Here we have yet another list of players that I like.
Officially, they're breakouts. If you want to call them sleepers, you'll get no arguments from me. The distinction is a subtle one and open to interpretation. For me, a sleeper is defined mainly by value while a breakout is defined mainly by untapped potential, but it stands to reason that breakouts can also be sleepers.
- Sleepers 2.0: Scott | Chris | Frank
- Breakouts 2.0: Scott | Chris | Frank
- Busts 2.0: Scott | Chris | Frank
Because this is Version 2.0, you'll find six new additions to my original list of 11. If you missed the first run of breakouts, you don't need to go searching for it. Just scroll down past The Newcomers, and you'll arrive at The Holdovers.
Get the Fantasy Baseball Today 2025 Draft Guide Here!
THE NEWCOMERS
Masyn Winn, SS, Cardinals
| ||||||||||||
FantasyPros ADP: 179.8
Winn had a combined 26 home runs and stolen bases in 2024, which was worse than Dansby Swanson's 36 and Jeremy Pena's 35. So why is he being drafted ahead of those two? Because as much as I think Swanson could improve on his total (see Sleepers 2.0), Winn likely has the most room for improvement, particularly if he lives up to his stated offseason goal of stealing 30-40 bases. His minor-league track record (he twice stole 30-plus bases down there) and 87th-percentile sprint speed would suggest it's well within his capabilities, and just changing that one part of his stat line would surely vault him past Xander Bogaerts, Ezequiel Tovar and Anthony Volpe as well.
But I think the improvements could be wholesale. Winn upped his power production over the course of the season, hitting eight of his 15 home runs over the final two months, and his 17.1 percent strikeout rate and up-the-middle approach (with more balls hit to center field than left or right) give him a solid foundation for batting average. Even just the fact that he'll bat leadoff from the get-go gives him a good chance of exceeding last year's run total. Hard as it is to break into the top 12 at shortstop, given the surplus of quality options there, Winn has the potential to do so.
MacKenzie Gore, SP, Nationals
| ||||||||||||
FantasyPros ADP: 212.3
For the first 2 1/2 months of 2024, it seemed like Gore had already broken out, unveiling a new changeup that, while sparsely used, registered whiffs at a ridiculous rate and seemingly pulled his whole arsenal together. Through 14 starts, he had a 3.24 ERA, 1.32 WHIP and 10.9 K/9. Then came a rocky middle portion of the season when he struggled to throw strikes and put together a 6.75 ERA, 1.97 WHIP and 8.0 K/9 over 11 starts. He ended the season on the highest possible note, though, landing 66 percent of his pitches in the strike zone over a seven-start stretch for a 1.55 ERA, 0.91 WHIP and 10.0 K/9.
"You know, first part of last year, unbelievable," manager Dave Martinez said after Gore's first spring start. "Didn't go so well in the middle. At the end, he was unbelievable. So if we can get him consistent, he's going to be one of the top pitchers in the league."
Was that last stretch, with all the strike-throwing, a sign of Gore turning the corner? At the time, he credited the training staff for helping him through some unspecified issue, which I suspect may have contributed to his midseason struggles. Slumps aren't just random phenomena, after all. Sometimes they can be attributed to luck, but there's usually some tangible cause of them, whether it's mental, mechanical or physical. Gore seemed to hint at something along those lines.
The bottom line, though, is that he's already demonstrated the ability to dominate if he can throw enough strikes. He may be owed some better batted-ball luck as well, seeing as his .340 BABIP was the second-highest among qualifiers.
Nick Lodolo, SP, Reds
| ||||||||||||
FantasyPros ADP: 231.3
Like Gore, Lodolo looked like he was poised for a breakout season early in 2024, putting together a 2.76 ERA, 1.01 WHIP and 9.6 K/9 over his first 11 starts. But that's about the time he developed a blister on his left middle finger, which compromised the grip on his bread-and-butter pitch, the curveball. The actual movement profile of the pitch changed thereafter, and he was completely ineffective without it. Efforts to compensate for the blister led to a season-ending sprain of that finger and once again reduced Lodolo to afterthought status in Fantasy.
Lodolo worked to address the blister in the offseason, according to MLB.com, rubbing a metal file on the skin each day to toughen it up, and he showed up to camp in good health and good spirits.
"He had a good offseason because he could actually do some stuff that he couldn't do before," manager Terry Francona said. "That will help with getting deeper into games, stamina. Hopefully, it keeps him healthy. If he stays on the mound, he's going to be exciting."
