February 10, 2016

Kyle Bishop looks at five players whose fantasy dominance in 2015 should continue this season.

It happens every year: A bunch of players produce way above or below expectations, and we spend the entire offseason arguing over whether or not the improvement or decline was genuine. Today we'll discuss five players whose coming out parties should continue in 2016.

All week long, I’ll be taking a look at last season’s surprises, be they breakout or bust, and offering my thoughts on each player’s fantasy outlook for this year. Separating the wheat from the chaff when it comes to last year’s performances can be the difference between a championship season and bitter, abject failure for your fantasy team. After all, if you ain't first, you're last.

Editor's Note: Be sure to also head over to our fantasy baseball rankings assistant. We have released our new rankings tool - you can easily filter, sort, and export all sorts of rankings - mixed leagues, AL/NL only, top prospects, dynasty formats, keeper values and more! It's all in one place, and all free.

Sustainable 2015 Breakouts

Manny Machado

When a player doubles his career home run total in a single season, the impulse is to check for any fluky elements. Machado’s 17.6 HR/FB% was a career best, but not too far afield from his 2014 mark of 15%. As you might have guessed, the bulk of the increase in homers came because he started elevating the ball more and hitting it harder. In 2013, Machado’s only other full season so far, he hit 14 homers and 51 doubles. Last season, he hit 35 homers and 30 doubles. That’s a nice bit of symmetry, and it suggests that Machado’s power developed exactly as his supporters argued it would. Having recovered the lower body strength he lost due to those leg injuries seems like a sufficient explanation here, especially since his swing hasn’t really changed.

Healthy legs also make it easier to buy the unexpected stolen base total. Machado isn’t known for being a burner or anything, but he posted solid speed scores and swiped 21 bags in his minor league tenure. It might be a bit much to expect 20 steals again, but 10 – 15 seems reasonable enough. Machado was one of only five players to hit 30 homers and steal at least 10 bases in 2015 (the others being Trout, Paul Goldschmidt, Todd Frazier, and Anthony Rizzo) so even a bit of regression here would leave him in elite company.

David Peralta

One of the most under-the-radar breakouts in fantasy last season, Peralta hit .312/.371/.522 with 17 homers and nine steals as he played his way into the starting job in left field. Only four other hitters managed to hit .300 while also producing an ISO of .200 or better – Bryce Harper, Goldschmidt, Joey Votto, and Nelson Cruz. Pretty good company for a guy who used to be a pitcher.

Examining his peripherals, there are no major red flags. A .368 BABIP is on the high side, but Peralta hits a lot of line drives and makes hard contact with regularity, particularly to the opposite field. He’s also fast, as demonstrated by his 19 triples in just under 800 at-bats at the major league level. So the skills are there to maintain an above-average mark. Peralta also made significant strides in the area of plate discipline last season, trimming his O-Swing% and nearly doubling his walk rate. The strikeouts went up a bit as well, but at just under 21 percent, they weren’t enough to bite into his value.

The home run output we saw in 2015 is probably his ceiling, as Peralta isn’t much of a fly ball hitter. His 26.6 FB% was 122nd out of 143 qualified batters. An eight-point jump in his HR/FB% is about the only aspect of his breakout that might raise an eyebrow, but even giving back half of that gain would only cost him a couple of bombs. Either way, Peralta’s gap power and speed should allow him to continue racking up extra-base hits.

Speaking of speed, there would seem to be untapped upside there. Peralta has 15 swipes in 22 attempts over his first two seasons. The Diamondbacks clearly aren’t afraid to give the green light, as they attempted the most steals of any team in baseball last season. Peralta may be held back a bit if he continues to see the majority of his at-bats in the cleanup spot, but he has the tools to increase his SB total. Another year of experience should only help.

Mookie Betts

Betts attracted plenty of attention in fantasy circles after his excellent rookie season in 2014, wherein he hit .291/.368/.444 with five homers and seven steals in just 52 games. Across four levels of the minors, he’d hit 27 home runs and stolen 79 bases to pair with a .325 batting average and double-digit walk rate in a little under 1,100 plate appearances. This across-the-board excellence had many owners (including yours truly) pegging Betts for a big year in 2015. He delivered, posting a .291/.341/.479 line with 18 homers, 21 steals, and 169 R+RBI as Boston’s primary leadoff hitter and center fielder (he was also 2B eligible, though he’s lost that for 2016).

Betts has said in interviews that he adjusted his approach to be more aggressive in his first full major-league season. As a rookie, his 19% O-Swing was the lowest mark in baseball. In 2015 that figure spiked to 27%, or roughly league average. Betts’ heat maps show a concerted effort to attack more pitches away, while his swing rate at pitches in the zone increased only slightly. As a result, Betts cut down on both his walks and his strikeouts, as each rate fell by a couple of percentage points. The uptick in power mainly came on pitches in the middle of the plate. Betts has surprising pop for a guy his size (5’9”, 160), as he smacked 42 doubles and eight triples in addition to his 18 bombs.

Steamer expects another excellent effort in 2016, forecasting similar numbers across the board with a slightly higher average and OBP and a few more stolen bases. Given his profile, it’s within the realm of possible that Betts could recover some of the lost walks without sacrificing the gains he made in power. And while he’s already great, the following comparison hints at even greater upside:

Gerrit Cole

The first overall pick in the 2011 amateur draft, the UCLA product had the velocity and the frame of an elite pitcher from day one. During his short time on the farm (he logged more innings this season than in his entire minor league tenure), Cole pitched well but never quite dominated. He acquitted himself well as a rookie in 2013, however, tossing 117 innings with a 3.22 ERA and 2.91 FIP. His 7.7 K/9 was a bit underwhelming, especially given that he had struggled to punch out hitters at Triple-A. All other indicators were good, however, as he limited walks and homers and induced a high number of grounders. He enjoyed a bump in strikeouts the following year, whiffing exactly a batter per inning, though modest upticks in both homer and walk rates contributed to a 3.65 ERA that, again, seemed somewhat disappointing for a player of his pedigree.

In 2015, however, Cole maintained the whiff rate and trimmed the other true outcomes to career-best levels. Much of his batted ball data has remained eerily consistent, and consistently excellent, since he broke into the big leagues. The one major difference between last season and his prior experience was pitch selection. Cole threw two-seamers and cutters nearly a third of the time as a rookie, but has almost entirely abandoned both offerings in favor of more four-seamers, more sliders, and a curve. The altered repertoire paid dividends, as only Clayton Kershaw got more out of his fastball, per PITCHf/x data.

Noah Syndergaard

As a rookie, Syndergaard struck out over a batter per inning and posted a K/BB north of 5.00. Here is a list of other starting pitchers in MLB history who have done that in their first season (minimum 150 innings):

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Thor also induced a double-digit pop-up rate and a ground ball rate above 45%. Below you will find a list of other starting pitchers who hit these benchmarks last season, in addition to the aforementioned strikeout and walk numbers:

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So yeah, this kid is pretty good. About the only thing he didn’t do well was limit homers. If he can figure out how to keep the ball in the yard, we’re looking at a legitimate Cy Young candidate.

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