Breakout Hitters for Fantasy Baseball - MLB Batters Rising for Week 15

Jon Anderson looks at fantasy baseball breakout hitters, risers and potential sleepers for Week 15. He looks into Statcast data to identify hitter breakouts.

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

Vinnie Pasquantino, Kansas City Royals

We are late on Pasquantino here. Chances are that he's rostered in your league, but if he's not, stop reading this right now and go add him.

There are just 11 hitters in the league this year with a barrel rate above 10% and a contact rate above 78%. Here are those names along with their xwOBA marks.

SAMPLE SIZE ALERT. The reason Pasquantino is on this list is probably the same reason Arroyo and Jansen are on the list – not a lot of PAs this year. However, that doesn't mean we need to ignore what he's done so far this year.

The 89% contact rate is absurd. Not many hitters can do that over the long haul, and I have a feeling that Pasquantino will be down into the low-80s quite soon. He did post a great 12.2% K% in the minors this year, and his career mark is right around there and it has only come up to 16% since joining the Majors. He's a very polished hitter.

Now finding a young player that can make a lot of contact and limit strikeouts isn't all that rare. What is rare is that coming with any kind of decent barrel rate and hard-hit rate. Not a single hitter in the league with more than 200 plate appearances and a contact rate above 85% has a double-digit barrel rate, and chances are Pasquantino won't either when he gets that big of a sample – but it sure seems like right now he's going to be a very, very good Major League hitter. Pick him up and start him now, and keep an eye on these contact and barrel rates on him.

Kris Bryant, Colorado Rockies

Yes, we are about six years too late to call Bryant a "breakout," but hear me out.

Bryant was a very exciting player to draft late off-season after he signed a huge contract with the Rockies. Unfortunately for those who drafted him with excitement, he sputtered out of the gate with a .281/.338/.351 line with no homers through his firs 65 plate appearances before hitting the IL for close to a month. Then he came back, played a couple of games, and then went back on the IL for another five weeks. If you drafted Bryant, you're probably not having the greatest season, however, it seems like your patience is about to be rewarded.

Since he has returned from the IL this second time, Bryant has hit .340/.392/.660 with four homers, an 11.4% Brl%, an 85.7% contact rate, a 5.9% K%, and a .459 xwOBA in 51 plate appearances. Holy cow.

Since June began, for hitters with at least 50 plate appearances, Bryant ranks third in the league in SLG and fourth in the league in OPS while having the league's best strikeout rate. Only the guy we just talked about, Vinnie Pasquantino, has a double-digit barrel rate with a contact rate above 85% over this time.

Bryant is healthy, he is seeing the ball and swinging the bat very, very well right now – and I think he might just be one of the best hitters for fantasy baseball moving forward given where he plays his home games.

Yermin Mercedes, San Francisco Giants

No player had a more strange 2021 season than Yermin Mercedes. He busted onto the scene early on with the White Sox, hitting .373 and slugging .598 with five homers in his first 100 plate appearances, but then struggled mightily the whole way down back to the minor leagues. Now it's the middle of the 2022 season and Mercedes is back, baby!

Let's have a look at his minor league performance this year:

That earned him a call-up to the Giants and since then we've seen him do this with the big league team:

It's 31 plate appearances so let's take it easy here. The reason I am somewhat almost sort of kind of interested here is that Mercedes has proven to be a bit of a... head case (can I say that here?). We saw him be a bit all over the place last year in scuffles with his manager and just not responding all that calmly to adversity. How that plays in here is that he joined the Giants this season after they claimed him off of waivers on June 18th.

So yeah, we're talking about a player who has been bad for his whole career and just recently got flat-out cut, but I just have a little bit of belief in what this guy could be capable of in a new environment. His numbers in April last year were so convincing as he was making tons of contact and hitting the ball extremely hard. He's done that again this year in his short time with a fine 73% contact rate and a 15% barrel rate with a .439 xwOBA.

He's not going to be an everyday player, and the smart money would still be on him ending back up in the minor leagues this year, but the Giants are known to squeeze the best numbers out of players – so you can keep one eye on Mercedes over the next few weeks.

Yadiel Hernandez, Washington Nationals

I was very close to writing up Hernandez in May, but the fact that he is 34 years old kept me from doing so. His late May to mid-June performance had me feeling pretty good about decision, but now he's back and I'm giving him the nod.

Over the first month of the season, Hernandez racked up 75 plate appearances and slashed .371/.400/.557 with two homers, a 14% Brl%, and a nice 19% K%.

So he's going in waves here. Let's check out the wOBA vs. xwOBA chart:

You can see the green line hovering above the red line for most of the year, and well above it during that rough patch – that suggests that he was experiencing some bad luck, but I mean in June those lines were both really low and he was not a good fantasy contributor.

You can see what he's done in this most recent sample that encompasses 72 plate appearances. He has a 45% hard-hit rate and a nice 74% contact rate along with the rest of those good statistics, and you know how I feel about hitters that can maintain good contact rates along with high barrel rates.

He's 34, and a career journeyman. He played in foreign leagues until 2017 and did not see a Major League jersey until last season. His minor league career slash line of .301/.383/.506 shows a capable hitter at those ranks, but clearly, the Nationals had reason to not call him up sooner. I don't think Hernandez is a difference-maker, but right now he's swinging a good bat and he's surely available in your league, so he can be added if you're desperate for some outfield help.

And that's it for this week's breakout picks, hope this helps. Good luck this week, RotoBallers!

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