When he's able to grip it properly, Lodolo's curveball is a true wipeout offering with a whiff rate in excess of 40 percent, and you can see from his career 10.7 K/9 rate what kind of upside it gives him. Is this year the year when it finally comes together? Fingers crossed.
Gavin Williams, SP, Guardians
| ||||||||||||
FantasyPros ADP: 248.3
Sorry to bury the lede, but Williams is the player I'm most excited to add to Breakouts 2.0, such that I'm prepared to draft him ahead of both Gore and Lodolo even though it goes against ADP. He has been, quite simply, the most improved pitcher in all of spring training, and because of his top prospect pedigree, there's little reason to doubt it.
It's not just the 16 strikeouts in eight innings, as revealing as those are. It's the way he's amassing those strikeouts, twice registering double-digit whiffs on his fastball alone. And this is in starts where he's throwing 50-55 pitches total. Perhaps you've heard me say that the clearest sign of a pitcher's upside is how well he misses bats with his fastball. Well, the whiff rate on Williams' fastball this spring is unlike we've ever seen before.
So what happened? Well, you may remember that the start of Williams' 2024 was delayed by an elbow injury that apparently blew him up mechanically. He spent the offseason working to repair the damage, with a particular emphasis on regaining his former fastball shape.
"Just staying taller on my back leg," Williams said. "Last year, I was too deep in the back leg, which makes me spin out of it on my back foot, creating a kind of dead zone sinker, which wasn't good for me. Velocity with that kind of movement doesn't work really in the big leagues. I was just trying to get back to that last year, but I never could figure it out."
The induced vertical break on his fastball is up two inches this spring, which allows it to play at the top of the zone again, according to Williams. And the proof, I would say, is in the pudding. If there's any pitcher with a chance to be this year's Garrett Crochet, it's Williams.
Kristian Campbell, 2B, Red Sox
| ||||||||||||
FantasyPros ADP: 298.8
The case for Campbell is as straightforward as the case for Matt Shaw in Breakouts 1.0 (see below). By that, I mean he's an elite prospect (fourth in my top 100, it turns out) with a legitimate chance to win a job this spring, which should always be cause for enthusiasm in Fantasy.
Campbell has two separate avenues to playing time. One is second base, where Alex Bregman was initially projected to play, but he'll likely be needed at third with Rafael Devers still working to strengthen his shoulders and likely to open the year at DH. The other is the outfield, where Campbell has gotten most of his reps this spring and is better suited defensively. He would be filling in there for Wilyer Abreu, who needs some time to regain strength following a gastrointestinal illness.
Campbell's odds of making the opening day roster are probably worse now than when spring training began, truth be told, because he hasn't lived up to his end of the bargain offensively. But the strikeout rate is gradually improving, and there's still time left for him to state his case. Regardless of whether it actually happens, he's well worth a pick at his ADP. The Red Sox seem earnest in their hopes of him winning the job, suggesting that they think he's nearly ready, and if he picks up where he left off in the minors last year, rampaging through the entire system with significant contributions in every facet offensively, he'll be up within a matter of weeks.
He's the sort of prospect who could take the league by storm when he does arrive, so stashing him ahead of time is an advisable move, particularly when the cost is so reasonable.
Kris Bubic, SP/RP, Royals
| ||||||||||||
FantasyPros ADP: 409.7
While much attention has been given to Clay Holmes' move into the starting rotation, Kris Bubic's has mostly flown under the radar, with him often going completely undrafted in Fantasy. But his upside in the role is also noteworthy. We first got a glimpse of it in 2023, when Bubic showed up with a lower release height, a new slider and a firmer changeup, all of which played for more whiffs. He had a huge nine-strikeout, 18-whiff effort against the Giants on April 9 of that year only to tear his UCL in his next outing, derailing the hype train before it really got going.
Surely the rehabilitation would sidetrack him, right? He had hardly gotten a chance to settle into his new arsenal. But no, he came back last year with all of the changes still intact, and you can see the kind of numbers that resulted. His 70 percent strike rate and 15 percent swinging-strike rate were both elite.
Of course, they came in relief and not a starting role, but since we've already seen the arsenal work in the latter, however briefly in 2023, I'm expecting the transition to be a seamless one. Bubic entered camp as the favorite for the fifth starter job, and nothing he's done to this point should have altered that standing. He's an optimal end-of-draft choice in any format, but especially Head-to-Head points, where his relief pitcher eligibility is of the most utility.
