| | | | Monday, October 14, 2024 | | Last week on the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast, we looked back at our preseason sleeper, breakout, and bust picks, focusing on our best and worst calls for each category. And, while none of us agreed to it before the show, nobody ended up going with Tarik Skubal for their "best breakout pick," because how are you going to take credit for the breakout literally every single Fantasy analyst called beforehand? | | Some breakout calls are so obvious it almost goes without saying. Two years ago, it was Corbin Carroll; last year, Skubal was the free space on the breakout board. It didn't take any kind of special knowledge or insight to call those guys "breakouts." | | Of course, just because everyone is in on a breakout doesn't mean it will actually come to fruition. Grayson Rodriguez and Bobby Miller were pretty unanimous breakout picks, and while Rodriguez had a decent season when healthy, he certainly wasn't the ace many of us expected; as for Miller, well, there's a reason he might actually be a sleeper heading into 2025. Following the consensus breakout picks often works out, but certainly not always. | | This gets to the heart of what makes predicting breakouts tough: You're projecting someone to do something they've never done before. The strongest predictor of future performance is past performance, so picking breakout candidates inevitably requires going out on a limb. You have to be comfortable being wrong if you really want to take the big swings required of predicting a breakout. | | It's especially tough to plant a breakout flag six months away from the start of next season since some of the best breakout calls come from guys who find themselves in suddenly advantageous positions, either because they switched teams in the offseason or because other roster moves cleared up playing time for them. There are breakout candidates we'll be talking about come February and March who aren't even on our radars right now. | | The nice thing is I can just update this list in February and March! While there are a few of us sickos doing drafts right now, for the most part, nobody is really drafting their 2025 squads for at least four more months, so there's plenty of time to update these calls when needed. For now, here's my very first, way-too-early list of breakout candidates for 2025, beginning with the five I think will be on pretty much everyone's breakout lists, followed up by eight I'm planting an early flag on: | | |
| | Way-too-early 2025 Breakouts | | Free spots on the bingo card: | | Junior Caminero, 3B, Rays – Caminera got to the majors for good as a 20-year-old and held his own, hitting .249/.299/.424. There's very little doubt that he'll hit, and he's already shown high-end power potential in the majors, with a 116.3 mph max exit velocity and one of the fastest bat speeds in the majors. There isn't much speed here, but Caminero could be an Austin Riley-level hitter as soon as 2025. | | Wyatt Langford, OF, Rangers – Langford is going to go down as a cautionary tale for getting too excited about rookies for Fantasy, but there was still plenty to get excited about from his first season. He didn't make the impact we hoped for overall, but he displayed elite athleticism and good-enough plate discipline for a 22-year-old with barely any professional experience, and he definitely showed the kind of progression we're hoping to see from a young player. He put up a .996 OPS in September and had a .388 expected wOBA over his final 100 PAs, comparable to what Brent Rooker did last season. Does "2024 Brent Rooker with 25-steal upside" sound good to you? I thought it might. | | James Wood, OF, Nationals – Among the three hitters here, I have significantly less confidence in Wood. But he feels kind of like Elly De La Cruz did a year ago, where the flaws are obvious and worth pointing out but ultimately just may not matter very much. Yes, he struck out too much as a rookie; yes, he hit the ball on the ground and to the opposite field way too much to maximize his power. He also just put up a full-season pace of 18 homers, 85 runs, 82 RBI, and 28 steals while hitting .264 despite those flaws. Maybe he takes a step back in his first full season, but we've got a player here with all the physical tools you could ask for, plus a pretty good approach at the plate – 21% chase rate, 80% zone contact rate are both fine marks for a player with his power – and it just feels like the kind of profile you want to bet on with a guy this young. | | Spencer Schwellenbach, SP, Braves – I went deep on the run. Schwellenbach went on to close the season , so you can head there and read that for the full story. But here's the spark notes: Among pitchers with at least 120 innings in 2024, he had the 16th-best K-BB% ratio, and only Logan Gilbert, Joe Ryan , and Tarik Skubal had both a better K% and BB% than Schwellenbach. And his 13.5% swinging strike rate was the 12th-best in baseball, suggesting there might even be more strikeout upside here. There are real inning and health concerns for Schwellenbach, but if we're just talking about skills, he might already be a top-20 pitcher in baseball. | | Spencer Arrighetti, SP, Astros – One of my favorite pieces Scott White writes every season is his " What you missed after Fantasy Football started " column, and he laid out the case for Arrighetti there like this: "He kicked off August with consecutive double digit-strikeout efforts and added another at the end of the month, putting together a 2.72 ERA, 1.17 WHIP, and 11.4 K/9 over his final 10 appearances." The stuff has always been good, and he figured out how to put it into action consistently down the stretch. He might just be the next Astros developmental success story. | | | | Eight more breakout picks: | | Jazz Chisholm, OF/3B, Yankees – The nice thing about this one is, the breakout already happened. Chisholm got to the Yankees and kind of went bonkers, hitting 11 homers and stealing 18 bases in just 46 games – a 35-homer, 59-steal pace. Do I think he'll actually manage that over a full season? Oh, of course not! Do I think he's particularly likely to play a full season? Not really, though the fact that he basically managed it in 2024 despite missing time with an elbow injury certainly gives me more faith than I've had in a long time. But the bigger point here is that the move to the Yankees was exactly the boon to Chisholm's value we hoped it would be, as his pull-heavy swing was a perfect fit for Yankee Stadium, and the lineup upgrade was huge, too. Chisholm is one of those players who is never going to get drafted like his surface-level numbers should justify because of the injury risk, and the surface-level numbers might be underselling his upside now. A full, healthy season in New York could give him top-two upside at 3B. | | Triston Casas, 1B, Red Sox – Let's just run it back from last year. Casas didn't have the breakout season everyone was hoping for, but I think it's reasonable to write that off because of the rib cage injury that cost him nearly four months of action. Before the injury, he had six homers in 22 games and was surely showing the kind of upside we hoped to see from him, and he still showed plenty of upside overall, ranking in the 65th percentile or better in expected slugging percentage, average exit velocity, barrel rate, hard-hit rate, and bat speed. There was enough regression in his contact skills even before the injury that it doesn't feel quite as inevitable that Casas will emerge as the next great slugging first baseman in baseball, but I still think he's on that track. | | Masyn Winn, SS, Cardinals – Here's the big question for Masyn Winn: Why didn't he run more once they moved him to the leadoff spot? In 42 games batting outside of the leadoff spot, Winn had seven steals on 10 attempts, a 27-steal pace; in 102 games as the leadoff hitter, he stole just four on six attempts. Winn is a plus athlete who stole bases efficiently in the minors, and teams are usually more inclined to give guys the green light at the top of the lineup, so why didn't that happen for Winn? If you think he'll run more in 2025, he feels like a really solid CI target, one who could put his strong contact skills together with his speed to give us something like the good versions of Nico Hoerner or Bryson Stott , and I can even see some peak years where he looks like the healthy version of Tim Anderson. But he's going to have to run more to reach that upside. At the cost of a CI in the double-digit rounds, it's a bet I'm willing to make. | | | | Jordan Westburg, 2B/3B, Orioles – The key question with Westburg is this: How much of his underperformance in 2024 was bad luck, and how much of it was because of Camden's cavernous left field? Westburg had a solid season, hitting .264/.312/.481, but he posted even better quality of contact metrics, with a .284 xBA and .498 xSLG. There's room for improvement here if you believe in those metrics, but his home park isn't going to help in that regard. Westburg will also need to sustain his strikeout rate improvements to get the most out of his improved