Finding Breakout Hitters for Fantasy Baseball: Blast Rate Early-Season Metrics

Eric Samulski Identifies fantasy baseball hitters that could be breaking out and potential sleepers, and should be added off the waiver wire if still available.

It's about that time in the season when we start getting antsy about slow starters, or wondering if players off to hot starts on the fantasy baseball waiver wire might be for real. While it's still important to keep in mind that we're dealing with small sample sizes, there are some stats that have begun to stabilize.

Two of the ones I like to keep in mind when looking for hitter breakouts are Exit Velocity (which stabilizes at 45 balls in play) and Launch Angle (which stabilizes at 50 balls in play). Those stats are usually combined to tell us a hitter's barrel rate or blast rate.

In this article I'll be taking a look at some improving hitters who can be potential fantasy baseball breakouts and power-hitting risers in 2022.

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Background

Last year, I wrote an article about Blast Rate, which is a stat that Alex Chamberlain uses on his Pitch Leaderboard to separate "weak barrels" from "strong barrels." In that article, I explained that "by condensing the launch angle [on a typical barrel] to 28° and increasing the lowest exit velocity threshold from 97.5 mph to 100 mph, [Alex] noticed a massive difference in batted ball quality."

"Blasts" = 1.744 wOBAcon, 82% HR/BBE, and .919 AVG.

"Weak Barrels" = 1.140 wOBAcon, 38% HR/BBE, and .707 AVG.

While those numbers may not seem so different, the separation in production is especially important this year when we are having issues with the new baseballs. Balls that are hit at speeds and angles that would normally be leading to home runs are landing at the warning track, which means that, unless they switch the ball back (which is likely to happen) in order for a hitter to do real damage on a consistent basis, we might need to be looking for more than barrels.

We need to up the ante and be searching for Blasts.

Below you'll find the Blast leaderboard, with my thoughts on some of the names on the list, as well as a couple of names who just missed but might be worthy of our attention for fantasy baseball.

Blast Rate Leaderboard

Rowdy Tellez - 1B, Milwaukee Brewers

Many in the fantasy community have been waiting for the Rowdy breakout. Coming up with Toronto, he had never gotten more than 409 plate appearances in a season, yet he was intrigued with a career 11.8% barrel rate and 44.3% hard-hit rate. To many people, it was always a matter of "just wait till he gets full-time at-bats." Well, we're kind of seeing that now. Yes, Tellez sits against left-handers the majority of the time so the Brewers can work in Keston Hiura, but Tellez has 60 plate appearances and has appeared in 18 of the team's first 19 games. While he's only hitting .218/.283/.436, I think there are some signs that a breakthrough is coming.

For starters, Tellez hasn't had a high strikeout rate since 2019 and has just an 18.3% one now. His swinging-strike rate is a solid 10%, and he has an 88.9% zone contact rate, which is pretty tremendous for a power hitter. So we know he's making a lot of contact, and he's making hard contact, as evidenced by his blast rate and 45.5% hard-hit rate. However, Tellez is also elevating the ball more with a 47.7% flyball rate after finishing last year with a 38.2% mark. I'd love to see him raise his pull rate a bit more from 36.4%, but that was the mark he had last year, so it's not a bad thing as he does use all fields.

So we now have Tellez playing at least 80% of his team's games, hitting in the middle of the order in a hitter's ballpark, with an improved launch angle and the same top-end hard contact? To me, that has all the pieces of a true breakout.

Eugenio Suarez - 3B, Seattle Mariners

So this one surprised me, not gonna lie. After dealing with a shoulder injury before the 2020 season, Suarez just seemed to lose the feel for his swing. His slugging percentages plummeted in both years, his HR/FB ratio fell each year, his swinging strike rates climbed a bit higher, and his batting averages bottomed out. However, if you looked beneath the surface, not much had actually changed. His strikeout rate remained the same, his swinging strike rates went up a bit (as I mentioned) but not egregiously, so his O-Swing% remained around the same, his flyball rates actually improved, as did his barrel rates.

So it appeared as though Suarez was the same hitter and was squaring up the ball even more but he simply couldn't get a hit. If it was just one season, we would have looked at his .214 BABIP in 2020 and said he was unlucky. In fact, many did. But when he was even worse in 2021, people seemed to ignore his .224 BABIP and just said he was broken. Perhaps that was premature.