THE HOLDOVERS
Wyatt Langford, OF, Rangers
| ||||||||||||
FantasyPros ADP: 48.0
Judging by the ADP, you probably don't need much convincing to buy into Langford again after he let us all down in 2024, failing to live up to the massive numbers he put together in the minors a year earlier (batting .360 with 10 homers and a 1.157 OPS) and the equally massive numbers he put together the following spring (batting .365 with six homers and a 1.137 OPS). But if you're one of the stubborn holdouts who doesn't understand why we're falling for it again -- and at an even higher cost this time -- allow me to explain.
Langford hit .300 with eight homers, seven steals and a .996 OPS last September. Simple as. We had been waiting to see it all season long, and he finally delivered in the final month to end his rookie campaign on the highest possible note. He crammed basically half a season's production into that 30-day span, and in retrospect, it stands to reason that he'd need so much time. Hitting prospects in general have been taking longer to adjust to the majors the past few years (go back and look at Jackson Chourio's first two months ... or Gunnar Henderson's ... or Bobby Witt's ... or Julio Rodriguez's), and Langford was attempting to do it after just 44 minor-league games.
So early on, he struggled with the movement and velocity of major-league pitches, but all throughout, he maintained respectable strikeout and walk rates. He eventually adopted a more upright stance to make his swing more adaptable, and that's about when he took off. The specifics of his breakthrough are less significant to me, though, than the pattern. When things finally click for these elite bats, they don't look back, and I suspect the same will hold true for Langford.
James Wood, OF, Nationals
| ||||||||||||
FantasyPros ADP: 54.3
You know how I said that elite hitting prospects have by and large struggled to transition to the majors the past few years? That wasn't so much the case for Wood, who delivered enough power and speed in his three months on the job to average nearly as many Head-to-Head points per game for the season (2.82) as Jackson Chourio (2.86). It wasn't a stellar performance, but it was a solid one, which these days is about all we can hope for when a hitter is first called up.
What makes the performance especially impressive, though, is that his flaws were plain to see. The growing pains that so many young hitters experience were also evident for Wood, but he's so tooled-up that he succeeded in spite of them. He struggled to put the ball in the air and to pull it, with rates that would place in the bottom 10 among qualifiers, and yet he still hit nine home runs in half a season's time, including seven to the opposite field. These rates can improve with better timing and pitch recognition -- the same sort of adjustments that Wyatt Langford needed five months to make -- and yet Wood was still a viable starter for Fantasy with them at their rock bottom.
How? He's incredibly strong, leveraging his 6-foot-7 frame for a 92.8 mph average exit velocity that would have placed in the top 15 among qualifiers, up there with Gunnar Henderson and Bobby Witt. Hitting the ball that hard is one way to overcome the near-30 percent strikeout rate that's almost a natural consequence of being 6-feet-7, but if Wood's minor-league history is any indication, he may be able to reduce that rate itself. He went from striking out 34 percent of the time at Double-A one year to 18 percent of the time at Triple-A the next, and the result was a .353/.463/.595 slash line. There's simply no overstating the ceiling here once everything clicks, and in the meantime, he'll still be must-start.
Lawrence Butler, OF, Athletics
| ||||||||||||
FantasyPros ADP: 73.8
Now that I've gotten the obligatories out of the way, let's discuss one who's dear to me personally. Butler doesn't come with a sparkling prospect pedigree and, thus, doesn't get the same presumption of sustainability when he does something right. But he always showed the capacity to hit the ball hard, such that if he could ever learn to make enough contact, things could go very right.
Turns out we underestimated just how right. Toward the end of June, immediately after Butler had returned from a month-long stint in the minors, Athletics director of hitting Darren Bush suggested that the 24-year-old make some mechanical tweaks aimed at eliminating excess movement and staying back on the ball. The results were immediate, and they were astounding. From July 1 on, or roughly half the season, Butler hit .302 with 20 homers, 14 steals and a .943 OPS. He cut his strikeout rate to 20.6 percent as compared to 30.7 percent in the 52 games prior, when he hit .179. He had two three-homer games during the surge and was basically on a 40-homer, 30-steal pace. Again, that's over half a season.
To me, that's long enough to call it legitimate, particularly since there was a dramatic improvement in strikeout rate to confirm the underlying changes. It's possible that after a long offseason, Butler could slip back into old habits and bring back the noisy swing that made him an easy out. I'm not saying there's zero risk. But now that the Athletics know what works for him, I suspect any such hiccups to be short-lived. If he picks up where he left off, Butler might even be in the first-round discussion next year.
