In fantasy baseball, breakouts happen every year, but not every breakout is created equal. That is to say that they come in different shapes, sizes and scopes.
There are breakouts achieved by rookies who take the sport by storm right out of the gate, like Jose Fernandez and Yasiel Puig did last year. Then there are those that come in the form of a player going from good to great, a la Chris Davis and Carlos Gomez, or ones where something finally clicks for a previously disappointing performer, like Domonic Brown and Daniel Murphy. And yet another kind is when a no-namer becomes a star, which is what happened with Josh Donaldson and Matt Carpenter.
Of course, it’s one thing to use hindsight to highlight a batch of breakout performers from 2013. What fantasy owners drafting now need are players who just might break out—in various shapes, sizes and scopes—this year.
Having these breakout candidates broken down position by position, well, that’s just a bonus.
*Statistics come from Baseball Reference and FanGraphs.