Suarez is hitting .254/.356/.492 to start the season; however, he actually has a lower hard-hit rate and lower average exit velocity (down to just 86.5 mph). It seems the benefit for Suarez, at least in the early going, is that he's lowered his launch angle from 18.3-degrees to 14.5-degrees. As a result, he seems to be avoiding the extremes that come with an uppercut bat path and has not hit a pop-up this entire season. He sits at 0% when he was at 7.6% in 2021 and 7.7% in 2022. So even though he is not hitting the ball as hard, he is maximizing his launch angle to not get under the ball as much.

That's good and can make Suarez useful, but I'm not buying into this as much as with Tellez. If the hard contact rate is what stabilizes around now, then Suarez is not hitting the ball as hard as he has in the past. The launch angle correction could be a good one, but he's also now in a far worse hitter's park, which will cap his power upside. It's possible that Suarez could now be a .240 hitter with 20-25 HR in a solid lineup, and that will be useful in many formats, but I don't think we're seeing a true return to form.

Joc Pederson - OF, San Francisco Giants

I'm sad to write that Joc Pederson injured his hamstring on Wednesday night and might be looking at an IL stint. Pederson was off to a tremendous start, hitting at the top of the Giants' lineup almost every game against a right-hander. He'd played in 16 games, hitting .353/.382/.745 with six HRs, 10 RBI, and 11 Runs. His 22% barrel rate, 61% hard-hit rate, and 95.7 mph average exit velocity are also all among the league leaders.

While we're used to seeing these kinds of hot streaks from Joc, there is one thing that stands out as making this potentially different: he's raised his swing rate to a career-high 52.2% and his first-strike swing rate to a career-high 65.5%. It seems as though the Giants are asking Joc to be more aggressive early in the count, which is why we've also seen his walk rate drop. The aggressiveness has also caused Joc to see almost 5% more fastballs than last year, likely because he's not allowing the count to go deep enough that pitchers are using breaking pitches to try to get him to chase. Once teams pick up on his aggressive approach, pitchers may start to pitch him backward, but he's never been too big of a swing-and-miss guy (aside from 2020), so that wouldn't concern me too much.

Given Joc's previously solid contact profile and clear power, I think a more aggressive approach that allows him to hunt fastballs early could make a lot of this growth legitimate. No, the .343 BABIP will not remain and the average will drop, but I believe he'll pay pretty much every game against right-handed pitching and continue to hit near the top of the lineup. That makes me think that a .250-.260 season with 30 HRs isn't that far out of the question for Joc, provided he doesn't miss too much time with this injury.

Jesus Sanchez - OF, Miami Marlins

In the first few weeks of the season, Jesús Sánchez had the fantasy baseball world going ga-ga. He was showing off his arm in the outfield and flashing his power at the plate. While the numbers have cooled a little bit of late, Sánchez is still hitting .277/.338/.508 as of this writing with three HRs, nine RBI, and 10 runs. However, despite the early optimism, I think we're looking at a player who isn't much different from who we thought he was last year.

Sánchez's hard contact metrics are strong, but they always have been. He had a slightly higher average exit velocity and a better barrel rate last year, so even though the hard-hit rate is up this year, the profile doesn't suggest that he is doing something new. What is new is the higher groundball rate. Sánchez's flyball rate has dropped to 28.9% and his groundball rate is up to 48.9% as his launch angle sits at just 5.1-degrees. We don't like that. Even if Sánchez continues to hit the ball hard, a 50% groundball rate is going to cap his power upside.

Another area of concern is that Sánchez is currently sporting a 14.2% swinging-strike rate and 28.2% strikeout rate, which are a bit higher than we'd like to see.  I still think Sanchez is an exciting player, but I think he's likely a .260-.270 hitter with a 20+ home run upside unless he can limit his groundball rate, which would take an in-season swing change that can be hard for some to implement.

Jurickson Profar - 2B/OF, San Diego Padres

Okay, this one surprised me. I know Profar is hitting well to start this year, but I kind of figured it would be flukey. And, to a certain extent, it might still be, but perhaps not as much as I expected. Let's start with the flukey aspects. Profar has a hard-hit rate of 36.4%, which is solid but not eye-popping, and his 37.3% fly-ball rate is basically in line with 2019 and 2021. Profar is also hitting the ball harder than ever before in his career, but his 89.7 mph average exit velocity doesn't make us think of a power profile.

Yet, there are a few changes that stand out. The first is that Profar's pull rate is up to an astronomical 61.4%, his launch angle is up a bit to 15.3-degrees, and his strikeout rate is up 4% to 19.7%, so even though Profar doesn't hit the ball with tremendous power, his approach seems more designed to sell out to pull the ball for damage. This has also likely helped to fuel the high barrel and blast rate.