Jordan Westburg, 2B/3B, Orioles
| ||||||||||||
FantasyPros ADP: 86.8
To a certain degree, Westburg broke out last year, delivering an xBA and xSLG in the 92nd percentile with an average exit velocity (91.1 mph) on par with Kyle Tucker and Bryce Harper. If you project his actual totals over 150 games, they come out to 25 homers and 88 RBI, both of which would have ranked second among second-base-eligible players. Yet I can think of a couple reasons why his Fantasy standing could improve further.
The first is that nobody's drafting him like that. Because he missed nearly two months with a fractured hand late in the year, he didn't actually play in those 150 games and achieve those numbers. But it's less a matter of people overlooking him, I think, than overlooking how he stacks up at second base. By and large, drafters aren't accounting for the position's scarcity, and he represents just one example.
The second reason is that I genuinely believe he could be even better this year. I said he was in the 92nd percentile for both xBA and xSLG, but I didn't give the actual numbers, which were .281 and .491, respectively. What it means is that Statcast thinks he should have had a higher batting average and slugging percentage than Harper, to name one, but he obviously didn't. And a big reason why is because of how punishing Camden Yards is for right-handed hitters. The decision to move back the entire left field fence 30 feet in 2022 completely devastated home run totals to that side, as I explained for Ryan Mountcastle in Sleepers 2.0.
But as I also explained for Mountcastle in Sleepers 2.0, the left field fence is moving back in this year, by 13 feet in some places and 26 in others, which should mean the park plays much fairer for right-handed power. In such an environment, 30 homers are well within the range of outcomes for a hitter who impacts the ball as Westburg does, and second basemen who can reach that threshold are exceedingly rare. Let's also not rule out the possibility of Westburg attempting to steal more bases, a likely scenario given his 91st-percentile sprint speed.
Bailey Ober, SP, Twins
| ||||||||||||
FantasyPros ADP: 88.0
People hate when I do this, but they're wrong. They're not appreciating the fine line between excellence and disaster in baseball and the degree to which sheer randomness comes into play. So here it is: You know the 3.98 ERA that Ober posted last year? How different would you feel about him if it was 3.18? All you have to do to get him there is remove two starts from the ledger:
- His season debut March 31 in which he allowed eight earned runs in 1 1/3 innings
- A second massacre Aug. 26 in which he allowed nine earned runs in two innings
"Yeah, but they happened," you'll say with a sneer. Sure, but they didn't have to. They weren't predestined, and they were clearly out of character. If you've watched baseball for any length of time, you'll know it doesn't take much to cause things to spiral. Anything from an unfortunately placed ground ball to a missed strike call or two could have triggered an avalanche big enough to bury the 6-foot-9 Ober. Who knows? Maybe he just had a headache that day and wasn't as sharp because of it. The season debut in particular was probably loaded with baggage. We don't know exactly where the blame lies because he hasn't volunteered it, but one thing we can't blame is a lack of talent, not with what the other 29 starts show.
You'll notice that Ober's ERA is the only real blemish in his stat line. His K/9 rate was solid, the 14th-best among qualifiers, and his 14.2 percent swinging-strike rate points to the potential for even more. His WHIP was excellent, the fifth-best among qualifiers, and between his elite control and high fly-ball rate (resulting in easy outs on contact), that's unlikely to change. Ah, but don't all the fly balls leave him vulnerable to home runs and (gasp) ERA inflation? Yes, but not to the extent we just saw. His xERA was only 3.22.
To give you an idea what Ober's 2025 could look like, look to Shota Imanaga. He has roughly the same profile -- excellent walk rate, pretty good strikeout rate, high fly-ball rate -- and actually had the higher xERA at 3.39, but his actual ERA was just 2.91, a full run lower than Ober's. You may think it's a reflection of talent, but the data tells us it was pure happenstance. Maybe they'll both be as good as that this year, but if their ERAs flipped, it wouldn't surprise me.
Spencer Schwellenbach, SP, Braves
| ||||||||||||
FantasyPros ADP: 91.8
The forward-facing numbers from his rookie season are impressive enough that we don't need to see further improvement to justify drafting Schwellenbach among the top 30 starting pitchers. What we really need is confirmation. You see, he didn't arrive with a sparkling pedigree or to great fanfare, and in a year that favored pitching, it's possible that a lesser talent could "fake" numbers of such quality over a partial-season sample. (Anyone remember Vance Worley? One such example.) So for Schwellenbach, "breaking out" would simply mean sustaining what he's already done.
