Breakout Hitters Watch for Fantasy Baseball - Alex Kirilloff, Taylor Walls, and More

May 17, 2023

Jon Anderson looks at fantasy baseball breakout hitters, risers, and potential sleepers for the rest of the fantasy baseball season, written in Week 8 of the season. He looks into Statcast data to identify hitter breakouts.

Here we are for our fifth iteration of breakout hitters! We are seeing more and more standout performances as we get closer to summer. There have been minor leagues being called up and some young players developing before our very eyes. There have also been plenty of dud performances and disappointments.

Some of the early season breakout candidates have panned out very well (Josh Lowe, Miguel Vargas, Brent Rooker), while others have declined heavily in the last few weeks (Brandon Marsh, Jack Suwinski).

For full transparency, I also track the picks every week, so you can go back and see who I picked. There will be some misses, but hopefully, we'll have enough hits to make this a worthwhile endeavor. I'll give you the tracker first and then we'll get into the five names we're picking for this week.

2023 Breakout Picks Tracker

Week 8 Picks

Alex Kirilloff, Minnesota Twins

It's all about the wrist! A healthy Kirilloff has done nothing but mash at all levels. Since 2021, Kirilofff has a .347/.456/1.104 slash line in the minors. That's an elite 14.3 PA/HR rate and he's handled strikeouts beautifully at an 18% K%.

This season, he mashed AAA pitching again for a few weeks before getting the call back to the bigs. He was one of the top hitters at consistently making elite contact with a 19% Brl% and a 79% Contact%:

2023 Minor League Brl% vs. Contact%

At the major league level, it's been predictably worse at .260/.312/.416 with a 32.3 PA/HR and a 22.5% K%. The thing is that a lot of that time was him clearly playing through injury. He has been on and off the IL with a wrist issue; in fact, he had surgery on the wrist last year.

What we see from Kiriloff in the advanced data is him being one of these guys that can maintain a high barrel rate and a high contact rate at the same time. Over his 190 PAs in the last two seasons at the highest level, he has a strong 80% contact rate. The average barrel rate for a hitter with a contact rate of around 80% is just 6% -- a couple of points below the league average.

The reason for this is that it's easier to make contact when you're swinging the bat slower, as the bat stays in the hitting zone longer. You will often see high barrel-rate hitters having low contact rates because of the speed with which they are swinging the bat. Kiriloff, however, has managed a league-average barrel rate along with his great contact rate, and it was much higher last year before the wrist injury flared up.

I believe the only question with Kirilloff is health. If the wrist injuries are behind him, he's going to hit very well -- and he should be owned in all leagues. Go get him.

Matt McLain, Cincinnati Reds

I don't like chasing after rookies because they so often let us down. That said, a few of them every year will prove to be able to handle major league pitching right from the jump. It is at least a speculative add on the better prospects just to see what they have (provided it doesn't cost you very much).

That's what I want to do with McLain here. Here's what he's done in the minors the last two seasons:

We can see a real improvement there from 2022 to 2023 across the board. If I am to risk anything at all on a rookie, I am going to do it on a player that doesn't already have a strikeout problem -- and McLain has been able to put plenty of balls in play this year.

McLain's contact rate in the minors this year was 75%, which pairs very nicely with the 14% barrel rate he put up. He also put a ton of balls into the air (40%). That's good news while he plays his home games at Great American Ball Park.

I think we should expect the K% to go into the mid-twenties or worse, but there's a decent chance he can keep the power production there with that advantageous home ballpark. That could work to offset the bad batting average he is likely to give us in this first go-around at major league pitching.

Again, don't spend too much on the guy because the failure rate with rookies is always quite high -- but he's worth a speculative add.

Zach Neto, Los Angeles Angels

It was not a hot start to the young shortstop's career as he slashed just .214/.313/.310 in his first 50 PAs. He has looked better over the last few weeks though and now has his season slash line up to .240/.308/.365 with two homers and a steal in 107 PAs.

Those numbers aren't really fantasy start-worthy right now, but there are a lot of good signs under the hood with the young guy.

His swing decisions are superb. You can see the elite chase rate along with a league-average swing rate. So he's swinging at the good pitches and letting the bad ones go. That plus his great zone contact rate makes for a guy putting a lot of balls into play, and most of them will be on hittable pitches. The icing on the cake is the barrel rate, which is not far behind the league average and trending upward.

There's a ton to like here, and a lineup promotion could very well be coming soon. If we can get a guy with elite contact, some power, and a lot of speed hitting ahead of Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani -- he could be a really, really strong fantasy contributor.

Taylor Walls, Tampa Bay Rays

I really didn't think we'd ever get here. Walls has been hitting the ball well since the season began, and I've been expecting it to all come to an end since the day after the season began.

Sometimes, the best way to make an argument is to try earnestly to make the opposite argument. If you can do it, your argument isn't very good. If you can't -- you might have something. I can't really make a great case for why Taylor Walls isn't going to continue to be a productive major-league hitter this year.

From 2021-2022, Walls slashed .198/.308/.326 over 863 PAs. He was one of those guys just in there for his defense, and it made me think that the beginning of the year was a total fluke. In 2023, he's slashing .281/.373/.583 with seven homers and seven stolen bases. An insane turnaround.

The thing about Walls is that he was never a bad hitter in the minors with a .831 OPS in AAA from 2021-2022. He didn't hit a ton of homers, but he did hit some (27.5 PA/HR).

Here are some of the improvements he's made from 2022 to 2023:

• K%: 25.8% -> 21.8%
• Contact%: 74.5% -> 76.8%
• Brl%: 6.2% -> 6.9%
• xwOBA: .265 -> .329
• xwOBACON: .297 -> .372
• EV: 85.2 mph -> 88.8 mph
• LA: 15.7 -> 17.2

To summarize all that, he's hitting baseballs:

1. More often
2. Harder
3. At a higher angle

Ding ding ding! That's a recipe for a breakout! His seven homers in 110 PAs do seem a bit high with the below-average Brl%, but those kinds of things can happen when you're so consistently hitting the ball in the optimal angle range, which Walls has done.

Besides the 14 HR+SB, the best part of Walls' fantasy value is that he plays three different positions. That's very valuable in roto leagues. I think he's a guy who should be picked up and started in most leagues.

And that's it for another week of breakout hitters! I hope this post makes all of your fantasy baseball dreams come true.

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