When we talk about sleepers, as we did in yesterday's newsletter, we're usually talking about pretty low-end players. Guys who are widely available in most Fantasy leagues, who haven't necessarily accomplished enough to be stalwarts, but who we think can make the leap – if not to stardom, then at least to Fantasy relevance.

Breakouts are the next step up. Breakouts could be established players – they could even be stars, as long as they are players you expect to be better moving forward than they have been. Preferably much better.

We're talking about starters becoming stars, or stars becoming superstars. Whatever that next level is, that's what we're expecting these players to reach, and that's what today's newsletter is all about. For a couple of obvious examples of what we're talking about, look no further than opposing side of last night's All-Star game: On the NL side, you had Pete Crow-Armstrong, representing that leap from "pretty good player" to "superstar"; on the AL side, Cal Raleigh went from being one of the best catchers in baseball to having maybe the best season ever by a catcher. If you had called Raleigh a breakout before the season, people might have scoffed at you, given how established he already was, but you would have been right! 

The eight names in today's newsletter aren't nobodies. They range from a two-time All-Star to a former Rookie of the Year runner-up to the literal top prospect in baseball this season, but they all have one thing in common: I think they're going to take another step forward in the second half of the season. And they could all make a big impact in how your Fantasy championships play out this season. 

Let's get to them:

Wyatt Langford, OF, Rangers – It might already be happening, as Langford has hit .324/.425/.529 with nine runs, seven RBI, two homers, and four steals in nine games since coming back from the IL in early July. Langford was everyone's favorite breakout pick before the season, but I'm not sure he ever got a fair chance to live up to the hype, as he dealt with an oblique injury during the spring, another one in April, and then a third in late June. Those are notoriously difficult injuries to manage and play through, and we see seasons wrecked by them pretty regularly. That may be what's happening with Langford, but it's still worth noting that, despite the injuries, we're still seeing flashes of those high-end tools from Langford; his sprint speed is in the 88th percentile, and his quality-of-contact metrics are above average across the board, including an 88th percentile 113.1 mph max exit velocity. Langford might never become the superstar many have hoped he would be, but I still have faith. 

Roman Anthony, OF, Red Sox – Here's how it has worked for most top hitting prospects over the past couple of years: They get called up to much pomp and circumstance, and then they struggle to show more than just flashes for a month or two as they acclimate to the major-league level. Then, the ones who are stars eventually start to figure it out. The leap from the high minors to the majors looks to be as big as it's ever been, and expecting any prospect to immediately be a superstar is probably asking too much. But the good ones eventually figure it out, and I have a lot of faith that Anthony is going to be one of the good ones. We're seeing those flashes already, both in terms of his approach at the plate – a very low chase rate and roughly average swing-and-miss metrics – and in terms of what happens when he makes contact, where he has a 93.8 mph average exit velocity that would be tied with Matt Olson for the seventh-best mark if he had enough plate appearances to qualify. And he does damage when he elevates the ball, with a 98.9 mph average exit velocity on fly balls and line drives that is behind just five hitters – and, notably, ahead of Aaron Judge . Anthony is probably on the wrong side of the passive/patient divide and needs to do a better job of hitting the ball in the air more consistently, but that'll come. Betting on this kind of talent just makes sense. 

Adley Rutschman, C, Orioles – I was so sure Rutschman was going to be good this season. I was so sure his struggles in the second half last season were mostly injury-related. But even before his trip to the IL with an oblique strain in June, it was another deeply disappointing season from Rutschman, whose OPS had tumbled to .691, a career-worst mark. But a .227 batting average with a 16.3% strikeout rate is hard to square, and a .247 BABIP shows just how unsustainably poor that mark is, and Rutschman's career mark entering 2025 was .289. If all that happened was Rutschman had that mark instead, his line would be .260/.352/.405 – a far cry from what you expected, but a much more tolerable line. And his expected stats from Statcast suggest it should be even better than that, with an expected ISO of .193 that would push that OPS up another 50 points or so. Living up to that, coming off an oblique injury could be tough, but I still think Rutschman is a good bet to be much better than he was in the first half, and I still think we're going to see an MVP-caliber season from Rutschman at some point. 