And I'm willing to bet it'll happen. For as impressive as the forward-facing numbers were, the underlying ones were downright stellar. His control is already elite, as evidenced by a walk rate would have ranked fifth among qualifiers, up there with Logan Gilbert and Tarik Skubal. He was also one of just four pitchers (minimum 100 innings) to throw at least 69 percent of his pitches for strikes. While he averaged just over a strikeout per inning, his 13.5 percent swinging-strike rate points to even more strikeout upside, and he achieved it not just with one wipeout pitch but a deep six-pitch arsenal that he was willing to mix up from game to game. His polish certainly stands out for someone with his inexperience, but it verges on prodigious when you consider that last year was only his second as a full-time pitcher. He was a two-way player in college.
So yeah, Schwellenbach is good, and if he shows it over a full season, he'll probably be in the ace conversation for 2026.
Spencer Arrighetti, SP, Astros
| ||||||||||||
FantasyPros ADP: 205.3
You notice the drop-off in ADP here? Yeah, I could more appropriately call Arrighetti a sleeper than a breakout. Perhaps the most succinct way of putting it is that people are sleeping on a breakout that already happened. I'm referring to the two-month stretch at the end of last season in which Arrighetti put together a 2.72 ERA, 1.17 WHIP and 11.4 K/9. It was obviously a great departure from the rest of his season, which had been pretty terrible up to that point, and we can't completely rule out the possibility it was a blip. But while a lower ERA is achievable over a two-month span purely by happenstance, an elite strikeout rate is harder to fake. Arrighetti had three double digit-strikeout efforts in those 10 appearances. Add another from back on June 20, and he actually had more for the year than Tarik Skubal.
But what actually changed to turn his season around? For one thing, he stopped throwing his fastball so much, dropping its usage to below 40 percent. An overreliance on the fastball is a common problem for pitchers breaking into the big leagues, which isn't so bad when it's the highlight of their arsenal, but that's absolutely not the case for Arrighetti. His yielded a .303 batting average and .528 slugging percentage. By comparison, his curveball and sweeper were untouchable, yielding batting averages of .171 and .113, respectively, and they were also the main source of his whiffs.
As he began to find more success, he also became more comfortable going on the attack, issuing 3.1 BB/9 over the final two months compared to 4.6 BB/9 over the first four. Whether he can sustain those gains is less certain to me given that he also struggled with walks throughout his minor-league career, but it's worth noting that his actual strike percentage wasn't bad. In fact, it was right in line with league average at 64.4 percent, suggesting that his walk issues are less a matter of ability than confidence -- confidence that, again, I think he now has.
Matt Shaw, 3B, Cubs
| ||||||||||||
FantasyPros ADP: 246.0
The case here is pretty straightforward. Shaw is a top prospect (third in my top 100, it turns out) with a wide-open path to a starting job. And it's not some happy accident either. The Cubs included Isaac Paredes in the Kyle Tucker trade precisely to clear a path for Shaw. So where's the enthusiasm? Why isn't he getting the same reaction that Wyatt Langford and Jackson Chourio got last year? Granted, the overall ADP includes drafts from before the Tucker trade, when Shaw wasn't in line for the job yet, but even since Dec. 14, the day after the trade, Shaw's ADP is only 216.7. He's kind of an also-ran.
But he's also the complete package for Fantasy, projecting for batting average, power, and speed. The raw tools may not be loud, in part because he stands only 5-feet-9, but they're optimized to all get-out. He excels against all pitch types, drives the ball to both his pull side and the opposite field, and is appropriately aggressive on the base paths. Though his overall numbers are excellent, he really hit his stride over his final 80 games, batting .318 with 18 homers, 21 steals and a .959 OPS (just double it to find out the 162-game pace). He slips out of the top 25 in some prospect rankings because his defense is suspect, but as long as it's good enough for the Cubs to play him, as they seemingly intend to do, it's a moot point for Fantasy.
The truth is that I wouldn't want to target Shaw on the level we did Langford and Chourio last year. I'm keenly aware that hitting prospects have needed longer to adjust to the majors in recent years, so drafting him as my starter at third base is a bigger gamble than I'd like to take. I'm also aware that as the buzz begins to build in spring training, his stock is likely to climb. Still, if I'm looking for upside outside of the top 175 players or so, he's a prime target for me.
