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Mike Carter's 2025 fantasy baseball breakout hitters. His 5 biggest surprises and breakouts hitters in fantasy baseball last season. 2026 season outlooks for Ben Rice, Addison Barger, Junior Caminero, more.
The 2025 fantasy baseball season is in the books, so it's time to look back on some of the biggest surprise stars and performances. There are always players who emerge from nowhere to become productive players, or simply come on stronger than in their past histories.
My teammate Kevin Luo wrote a fantastic piece last month in which he named players like Pete Crow-Armstrong and Brice Turang as true breakout stars. For this piece, I dig a little deeper to find other breakout players not mentioned in his piece.
The big question for all of these players: can they repeat their 2025 seasons in 2026? Many of them look like they can do just that, if not surpass their marks from 2025. Let's dive in and take a look at five players who had excellent, if somewhat unexpected, seasons.
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Junior Caminero, 3B, Tampa Bay Rays
Caminero, who is 22 years old, had an incredible season and may be the best third baseman, at least offensively, in baseball right now. Many pundits predicted he would break out in 2025, and he did, hitting .264 with 45 home runs, 110 RBI, seven stolen bases, and 93 runs scored.
He was a 4.6 WAR player with a 129 wRC+, meaning he was 29% better than league average. A lower-than-average K rate of 19.1% helps. His BABIP was only .260 last season, while his career BABIP is .289. If that number normalizes somewhat, a few more points of batting average are possible here.
Caminero has few peers when it comes to bat speed; his 78.6 mph swing speed is in the 100th percentile in the game. His hard-hit and barrel percentages are over the 85th percentile. Could he overtake Jose Ramirez as the top third baseman for fantasy purposes this year?
So, Caminero may just be scratching the surface. If you want to roster him, you will need to do so early; his current NFBC ADP has him in the first round at pick 13. He could very well be worth that helium.
Andy Pages, OF, Los Angeles Dodgers
Pages might seem a surprise here, but he carried many fantasy teams early in 2025. He hit .325 with six home runs and 14 RBI in April to set the tone for his breakout season. Pages finished with a .272 average with 27 home runs, 86 RBI, and 74 runs scored.
Pages also pitched in on the stolen bases, nabbing 14, which was an unexpected yet pleasant development for fantasy players. His tremendous defensive skills will keep him in center field, and on a team that needs speed and youth, Pages fits the bill in Los Angeles.
Take a look at the chart below. Much of the breakout was fueled by the gains Pages made against right-handed pitchers. He picked up more than 100 points of batting average in 2025 against breaking pitches from right-handed batters, and another 30 against fastballs.
The underlying metrics suggest that a 25-homer, 15-steal season is repeatable for Pages. His current NFBC ADP is 127, which means he's going in the ninth round in current early drafts. That seems to be a fair price for a productive outfielder on a great team.
Hunter Goodman, C/OF, Colorado Rockies
It feels like we have been waiting on the Goodman breakout for a long time, yet he is still only 26 years old. In 2024, he hit a lackluster .190 with 13 home runs. In 2025, given a full-time job, he hit .278 with 31 home runs, 91 RBI, 73 runs scored, and chipped in a steal.
This was good for a 3.4 WAR season and a 118 wRC+. Goodman should be a mainstay in the middle of the Colorado lineup and get most of his starts behind the plate. His current NFBC ADP of 71 has him as the fourth catcher off the board.
You can see in the chart below that Goodman is aggressively pulling the baseball when he hits it, especially in the air. His 25.4% pull-air percentage is elite, and you can see that the vast majority of hit homers were pulled over the left field wall. Playing half of his games in a hitter's paradise makes him well worth the investment at the ADP.
Ben Rice, C/1B/DH, New York Yankees
Rice proved his mettle to the New York Yankees in 2025. He hit .255 with 26 home runs, 65 RBI, 74 runs, and three stolen bases while getting starts at catcher, first base, and designated hitter. His OBP was .337 with a paltry 18.9% K% and 9.4% BB%.
I love looking at his Statcast page and seeing all of this red. Rice will not sneak up on any savvy fantasy players this season. He hits everything hard; his xBA was 34 points higher than actual, and all his hard-hitting metrics just jump off the page. See below.
Rice did struggle somewhat with left-handed pitchers, hitting only .208 in 119 plate appearances. Yet with that low average came seven home runs. He finished the season strong, hitting 10 of his homers in August and September.
His season was good for a 133 wRC+. Rice should be back in the middle of the batting order in 2026, where I would anticipate that most of his at-bats will come at first base, with maybe 15-20 games catching. Rice could easily hit 30 home runs next year with a full-time job.
Addison Barger, 3B/OF, Toronto Blue Jays
Barger had a nice season for the Toronto Blue Jays, splitting time between third base and the outfield. He really came into his own on the game's biggest stage in the playoffs and will likely be on fantasy radars in early 2026.
Barger finished 2025 playing 135 games with a .243 batting average with 21 home runs, 74 RBI, 61 runs scored, and four stolen bases. This season represented significant gains over 2024, adding 46 points to his batting average, cutting his K% from 26.7% to 24.1%, and raising his ISO from .154 to .211. His wRC+ was 107 in 2025.
One thing Barger does for certain is swing hard, as seen by the chart below. His 75.9 mph swing speed is elite, as is his 51% hard-hit rate. His current NFBC ADP is 185, which puts him as the 13th third baseman going off the board.
There are some warts in the profile as Barger struggled in a limited sample size against left-handed pitching, hitting .217 with one home run in 89 plate appearances. He will need to make some gains there, or he may find himself in a strong-side platoon.
As of this writing, Barger is penciled in at third base for the defending American League champions, but that could change depending on free-agent and trade acquisitions. One big question will be, does Toronto find a way to bring back Bo Bichette? If it does, that could push Barger to an outfield role.
There are so many good players we could have written about here. Who did we leave off the list who should be on here? As we prepare for drafts in 2026, the players listed here will be interesting, given that their price tag is expected to continue to rise following their breakout season.
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