RADIO
Welcome back RotoBallers to another edition of my "Breakout Hitters To Watch" series. And just like that, we are on our third version of the weekly breakout hitter watch analysis.
For those who are not familiar, I'll be writing this article weekly and it will be published on Thursday mornings. So far, we have identified nine different hitters that we suspect to be having breakout seasons.
Let's do a little bit of a recap before we get into the names we're looking at this week.
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Recap
In week one of the post (before the season even began), we identified these names for you:
So two of those names have been absolute disasters, and Stott hasn't really helped fantasy teams either. Kwan has been very good early on, but overall you'll have to forgive me for that first post – I only had spring training data to use!
In week two, we should have done better with a week's worth of games to look at. Here's who we picked out:
- Steven Kwan again
- Gavin Lux
- Andrew Vaughn
- Jesus Sanchez
- Austin Nola
A swarm of rainouts over the last week largely kept Kwan and Vaughn off the field, but all of these guys performed relatively well in their time. Sanchez put together a really nice week with a 21% K% and a 1.211 OPS despite not actually putting a ball over a fence. Nola might not have much power in his game, but he continues to hit in a nice spot in the lineup and make tons of contact.
Now let's go over the general process here again once more, and then we'll identify some breakout hitters once again.
The Process
The beauty of Baseball Savant is that it gives us one of the richest datasets in the entire world, and I'm not even talking about just the sports world. Every day, tens of thousands of data points are generated from Major League Baseball games, capturing nearly everything that happens on the field. This gives us more powerful and rich data than we ever had before.
More data does not always mean better insights, but in this case, it does mean that if we're smart, we can get find legitimate conclusions and takeaways from the data much earlier than before. We don't really need to wait for a 400 plate appearance sample to feel confident that a hitter has actually improved, we can do that much more quickly now.
That isn't to say that some players won't fool us early on, it's not impossible to luck into a couple of weeks of checking every box at the plate, but the things we're looking for more often than not give us a pretty good idea of what's true.
Some of those things we're looking for:
- Contact Rate. We'll be looking for hitters that are making much more contact on their swings than in years past, which is a tough thing to fake for even a few weeks of time.
- Barrel Rate. These batted ball types (by exit velocity and exit angle) are great indicators of power potential.
- Max Exit Velocity. This gives us a good picture of raw bat speed. If we suddenly see a player beat his career-best maximum exit velocity by three miles per hour, we'll know he's swinging the bat harder than before.
- Plate Patience Metrics. We'll see which hitters are swinging more or less, and we can even break that down by the quality of the pitches they're offering at or letting go by.
The Breakouts
Seiya Suzuki, Chicago Cubs
I'm taking some liberties here. I'm not sure we can really technically call a rookie like Suzuki a "breakout", but we just have to talk about what he's been able to do so far.
Here are some stats on Suzuki's first 41 plate appearances and where they rank league-wise.
| Stat | Value | Rank |
| OPS | 1.458 | 1st |
| Brl% | 28.6% | 1st |
| AVG | .414 | 2nd |
| Max Velo | 110.9 | 45th |
A bit selective there in the categories I picked, but this guy has been mashing the ball. The other big-time positive for Suzuki is the 22% K% he's posted. It's very, very tough to post a league-leading barrel rate without a high strikeout rate, and Suzuki has done just that over the season's first two weeks.
Interestingly, Suzuki is also #1 in the league in swing rate. He's swung at just 28.6% of the pitches he has seen. This doesn't necessarily mean anything, it's more of just a metric of his approach at the plate, but when we see a low swing rate with a low strikeout rate, we can feel pretty confident that he sees the ball very well. Taking this many pitches does tend to lend itself to a few more strikeouts since you're getting deep into counts, but it also results in higher on-base percentages as well.
I think it's likely that Suzuki eventually gets to a 25-27% K%, which might lead to a more league-average batting average, but the power is legit and he's looking like a total fantasy stud. I would be trying to buy high on Suzuki right now, he just might be one of the best hitters in the game.
Jeremy Pena, Houston Astros
Well, I guess we've found out why the Astros were willing to let Carlos Correa sign with another team. Their new rookie shortstop has come out of the gates blazing hot with a .333/.366/.639 slash line, a 20% barrel rate, and a tiny 17% K%. The walks haven't been there (4.9%), but he has not let many mistake pitches go unpunished.
