Archive for Breakout Breakdown

Last spring, I wrote up a group of first basemen who I saw as valuable picks in the draft. Let’s review the initial projection, see what happened, and grade these suckers!

• 2023 Breakout 1B

1B

Wil Myers | CIN

• My Projection: .265/.343/.493, 24 HR, 66 R, 71 RBI, 7 SB in 505 PA
• Final Result: .189/.257/.283, 3 HR, 11 R, 12 RBI, 2 SB in 141 PA

What Happened: OK, we’re starting off hot!! Well, hot vomit. Let’s not beat around the bush, this is a massive F-. Myers completely flamed out and was eventually run out of Cincinnati altogether as they called up a bevy of premium prospects, most of whom clicked upon arrival. He managed a meager 43 wRC+ in his tiny sample and was let go in late-June.

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Nestor Cortes announced himself to much of the baseball fandom last week, striking out 12 Orioles over five shutout innings while allowing just three hits and walking one in an eventual no-decision. But Baltimore, all the haters cried. Everyone knows you only get 50% credit for games against the O’s! Read the rest of this entry »

Back in late March, I discussed six of 2019’s biggest breakouts, as defined by gain in end of season dollar value as calculated here. Obviously, reviewing how these six players ended up performing in 2020 is pretty silly considering we only played 60 games, amounting to just 37% of a regular full season. I’m going to do it anyway, because it’s still fun for me to look back to see how I did on the many calls I made. So let’s find out how the six 2019 breakouts performed in terms of generating fantasy value and whether I was right or wrong in calling them REAL (2020 EOS $$ was within $10 of 2019 EOS $$) or a BUST ((2020 EOS $$ was $10 or more below 2019 EOS $$).

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Two years ago during Fantasy Baseball Week at The Hardball Times, I researched whether last season’s breakouts were solid investments the following year. Spoiler alert: they are actually terrible investments. Of course, that’s as a group. That means that not every breakout from the previous season is going to fall flat the following year. So let’s discuss some of the big breakouts from 2019 and decide whether each turns out to be a poor investment bust or ends up holding onto their gains.

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Heading into the season, I published my first piece on previous season breakouts with a verdict on whether I believe the hitter is for real and will repeat or come close, or will be a bust in the following season. I discussed seven hitters in the inaugural edition, all of whom earned at least $13.90 more than in 2017. Let’s find out how my calls did.

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Note: For my next few articles, I’m going to examine the hitters and pitchers who underperformed and overperformed in 2019. Each article may spawn off others since some areas may need to be explored in more detail. After performing horribly in 2019, I need to take take a hard look at why I missed last season and what I can do to improve.

I’m going to start with the one player class every owner hopes to hit on, breakout hitters. A couple of these cheaply acquired star hitters can help carry a team. It could be a prospect turned uber-prospect (e.g. Pete Alonso) or just a hitter displaying new skills (e.g. Ketel Marte). I’m going to dig into the reason these breakouts were not draft-day targets and look for any common themes.

To get the test subjects, I ran our auction calculator for end-of-season production and then compared the auction dollars to the values created from their ADP. I didn’t want to just use the difference in ranks because the gap from #1 to #15 could be over $10 but the difference between #250 to #300 might just be $1. Using this method, I found 62 hitters who outperformed their value by $10 or more.
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Ever since his exciting debut in 2014 that came over a small sample size, we’ve been awaiting a full season of strong offensive performance from Jorge Soler. Actually, we didn’t even require a strong performance, we just wanted a full season for once, gosh darn-it! Since that 2014 debut, Soler’s career high in plate appearances has been just 366, thanks to injury after injury. Finally, this year he has surpassed the 500 plate appearance plateau. Not only has he given us his first full season, but he has paired it with strong offensive performance for a true fantasy breakout.

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Few aspects of fantasy baseball deviate more from the reality of major league baseball more than the speculation of prospects.  Like most aspects of market-based economics, you often have to buy early on limited information if you want to get the best return on investment before the rest of the industry influences supply and demand.  Perception is reality until prospects actually get the chance to contribute (or fail) on a major league field, and the outcome of those small but important samples can swing values wildly in short cycles.

The goal today is to identify up and coming talent well before the masses of most leagues, so here are five prospects primed to see a big increase in value in 2019.  You won’t find these prospects sitting on many Top 100 lists (yet), but you’ll want to at least keep them on your radar as they rise in the future.

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A year ago during Fantasy Baseball Week at The Hardball Times, I researched whether last season’s breakouts were solid investments the following year. Spoiler alert: they are actually terrible investments. Of course, that’s as a group. That means that not every breakout from the previous season is going to fall flat the following year. So let’s discuss some of the big breakouts from 2018 and decide whether each ends up as part of the poor investment bust group or they hold onto their gains.

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Although it’s more of a repeat, Anthony Rendon provided another fantasy relevant year while improving upon his average. Rendon set career highs in both doubles and extra-base hits despite appearing in 11 fewer contests compared to 2017 . In 2018, he finished with 88 runs, 24 home runs, 92 RBI, two stolen bases and a .308/.374/.535 slash line. In spite of missing time with an ankle injury last year, Rendon finished tied for first in the National League in doubles, fourth in average, fifth in on-base plus slugging percentage (.909), sixth in slugging percentage and ninth in extra-base hits (70). Rendon also reached base safely in 33 straight games between August 21st and September 25th hitting a robust .369/.454/.662 in the streak. Read the rest of this entry »