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Welcome back RotoBallers to another edition of my "Breakout Hitters To Watch" series. What we're doing here is taking a good, close look at the hitting data each week to see which hitters are standing out the most.
The idea is to find hitters that have made changes and/or really improved this season to find start-worthy hitters for your fantasy teams, preferably on the cheap. We aren't constricting ourselves to players that are available on waivers or anything like that, just looking for some hitters that may be having their breakout seasons that you should try to acquire.
For transparency's sake, we'll do a recap of each week's recommendation at the beginning of each post to track our results and see if we're on the right track.
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Fantasy Baseball Breakouts Recap
Here are all of the names I've recommended so far.
This Week's Fantasy Baseball Breakout Picks
Ryan Mountcastle, Baltimore Orioles
We thought that the changes made to Camden Yards would be the death of Ryan Mountcastle this year, but he has survived it. He did scare us with a pretty bad April, but since May 21 when he came off of the IL, he has done this:
| PA | AVG | OBP | SLG | HR | xwOBA | Brl% | Hard% | K% | BB% |
| 176 | .282 | .324 | .558 | 10 | .401 | 20.0% | 55.0% | 25.6% | 6.3% |
Ten homers in 176 PA is a really strong home run rate. The new ballpark setup will indeed cost him some homers compared to previous years, and it already has, here's the spray chart:
You can see a few balls there that went for fly-outs that would have flown over the fence in previous years, so look: that's a downside, but the profile is still that of a really solid hitter. Only four hitters with at least 150 plate appearances since May 21st have a barrel rate at or above 20%. Joining Mountcastle on that list are Kyle Schwarber, Aaron Judge, and Shohei Ohtani – that's elite company.
For the season, only six hitters have barrel rates above 15% with strikeout rates below 26%, those names:
| Hitter | PA | Brl% | K% |
| Aaron Judge | 338 | 24.8% | 25.4% |
| Yordan Alvarez | 295 | 18.7% | 17.3% |
| Shohei Ohtani | 332 | 18.3% | 24.4% |
| Joc Pederson | 233 | 18.1% | 21.9% |
| Ryan Mountcastle | 292 | 16.3% | 25.3% |
| Ronald Acuna Jr. | 219 | 15.3% | 23.7% |
His dot is BRIGHT red on my barrel rate vs. contact rate plot, signifying how often he has hit the ball over 95 miles per hour this year. Since his return from the IL, his 55% hard-hit rate is fifth-best in the league.
I think Mouncastle is just an elite hitter and (at the ripe age of 25) will be for years to come.
Cavan Biggio, Toronto Blue Jays
Not this guy again! But yes...we're back on Biggio.
Everybody likes when a bad hitter changes their approach right, right!? We get really interested in that kind of stuff. Well, it seems that Biggio has made some changes. He had just 28 plate appearances in April before hitting the IL, but during that short sample, his GB% was way up at 54%. We knew this would turn around given the career numbers, but it is interesting to see how downhill the GB% has been for him this season:
Let's take a look at his plate discipline numbers across his career thus far.
| Year | Swing% | Contact% | Chase% | GB% |
| 2019 | 36.1% | 75.9% | 13.6% | 25.8% |
| 2020 | 36.3% | 78.3% | 13.7% | 39.6% |
| 2021 | 41.5% | 76.6% | 18.5% | 39.0% |
| 2022 | 38.3% | 77.8% | 14.5% | 32.0% |
We see in the profile when comparing 2022 to 2021:
- Fewer swings
- Fewer chases (swings at pitches out of the strike zone)
- Slightly more contact
- Way fewer ground balls
The strikeout rate of 27.9% hasn't changed much from his career (26.7% career), and it is actually up 1.4 points from 2021 – but what we have seen is an explosion in the barrel rate up to 12.0% (career mark at 7.0%).
The 12% barrel rate has turned into just two homers for Biggio, which is pretty wild. His super high walk rate of 16% along with that high strikeout rate makes him one of these guys that just doesn't get a lot of balls into play, which is displayed in his much less fascinating barrels per plate appearance mark of 6.4. This is still a good mark, but it's important to note that a high barrel rate is much less interesting when it's coming from a guy who gives away 40% of his plate appearances to walks and strikeouts.
What to do about Biggio? Right now, Biggio is not quite an every single day hitter, sitting once or twice a week. When he does start, he's typically hitting ninth for the Blue Jays – which we know really handicaps fantasy production. If he's available in deep leagues, it appears he's a better fantasy contributor right now than in 2021 – and the upside is pretty large given his speed and youth.