His six barrels (tied for third in the league) have resulted in just two homers. Typically about 50% of barrels go for homers, but this does fluctuate based on the player (how hard they're hitting their barrels, if they're pulling them more often, etc.), but I think it's safe to say that Pena could easily have four or five homers so far with a bit more luck. It's pretty early to be looking at batted ball data, but in there we do see a pretty low 8.4-degree average launch angle. This comes with a pretty low 33% GB% rate though, so the guy has been hitting a bunch of line drives, which is encouraging.
Not to get too much into the weeds this early on, we can just keep it simple. Pena swings the bat hard, and he's made a lot of contact and limited strikeouts for two weeks now, and he's looking like a stud at the shortstop position in real life and in the fantasy game.
Alex Verdugo, Boston Red Sox
I have invented a new metric that I call "swing success rate". What this does is show you what percent of a hitter's swings end up with a barrel or a "solid contact" classification. The "solid contact" classification is the next best thing to a barrel, it won't result in homers as often as barrels, but those batted balls typically go for extra bases, and it's a very good thing to be good at.
Here are the leaders in this new stat I've contrived:
We have the aforementioned Pena and Suzuki shown there along with some of the most talented hitters in the game in Juan Soto, Wander Franco, and Luis Robert. Number two is a name you did not expect: Alex Verdugo!
Here is a comparison of Verdugo's batted ball profile from 2021 to 2022 thus far:
| Year | Brl% | Max Velo | GB% |
| 2021 | 7.3% | 110.8 | 50% |
| 2022 | 11.8% | 109.6 | 38% |
Verdugo is established enough for me to not really buy into this change this early on, but it's certainly notable that his ground-ball rate has dropped that much. Let's check on how his batted balls have broken down thus far:
| Ground Balls | 13 |
| Line Drives | 8 |
| Fly Balls | 12 |
| Pop-Ups | 1 |
He has always made tons of contact, and that is continuing this year (84% contact%). You know that Fenway Park is a pretty nice place to get some cheap homers as a left-handed hitter, so if Verdugo has really tweaked his swing and approach to hit more fly balls, we could see him legitimately turn into a 25-30 homer guy, which would make him a super valuable fantasy asset.
Ke'Bryan Hayes, Pittsburgh Pirates
We saw Hayes "breakout" as a rookie in the short 2020 season, when he slashed .376/.442/.682 in 95 plate appearances. His followup to that was not very impressive as he dealt with some injuries and slashed just .257/.316/.373 with six homers in 396 plate appearances last season.
So far, his 2022 looks a lot more like 2020 than it does 2021. Hayes has a 9.7% barrel rate, which is just slightly above league average, but he's posted an elite 86.4% contact rate with a low 20.0 K% and a great .326/.356/.419 line in his first 41 plate appearances.
His max exit velocity is 110, which is a strong number in itself. I don't believe him to be a threat for 35 homers, but I think 25 is a pretty rational expectation. That plays very, very well with the potential strong batting average given the bat skills, and he'll chip in stolen bases for you as well. I would imagine he would be tough to get given his previous prospect hype and hot start to the year, but he's someone worth pursuing.
Rowdy Tellez, Milwaukee Brewers
The 27-year-old has a career .248/.308/.465 slash line with a 24% K%. Last season, he was moved from Toronto to Milwaukee, and it looks like he might be flourishing in this new park.
So far in his 36 plate appearances, Rowdy has pounded three homers with a .270/.325/.595 slash line and a lowered 17.5% K%. The 24% career K% we mentioned is really being pulled up by the fact that he struck out at 28% mark from 2018-2019 in 482 plate appearances. Since 2020, he's posted a strikeout rate of 19%, a really impressive number for someone with his much pop.
Some of that extra contact might be turning into more ground-balls than we'd like to see, as he's put the ball on the ground 43% of the time this year, but again, this guy hits the ball very, very hard and he's a really solid source of power. Playing every day in hitting fifth in the lineup is a much-improved situation for his fantasy value, and I think Tellez is going to put up a really nice year this year – and he's widely available right now (5% rostered on Yahoo as I type this).
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