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Some breakout calls for Fantasy Baseball are so obvious, it's hardly even worth making the call. Gunnar Henderson a year ago is a great example: He was on absolutely everyone's breakout list, and there really wasn't much to be gained from planting your flag there – he made the leap from a second-rounder to a first-rounder, which isn't nothing, but given how excited everyone already was, there just wasn't a ton of room for profit there.

But being all in on Jarren Duran? Now, that made a huge difference to how your season went in 2025. Duran was being drafted around 150th overall on average last season, and he finished as a top-24 player, a huge increase in value. That was the kind of pick that could have singlehandedly changed your Fantasy season, nailing that breakout is exactly what you are trying to do with your mid-round picks.

With my Breakouts 1.0 list, I'm not opposed to the Gunnar Henderson-type breakout, but I'm really looking for the mid-round guys who become early-rounders. If you can hit on a few of those guys, you're going to have a huge leg up on the competition. Let's see if we can find some:

Breakouts 1.0

Willson Contreras, C*, Cardinals

*Nominally. 

And that's a big deal. It opens up playing time opportunities for Ivan Herrera, one of my favorite sleepers for 2025, but it also makes Contreras one of the biggest potential difference makers at the catcher position for 2025. I think it would be a mistake to assume that a soon-to-be 33-year-old with a lengthy injury history is suddenly going to become a model of health just because he's no longer crouching down behind home plate for half the game, but at the very least, he'll be at less risk for the kinds of injuries that tend to only happen behind the plate – like when he fractured his forearm last year being hit by a swing. And it opens up at least the possibility of Contreras getting to 150 games, which would give him a huge edge on the rest of the players at this position, minus one or two. And Contreras' 150-game pace since getting to St. Louis looks like this: .263 average, 74 runs, 25 homers, 74 RBI, and seven steals. That feels like the floor if Contreras stays upright. 

Triston Casas, 1B, Red Sox

We'll just run back last year's first base breakout pick with only slightly less enthusiasm. A rib injury cost Casas a huge chunk of last season and he took a big step back with his plate discipline, but I'm hoping the latter was a result of the former. If so, Casas remains one of the most intriguing potential power bats out there, with a high-end outcome that probably looks something like the median Matt Olson season even in a home park that makes it tough for him to live up to his full power potential. Casas hits the ball hard in the air, holds his own against lefties (.772 career OPS), and remains a young bat worth betting on. And if he gets that strikeout rate back down to 25%, where it was in 2023, the upside scenarios get really fun to dream about – remember, he had 15 homers in just 54 games after the All-Star break in 2023. 

Jordan Westburg, 2B, Orioles

Westburg barely cracks the top five of the most hyped Orioles prospect debuts over the past four years, but he established himself as a player worth getting excited about in 2024, and there's room to grow. At the risk of oversimplifying, Westburg is kind of a lesser version of Gunnar Henderson, combining a well-rounded skill set with tools that aren't quite as loud as Henderson's but which still should lead to big production. Especially now that the Orioles are moving the fences in left field back in, after a multi-year experiment that saw it become arguably the toughest place in baseball for right-handed hitters to homer. The park should play much closer to average, at least, and that'll only help Westburg, who was on pace for 25 homers before a late-July hit-by-pitch left him with a broken hand that cost all but six of the final 53 games of the season. One trick we'd like to see him borrow from Henderson: Turning his 91st percentile sprint speed into something like 20-plus steals, the way Henderson went from 10 to 21 in his second full season. The path to a truly impactful season from Westburg is trivially easy to see. 

Junior Caminero, 3B, Rays

We tend to get over our skis on young players, to the point where Caminero hitting .249/.299/.424 as a 21-year-old last season was viewed as a disappointment. But it's worth keeping some perspective on these things, so here's some perspective for you: Of Scott White's top 10 prospects for the 2025 season, only two are younger than Caminero. Of the eight older than him, four haven't even made their MLB debut; of the other four who have, two (Dylan Crews and Jasson Dominguez) were quite a bit worse than Caminero in their MLB action in 2024. 

Caminero has a ferocious, powerful swing that figures to generate tons of power in the long run, and so far, strikeouts mostly haven't been an issue for him – his 21% strikeout rate in Triple-A last season was right in line with what he managed in the majors, so no real concerns there. If there is one concern with Caminero, it's that he brings very little to the table beside his bat – four steals across three levels last season – which means there's a lot more pressure on the bat to be excellent. We're betting he will be, and in short order, making him a viable upside pick around 100th overall. 

Masyn Winn, SS, Cardinals

The key question for me with Winn is this: Why did he stop running when he got to the leadoff spot? In 42 starts anywhere but the leadoff spot, Winn stole seven bases on 10 attempts, a 25-steal-per-150-game pace; in 102 starts as the leadoff hitter, Winn stole just four on six attempts, a paltry six-steal pace. Otherwise, the move to the leadoff spot was great for Winn, who put up a 20-homer, 102-run pace, with a .247 batting average I would expect him to improve on – his xBA for the season was .256, and I think there's room for him to push close to .280 with his contact skills and speed. But if he's not going to be even a double-digit steals guy, the ceiling looks a lot lower. Seeing as Winn stole 43 bases in 119 games in 2022 and was in the 87th percentile in sprint speed last year, I'm betting there's a lot more untapped potential here. He's a perfect MI target with top-12 upside. 

