Breakouts and Busts for Each Round
Going through the player pool in chunks of twelves, quickly pointing out sleepers, breakouts, and busts.
We’re going 25 rounds deep and picking out breakouts and busts from each twelvesome of players.
We hear a lot of talk about “breakouts” and “busts”, and in fact, that is why I titled the article what I titled it! They are very appealing words to the fantasy community, it’s clickbait people!
What is more rare is for someone to define their terms, so I will do just that.
A “breakout” is a player that beats their ADP-based value by several rounds. For this article, this will be the player in each round that I find most likely to beat their draft value and move up several rounds (if possible) for next year.
A “bust” is the opposite - someone who comes in well below their ADP-based value, and a true bust does that without it being because of injury. These will be the players that I think are most risky in each round.
Because of these definitions, I’m unlikely to pick out veteran players. Veteran players are well-known commodities that rarely have breakout or bust seasons. Leaving them off does not mean I don’t want to draft them. This piece is just to identify the upside and downside players in each round.
Good, now let us begin!
Round 1
Ronald Acuna Jr.
Bobby Witt Jr.
Julio Rodriguez
Corbin Carroll
Mookie Betts
Kyle Tucker
Spencer Strider
Fernando Tatis Jr.
Freddie Freeman
Trea Turner
Aaron Judge
Juan Soto
Gerrit Cole
Breakout: Julio Rodriguez
By the definition of things, it’s impossible to be a “breakout” in the first round. But if anybody can fit that mold, I think it’s J-Rod. He has put together 60 homers and 62 steals in his first two Major League seasons to go with a .278 batting average, and that is with a 25% K%. Imagine what he could do with a 22% K%. There’s only one player that I can see rivaling a healthy Ronald Acuna Jr., and it’s J-Rod.
Bust: Gerrit Cole
You draft him for safety, I get it. He’s logged the second-most innings in the Majors since the world reset in 2020 with 96 starts and 591 innings, and it’s come with a sweet 3.11 ERA and 1.02 WHIP. He’s been reliably fantastic, and that matters a great deal at the starting pitcher position. However…
2021: 51.7% Strike%, 15.6% SwStr%
2022: 51.0% Strike%, 16.4% SwStr%
2023: 49.5% Strike%, 13.1% SwStr%
Things went the wrong way for Cole in 2023. His K% between 2021 and 2022 was 32.9%, and in 2023 it dropped to 27%. Cole has a history of giving up a lot of home runs, but that didn’t happen in 2023 for him which counter-acted the drop in K-BB%.
Round 2
Shohei Ohtani
Jose Ramirez
Matt Olson
Yordan Alvarez
Bryce Harper
Corey Seager
Austin Riley
Elly De La Cruz
Ozzie Albies
Corbin Burnes
Francisco Lindor
Rafael Devers
I’m not going to waste a spot on Elly De La Cruz here, which I bet is what you were expecting! The truth is that I could have put him in either category. Elly has the talent to end up as a top-five pick next year, and he’s also a guy who could struggle so much that he ends up losing playing time. He probably has the widest range of possible outcomes in the entire player pool.
Breakout: Jose Ramirez
J-Ram in the second round! Sign me up. This is a guy who has a 39-homer, 34-steal season on his resume. And if you think he’s old - think again, he won’t turn 32 until September. I don’t think he’ll outdo Acuna, J-Rod, or Witt Jr., but a top-five finish is very much possible.
Honorable Mention Breakout: Yordan Alvarez
I had to include Yordan here as well. We have never seen this guy play a full season, and yet he’s put up some massive seasons already. If he can finally stay healthy, you could see him go 100-45-125 with a .300+ batting average.
Bust: Corbin Burnes
Same mold as Gerrit Cole here. His K% dropped to 25.5% last year from the heights above 30% previously, and he posted an 8.4% BB% with it, his worst walk rate yet. Those aren’t good directional movements, and there are at least three SPs behind him I’d rather have, so I’m calling him a round-two bust.
Round 3
Zack Wheeler
Pete Alonso
Marcus Semien
Kevin Gausman
Luis Castillo
Gunnar Henderson
Luis Robert Jr.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Michael Harris II
CJ Abrams
George Kirby
Zac Gallen
Breakout: Gunnar Henderson
He went 28-10 in his first full year in the bigs, and that was after shaking off some early struggles. He’s just 22 years old and has a lot of those red dots and bars on his savant page. He hits the ball really hard and runs really fast; very few players have his raw talent. You could see a 35-homer, 25-steal bust-out season here to make him an easy first-rounder next year.
Honorable Mention Breakout: Michael Harris II
He’s not far behind Henderson in physical talent with an 88th-percentile hard-hit rate and 87th-percentile sprint speed. But he’s buried at the bottom of the lineup for now and doesn’t have the best plate discipline, which keeps the upside down a little bit. But there’s 30-30 potential in Harris without question.
Bust: Marcus Semien
It feels like this is the year the wheels come off. His steal rate came way down last year even while the rest of the league went upwards there, and he’s never had much in terms of raw power. If he loses any of that swing speed, he’ll see a few of those homers turn into outs. There’s the downside of a 22-homer, 8-steal season here, and that’s pretty scary in round three. There’s also the possibility that he, you know, doesn’t play 162 games this year. He’s been the modern-day Cal Ripken Jr. in that regard, but if you think there’s no luck involved there, I’d say you’re nuts.
Round 4
Jose Altuve
Pablo Lopez
Devin Williams
Bo Bichette
Tyler Glasnow
Edwin Diaz
Josh Hader
Randy Arozarena
Adolis Garcia
Adley Rutschman
Emmanuel Clase
Aaron Nola
Breakout: Bo Bichette
This is not a round with much upside in it. We see these relievers enter the picture, but that’s mostly because this ADP comes primarily from draft-and-hold leagues where you can’t make adds or trades, and that pushes closers way up the list. We’ll ignore them for this post. I don’t think Bichette has near the upside of a Henderson or Harris, but he has been a first-round type guy in the past, and it’s not like he’s old. He went 29-25-.298 in 2021, and while there was some over-performance involved there, why can’t he “over-perform” again? He’ll turn 26 soon, so there’s still plenty of time for skills improvement.
Bust: Randy Arozarena
Don’t look now but Randy ran less last year. The SB attempt rate dropped to 16.5%, and he’s never had a season with more than 23 homers. The Rays lineup could be mediocre this year, and there’s a downside here that has Arozarena coming up short of 40 HR+SB.
Round 5
Yoshinobu Yamamoto
Tarik Skubal
Camilo Doval
Royce Lewis
Jhoan Duran
Nolan Jones
Freddy Peralta
Cody Bellinger
Nico Hoerner
Raisel Iglesias
David Bednar
Framber Valdez
Breakout: Yoshinobu Yamamoto
I like to avoid the unknown on the pitching side of the game, but with the added downside that stems from the unknown comes an added upside. Yamamoto could be the best pitcher in the league, who knows! He could also be pretty pedestrian, who knows! But one thing is sure - you very rarely can find an SP in the fifth round that has a decently wide path to a Cy Young award.
Bust: Nolan Jones
I do feel pretty confident that he’ll be a strong HR+SB guy, and Coors bumps up the batting average projection. But we can’t forget that we’re drafting a guy with a 30% K% and a 68.5% Contact% in the top 60 picks. With that comes huge risk.
The rest of the post is behind the paywall. Subscribe today to get this full post along with my 2024 projections, team previews, rankings, and much, much more!