Lars Nootbaar, OF, Cardinals
| ||||||||||||
FantasyPros ADP: 292.8
We've been down the breakout trail with Nootbaar before, and at this point, fatigue is beginning to set in. (Probably should have packed something more substantial, eh?) But the facts on the ground haven't changed. He's still a fantastically disciplined hitter (98th percentile walk rate) who impacts the ball exceptionally well (88th percentile average exit velocity), yielding expected stats that exceed his actual ones. If you look at his Baseball Savant page, you're still blinded by all the red.
I think more than anything, what's prevented him from meeting his potential the past couple years is health. Three times he went on the IL in 2023 and twice in 2024, missing the first couple weeks of the season with a fractured rib and more than a month midseason with a strained oblique. Sure, all the ground balls didn't help. His 51.7 percent rate was his highest yet and would have ranked fifth among qualifiers, according to FanGraphs. But after spending last offseason working with Nolan Arenado to address exactly that, it seems to me that broken rib derailed Nootbaar's progress right out of the gate and perhaps instilled some bad habits as he struggled to catch up. But don't take my word for it ...
"I felt like I was in a good place heading into spring and then the ribs happened," Nootbaar said in late September. "I think I forgot some of the things that I was working on because I couldn't do those movements. I tried to play catch-up a little bit, but it was my fault for not being a great self-evaluator. I needed to not forget certain things we worked on in the offseason."
Those comments came at the end of a month in which he got his ground-ball rate down to 44.4 percent and went on to slash .290/.421/.565, hitting four of his 12 home runs on the year. More of that, and he's another Brandon Nimmo.
Reese Olson, SP, Tigers
| ||||||||||||
FantasyPros ADP: 293.0
Olson had a 1.92 ERA through 10 starts last year but also a 1-5 record. He would then lose his next three starts, taking him to 1-8, and make only six more before being shut down for two months with a shoulder strain. So you'd be forgiven for never warming up to him in Fantasy. The simple truth is that he wasn't so impactful.
But that doesn't mean he didn't pitch well. He's already learned what Spencer Arrighetti needed four months to figure out, which is that his fastball is a change-of-pace offering and not the pitch to lead with. He's taken the idea further, in fact, throwing his fastball in about equal measure to his slider and changeup, two quality pitches with better than a 40 percent whiff rate. Most pitchers would be pleased to have one pitch with such a whiff rate. Olson has two, which helps make up for the unremarkable fastball.
All Olson would need to do to break out, really, is pick up where he left off and stay healthy this time. Better win-loss luck is a given even before you account for the fact that the Tigers suddenly transformed into a contender during the time he was sidelined by the shoulder issue, and just adding a healthy win total would make him another Nathan Eovaldi type for Fantasy. But there's hope for even more, I think. If Olson can leverage those two high-whiff secondary offerings into more than a strikeout per inning and become a master at home run prevention with his better-than-50-percent ground-ball rate at a pitcher-friendly home venue, numbers closer to Justin Steele may be in store.
Jonathan Aranda, 1B, Rays
| ||||||||||||
FantasyPros ADP: 356.8
Sorry for the fakeout, everyone. Turns out 2025 is Aranda's year. Sure, I thought it would be 2024, and to be fair, he had seemingly wrapped up the starting DH job with a strong spring showing. But that's about the time he broke his right ring finger, and that's about the time all his troubles began.
A broken right ring finger sounds about as insignificant as broken bones get, particularly for a left-handed hitter, but it required surgery and kept Aranda out long enough that he seemed totally off-kilter when he returned. Gone were the impeccable bat-to-ball skills that had defined his career to that point, replaced by a 34.5 percent strikeout rate over a 44-game span between the majors and minors. Something had clearly gone wrong with his process, and it would take a two-month IL stint for a strained oblique to set him right again. He homered four times in his first six games back from that injury, earning a quick promotion to the majors, and in all, he hit .289 with nine homers and a .958 OPS in 32 games after returning. Best of all, his strikeout rate was back down to 17.6 percent.
That's more in line with his potential, and I think just scratching the surface of it. Remember, this is the guy who hit .339 with 25 homers and a 1.063 OPS in 95 games at Triple-A Durham two years ago with a walk rate (14.7 percent) that would have ranked third among all major-league hitters and exit velocity readings (92.2 mph average and 113.0 mph max) that compared favorably to Marcell Ozuna and Corey Seager. It's a hitting profile that's almost too good to believe, and while it's possible Aranda's left-handedness and defensive limitations cost him at-bats here and there, he's expected to get an extended look in the DH role again, this time without all the health interruptions. Don't lose faith in the breakout just because he's 26.