quality of contact. It's not the safest bet you can make in 2025, but with impact bats so hard to find at second base, Westburg is one of the few true upside bets you can make. | | Bryan Woo, SP, Mariners – I went on a whole journey with Woo this season, from thinking he was one of the most obviously sell-high candidates in the game to believing he might just have ace potential moving forward. The problem early on was that Woo was relying on almost certainly unsustainable success on balls in play while also rarely pitching deep into games – prior to the All-Star break, he averaged just under five innings per start and didn't even throw 80 pitches in 10 of his first 11 starts, as he dealt with recurring, but ultimately minor injuries. Once he put those injuries behind him, the Mariners used Woo more or less like a normal starter, and he started to pitch like an abnormally good one. From Aug. 1 on, Woo put up a 3.33 ERA with a 24.2% strikeout rate and 2.7% walk rate – a K-BB% of 21.6%, the 10th-best in baseball in that stretch. Woo is elite at suppressing hard contact with his two excellent fastballs, and his secondaries – especially his sweeper – have shown upside as swing-and-miss pitches, too. The Mariners have a great home park and might be as good as any team in baseball at developing pitchers these days, so it's a good bet to make. It's only the injury concerns that keep me from ranking Woo as a top-30 SP. | | Ryan Pepiot, SP, Rays – What's interesting about Pepiot is, when you go back to read scouting reports of him as a prospect, there was a near-unanimous belief that his changeup was his best pitch. And my breakout call here is based on a belief that still might be true, which is a scary proposition when he had one of the best fastballs in baseball in 2024. He was 15th in BaseballSavant's Run Value metric for four-seamers, with the second highest whiff rate – only Michael Kopech (a reliever) topping him. That pitch emerged as his go-to pitch when he needed a strikeout, and it gave him a solid floor in 2024 – a 26.3% strikeout rate and 3.60 ERA (backed up by peripherals) is a heck of a starting point. I'm betting on the changeup catching up and helping Pepiot take his play to the next level, and I'm betting on the Rays giving him a longer leash after he got up to 133.1 innings in 2024. There won't be any workload limitations here, and Pepiot might just be a top-25 SP when it's all said and done. | | Shane Baz , SP, Rays – Here's another bet on the Rays making the necessary tweaks to unlock the obvious upside in one of their young pitchers. With Baz, it comes down to his slider, which was considered his best pitch as a prospect but which he clearly didn't feel comfortable throwing in his first season back from Tommy John surgery. His usage of the pitch dropped from 37% in 2022 to just 21.3%, and his whiff rate with it similarly collapsed from 43.5% to 21.4%. Baz has a good enough fastball and other viable secondaries to overcome it, but I'm not sure he has the strikeout upside if he can't rediscover the slider, and I'm willing to bet that's going to be the primary thing he works on this offseason. He's already shown the ability to limit hard contact well, which gives him a high floor. If he gets back to generating whiffs and strikeouts at a high level, it's not hard to see Baz making a quick leap to ace status. | | Lucas Erceg, RP, Royals – I'm a believer in Erceg's. Despite a very small sample of success, I'm willing to buy him as a breakout reliever and the Royals closer to have for 2025. For a converted position player, he has a surprisingly deep arsenal – one that I'll admit does make me wonder if he might not be capable of transitioning to the rotation eventually. I don't think that's likely, and he wouldn't need it, given how good his fastball, slider, and changeup are. He has closer stuff and took a big step forward with his control in 2024 – just his fourth season as a starter, mind you. He'll have some competition from Hunter Harvey to close games for the Royals, but I think Erceg has the lead heading into the offseason as sort of the last man standing in the Royals pen at the end of this season. With his stuff and the improvements he made in 2024, I'm betting on a big season for Erceg in 2025. | | | | | | | | 24/7 Sports News | | Golazo Network | Stream CBS Sports HQ, your free, 24/7 snapshot of all the sports that matter to you. Catch highlights, in-depth analysis & breaking news anywhere you are. Download the CBS Sports App to watch today.
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