Profar has always had a good feel for the strike zone and continues to display that with a 16.9% walk rate and minuscule 7.9% swinging-strike rate. He's also lowered his O-Swing% to just 22.5% so even though his approach is more designed for power, he is not expanding the strike zone more than he needs to, which is good because he has just a 57.5% O-Contact rate.

Given the new approach, it seems possible that Profar would approach his career-high 20 HRs while hitting around .230-.240. If he can steal 10 bases again, that 20/10 season could certainly make him valuable, especially in deep leagues.

Christian Walker - 1B, Arizona Diamondbacks

Walker has appeared on a lot of Buy Low lists partially because of the hard contact rates he's shown so far, so his name appearing on this Blast leaderboard wasn't too much of a shock. He currently has a career-high 92.2 mph average exit velocity and 46% hard-hit rate. Another intriguing development has been his improved plate discipline. Walker has lowered his O-Swing% to 24.6% and cut his SwStr% to 8.9%, which has helped trim his strikeout rate to 21.6% while raising his walk rate to 10.8%. A hitter who has a better understanding of the strike zone and is hitting the ball harder than he has for much of his career is a good thing.

All of this would seem to indicate that a breakout is on the way. As would the fact that Walker has increased his flyball rate to 56%, which is almost a 20% increase from his career rates. He has also raised his launch angle to 21-degrees and upped his pull rate to 48%, which shows that he is trying to maximize his swing for power. I had thought that maybe he was popping the ball up too much, but his infield flyball rate is just 3.6% and his pop-up rate is 8%, which is exactly the same as last year.

So if he's not popping it up more and he's hitting the ball harder, what's wrong? Well, the easy answer is both a lack of luck (he has just a .130 BABIP) and also the new ball. Walker is hitting the ball in the air more, but the ball is not traveling as far on average, which means balls that might be leaving the park or falling into gaps are simply being caught. So even though Walker is due for some positive regression regardless, as the weather heats up or the league changes the balls, you might see a bit of an early summer bump for Walker if his approach remains the same.

Just Missed the List

Cedric Mullins - OF, Baltimore Orioles (6.8%)

Perhaps just a reminder to not panic about last year's breakout star. Mullins is actually hitting the ball harder than last year and with a near-identical flyball rate. Mullins' SwStr% is up a bit and his overall contact rate and zone contact rate are down, but not in an alarming way, so I think we should see Mullins begin to figure it out, and he might be a good buy-low player.

Seth Brown - 1B/OF, Oakland Athletics  (6.4%)

Brown finds himself with an everyday job given the state of the Oakland lineup. That's a good thing for a hitter with a career 13.6% barrel rate and 40.4% hard-hit rate who has never had more than 307 plate appearances in an MLB season. Brown has actually lowered his launch angle this year and dropped his flyball rate by 11%, which could be concerning except most of that has been transferred to his line-drive rate. Brown's strikeout rate remains high (even though it's lower than his career rate) and his SwStr% is an elevated 15.1%, so he will likely never hit higher than .220-.230, but the thump in his bat is real. If he can begin to elevate the ball the way that we're used to, with his new 50% pull rate, we could see a power sure from Brown.

Connor Joe - OF, Colorado Rockies (6%)

Connor Joe was a bit of a fantasy star at the end of the season, getting a chance in Colorado and ending the year as a regular lead-off hitter. However, the addition of Kris Bryant, Jose Iglesias, and Randal Grichuk made projecting the Rockies' playing time confusing and kept Joe down in many drafts. Yet, Joe remains a fixture in the Rockies' lineup and has cut his strikeout rate to 16.7%, along with his SwStr% to just 6.8%. However, I don't think we're seeing anything different than we saw last year. His flyball rate and pull rate are almost identical. his hard-hit rate is actually down by 9%, his barrel rate is slightly down, and his average exit velocity is down to 85.7 mph.

Digging into Joe for this has actually made me a bit more concerned about his long-term outlook. That was amplified when I saw that he's hitting .343 at home this season and .235 away. Obviously, it's WAY too early to be confident in those splits, but the idea that he's actually hitting the ball with less authority than last year makes me think we're not witnessing some power breakout. The plate discipline is still really good, but he doesn't offer much with his legs, so he'll likely remains a 15-20 HR bat who will hit .260-.270 because of his likely home splits. There's value there, but now might be the time to see if somebody is buying the breakout.

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