Jackson Chourio, OF, Brewers

The easiest call in the world, because the breakout already happened. Chourio had an OPS below .600 as late as June 7, but he was a top-20 player in Fantasy from that point on, hitting .306/.363/.525 with a 26-homer, 26-steal pace. Just go do that for a full season and we're talking about a first-rounder. And the thing is, that's not the ceiling – of course, it isn't the ceiling for a guy who won't even turn 21 until a few weeks into Spring Training of his second season! The most obvious place for Chourio to break out is on the bases – he somehow only stole one more base than Christian Yeliuch despite playing more than twice as many games. Chourio is a premium athlete who stole 44 bases in 128 games in the minors in 2023, and there's no real reason he couldn't get to 40 on an aggressive team like the Brewers. There's a non-zero chance we're talking about Chourio as a top-three pick this time next year. 

Wyatt Langford, OF, Rangers

The breakout already happened for Langford, though neither as emphatically nor for as long as with Chourio. Langford's breakout really only covered September, but he finally played like we wanted him to, putting up a .300/.386/.610 with eight homers and seven steals in his final 26 games, surely helping at least a few Fantasy players make a late surge. It wasn't the rookie season we hoped for, but it was nice to see some proof of concept for what a fully-actualized Langford can look like. The underlying skill set still looks broadly strong, with a good approach at the plate and plenty of athleticism, with only the quality of contact lagging behind expectations. Given the bat speed and plate discipline, I fully expect Langford to become a force for Fantasy as early as this season. 

Dylan Crews, OF, Nationals

Chourio needed a couple of months. Langford needed a couple more. Crews only played 31 games in the majors last season, so I'm not really going to hold his struggles against him when it took the other rookies even longer than that to figure things out. Crews was every bit the prospect Chourio and Langford were before their debuts, and while the production was nothing to write home about, Crews' skills were evidence already in his brief tenure, as he posted very strong plate discipline and athletic metrics, while showing flashes of plus power. There is work to be done, yes, and you'd prefer to have more of a track record of high-level production from Crews to bet on. But the 12 steals in 31 games in the majors provide a buffer for Crews if the bat continues to lag behind. And if the bat comes around as quickly as it did for Chourio, Crews could have first-round upside of his own. 

Grayson Rodriguez, SP, Orioles

In some ways, Rodriguez has come as advertised to the majors. He has a deep arsenal, with four pitches he throws at least 15% of the time, and he can generate whiffs or weak contact with any of them, in part thanks to the massive extension he generates with his delivery. He missed some time with a lat injury last year but has shown the ability to pitch deep into games when healthy – and it's noteworthy that we don't have an elbow injury in recent years to worry about here. It sure seems like he should be better than he is, especially when he's backed up by one of the best supporting casts in baseball. I'm willing to just keep betting on him figuring it out at some point, even if I'm not exactly sure where the next step comes from. One suggestion I would have? Going back to the sweeper he threw as a rookie, which generated similar swing-and-miss numbers and significantly better results on contact as the slider he leaned on in 2024. 

Spencer Schwellenbach, SP, Braves

Schwellenbach is probably the free space on the board for pitching breakouts. He showed elite command and a legitimate six-pitch arsenal as a rookie, with two different pitches sporting at least a 40% whiff rate. Among 107 pitchers who threw at least 120 innings in the majors last season, only 15 of them had a better K-BB% than Schwellenbach's 20.8% rate, and Schwellenbach didn't show many red flags in his batted ball profile, suggesting he shouldn't have the Bailey Ober/Joe Ryan issue of giving up too many homers to quite live up to his potential. There are some injury concerns here after Schwellenbach threw more than 100 more innings in 2024 than the previous year, but hey, which pitcher can't we say that about at this point? Even with Spencer Strider returning and Chris Sale healthy, Schwellenbach could be the Braves' best pitcher in 2025. The ceiling is that high. 

Bryan Woo, SP, Mariners

Another win for the Mariners' development staff. I was pretty out on Woo early last season when it felt like he left every game early with some kind of injury and almost never went more than four or five innings in his starts. However, things changed in August, and nine of his 10 starts with at least 80 pitches thrown (and all of his starts with 90-plus) happened. Woo lives and dies with his fastballs more than basically any other starter in the league these days, throwing them 72% of the time last year, so it's a good thing he's expert at missing the barrel of the bat with them. His sinker generates tons of weak groundballs, while his four-seam generates plenty of harmless flyballs in addition to a bunch of whiffs. And he's got multiple secondaries that do a good job generating weak contact, if not a ton of whiffs. Add in that he plays in a terrific home park, and Woo just needs to stay healthy. That's a big "if" after last season, but if he does, Woo's skill set isn't far off from teammates Logan Gilbert and George Kirby

Jeff Hoffman, RP, Blue Jays

Hoffman comes with some real injury question marks after concerns about his shoulder seemingly kept two separate teams from signing him this offseason. But I also think it's reasonable to assume the Orioles and Braves were targeting Hoffman for a role in the rotation, which would make health concerns a bigger obstacle to signing him than it surely was for the Blue Jays, who will ask for significantly less innings from Hoffman as their closer. And he has emerged as one of the very best high-leverage arms in the league, posting an ERA below 2.50 with K rates near 12 per nine over the past two seasons. The Blue Jays figure to be competing for a playoff spot so saves should be plentiful enough for Hoffman to potentially be an elite Fantasy closer.