Cam Smith, OF, Astros – That Smith is holding his own at this point is impressive enough, seeing as he leaped to the majors after just 32 games in the minors. He's proven to be a premium athlete (even if it isn't translating into steals), and he has plenty of raw power. It seems like the focus in the first half of the season was on just making contact more consistently, and he's starting to tap into more power as the season goes on. One red flag in reading preseason write-ups of Smith's skill set was the frequent comparison to Alec Bohm , another big corner bat who never quite figured out how to consistently put his raw power into action in games. Smith needs to avoid that fate if he's going to live up to his significant potential, and I'm willing to bet he will.

Chase Burns, SP, Reds – This looks a lot less bold after Burns' 10-strikeout game against the Rockies to close out the first half, but seeing as he still has a 6.19 ERA and 1.63 WHIP, I think there are probably still plenty of skeptics. But I'm a big believer in Burnes' stuff, with a fastball that comfortably sits in the high-90s and can generate both whiffs and avoid damage on contact and a slider that already looks like it might be one of the best weapons in baseball. The rest of the arsenal remains a work in progress, but the pieces in place don't look that different from Burns' teammate Hunter Greene , who has turned a similar arsenal into one of the best in baseball when healthy. I think Burns is a better talent than fellow rookie Jacob Misiorowski, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if he was just flat out better than Misiorowski the rest of the way. 

Reese Olson, SP, Tigers – Olson came back from his lengthy IL stint with two solid starts, but the strikeouts haven't been there – just four in 9.1 innings back. Those will come, as he still has that changeup/slider combo that generates whiffs at a higher rate than any pitcher except Mackenzie Gore's. Olson has made the shift this season from using a four-seamer as his primary fastball to a sinker, and I think it's made his whole arsenal make a bit more sense – the sinker isn't great, but it limits extra-base hits better, while limiting the exposure to his four-seamer seems to have allowed that pitch to play up a bit when he does throw. Limiting damage early in counts and putting hitters in situations where he can put them away with the two elite secondaries is a great plan for Olson, and I think it's finally all going to come together for him in the second half. 

Michael Soroka, SP, Nationals – Being a believer in Soroka is painful. Just peep that 5.35 ERA, which would be the second-worst mark in baseball if he had enough innings to qualify. But we know ERA has very little predictive value, especially over a sample of fewer than 70 innings, so let's not be beholden to that. Among pitchers who have at least 60 innings this season, only eight have underperformed their FIP by more than Soroka's 1.24 gap. The stat-savvy among you will surely respond by noting that FIP doesn't account for quality of contact, which clearly must explain why Soroka's underperforming by so much! But that isn't the case either, as Soroka has actually posted better-than-average quality of contact-allowed metrics and has a 3.21 expected ERA, the 21st-best mark in baseball. He gets a lot of strikeouts, he limits walks, and he doesn't tend to get hit hard, which sure sounds like a good pitcher. Do I actually believe Soroka is a low-3.00s ERA pitcher? I certainly wouldn't stake my life's savings on it, but yeah, I think he deserves a lot better than he has gotten so far. His breaking ball is an elite pitch, and his reworked changeup has helped him limit damage against lefties better than in years past, so I think we're going to see a much better Soroka in the second half. 

Raisel Iglesias, RP, Braves – Iglesias lost his job in mid-May, and given that he was working on an expiring contract, it was never a guarantee he would get it back. But his track record is long enough that betting on him to re-emerge as the best reliever in the Braves' bullpen always felt like the smart idea, and the best reliever in a team's bullpen is usually the closer, so … Iglesias has a 2.35 ERA with 20 strikeouts to just three walks in 15.1 innings since the start of June, and he once again looks like the best reliever in the Braves' bullpen. And would you look at that, he got the last two saves for the Braves before the break, a sign that he is, indeed, back to being the closer here. There's still a chance Iglesias gets traded at the deadline, and no guarantee it'll be to a team that needs a closer. But with Iglesias still available in 30% of CBS Fantasy leagues and unlikely to cost much in trade in the rest, I'd still be trying to buy where I can. The upside is, he's a top-five closer the rest of the way.