Nick Gordon, Minnesota Twins
Gordon is not a typical starter for the Twins, starting just four of the Twins' last ten games. That makes him an unstartable fantasy asset. However, if he does start playing every day I think he might be someone that is very, very interesting.
We have long known that Gordon can steal some bags – his 28.1 foot per second max sprint speed puts him in the 73rd percentile in that category – and he has stolen double-digits bags every season he's played in the pros. What we have seen that is surprising is a high hard-hit rate of 50.4%. He has gone as high as 110.7 miles per hour off the bat, and he's piled up a really strong 13.2% Brl% and a 7.0% blast%. Before the season, I wouldn't have thought Gordon was capable of these things given his 6.8% barrel rate last season. His decent 24% K% and 75% contact rate make him a guy that can hit for a good batting average as well (.275 currently).
We will need Gordon to hit/luck himself into more playing time for him to be a valuable fantasy asset, but if that does happen, he should be added in most leagues of size.
Daniel Vogelbach, Pittsburgh Pirates
Things got a little bit exciting in Bucco land in June as they called up Oneil Cruz and Bligh Madris, but since the calendar turned to June, it's been Vogelbach stealing the show.
In his last 87 plate appearances, Vogelbach has hit .247/.368/.493 with five homers on a 14.5% barrel rate. He has struck out just 20.7% of the time over this time with a high 16.1% walk rate and a really high 51% hard-hit rate. He also has seen his contact rate spike up to 82% over this sample and his .415 xwOBA is near the league leaders.
The thing here is that not a ton of this is new territory for Vogelbach. He has never been a stranger to the barrel (9.9% career), and he's always taken a ton of walks (career 15.2%). The 2022 changes are slight, here are some 2022 numbers compared to his career.
| Stat | 2022 | Career |
| Swing% | 32.3% | 33.8% |
| Brl% | 12.8% | 9.9% |
| K% | 23.7% | 25.2% |
| BB% | 13.1% | 15.2% |
| GB% | 40.3% | 39.1% |
| FB% | 45.0% | 40.4% |
| SLG | .446 | .411 |
| OPS | .781 | .746 |
He has always been at the bottom of the league in swing rate, and that has even gone down a point and a half this year.
2022 Hitters - Lowest Swing Rates
| Hitter | Swing% |
| Daniel Vogelbach | 32.3% |
| Max Muncy | 35.5% |
| Juan Soto | 35.8% |
| Steven Kwan | 37.4% |
| Taylor Ward | 37.7% |
We have seen the strikeout rate lowered slightly and the barrel rate up a pretty good amount, and that all has turned into increases in the SLG and OPS.
Vogelbach is most interesting in OBP leagues since his batting average won't help you and the RBI opportunities aren't really there with the Pirates even with their lineup getting a bit better. That said, if you're looking for an OBP power hitter at first base in any kind of league, Vogelbach can be of service.
Rob Refsnyder, Boston Red Sox
Let's wrap this week's edition up by talking about a 31-year-old platoon bat, shall we? Refsnyder has been around the block, going up and down between the minors and majors since 2015. He is a career .231/.317/.325 hitter, aka a bad hitter.
HOWEVER, this season Refsnyder is hitting .308/.387/.500 in 62 plate appearances. Oh, 62 plate appearances? Okay, why should we care then? Well, this is why!
| Stat | 2022 | Career |
| Contact% | 80.8% | 79.6% |
| Brl% | 15.2% | 4.6% |
| K% | 12.9% | 20.6% |
| GB% | 43.5% | 49.6% |
| FB% | 32.6% | 28.7% |
| xwOBA | .490 | .320 |
The stats we see above are a bit more meaningful over a small sample, so it's good to see huge improvements in these areas. In 2022, Refsnyder has
- Struck out way less
- Hit the ball way harder
- Hit way more balls into the air
I'm not proclaiming that the 2022 successes aren't mostly attributable to good fortune, they very well could be – we have seen so little of Refsnyder that it's hard to say anything with certainty.
What I do think explains quite a bit of this is how the Red Sox are using him. This season he has seen 24 plate appearances against lefties and 38 against righties, getting most of his starts against left-handed pitchers. He has slugged .667 against lefties and just .387 against righties. He's not really fantasy relevant while being a platoon guy, but he's someone to stream in or play in DFS in those times he's at the top of the Sox lineup (we know they like to put some strange names in the #1 spot of the lineup).
And that's it for this week's breakout picks, hope this helps. Good luck this week, RotoBallers!
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