In 2011 Craig Kimbrel saved 46 games and Mark Trumbo had 29 homers and 87 RBI.

In 2012 Mike Trout went .326-30-83-129-49 while Bryce Harper nearly went 20/20 (two stelas short).

In 2013 Jose Fernandez won 12 games with a 2.19 ERA,187 strikeouts and a 0.98 WHIP.

In 2014 Jose Abreu went .317-36-107 while Billy Hamilton stole 56 bags.

In 2015 Kris Bryant went .275-26-99 while Carlos Correa went .279-22-68-52-14 in just 99 games.

Every year a rookie, or a series of them, break out. Sometimes it’s like Trumbo and the result is extremely solid. Sometimes it’s like Correa and the performance is out of this world. Point being, we frequently end up with a handful of rookies who exceed expectations or flat out break out in the fantasy game. That’s a fact. That situation leads to questions like the following from Twitter.

 

@BaseballGuys who is this year's Kris Bryant or Noah Syndergaard? -- @Fresko024 

My answer to that question is – I don’t know.

Seriously.

There’s no way to know which teams will call up a player early in the year.

There’s no way to know which veterans will underperform and need to be replaced.

There’s no way to know which players will get hurt.

There’s no way to know which teams will make trades.

There’s no way to know which teams will start out in a massive slump, give up on the season, and start playing youngsters.

There’s no way to know which teams, that we’re not expecting, will start out hot and decide to go with veterans whereas previously we were thinking they would role with youngsters.

And that is kind of the point here. The fact is, we just don’t know how most teams are going to react with their players once the bullets start flying. Take the cases of Francisco Lindor and Carlos Correa. Nearly everyone thought they would be up in September last season, but it was nearly unanimous that neither guy would be up early in the year. They both ended up getting called up two months earlier than anyone thought they would. They both had talent, and all talent evaluators predicted they would be successful when called up, it’s just that we all missed when they would be called up. No one was predicting that.

That’s the real problem. WHEN will the player be called up? As I quickly went through above, there are a myriad of data points that have to be sifted through before we can arrive at the answer of who can break out. Unfortunately, the actual talent level of the player isn’t even at the top of the list in many instances. So much has to happen for a player to be called up early enough that the player has the chance to live up to expectations that it’s exceedingly difficult to predict who will, and who won’t, break out.

Don’t forget to pick up your copy of the 2016 MLB Draft Guide which includes more than 600 Players Ranked, auction values, rookie reports, hitting and pitching targets as well as all the info you need if you’re ready to start playing DFS.

 

 

A few cases in short.

1 – Joey Gallo is an elite power bat. He was called up with hoopla last season. He crushed it for two weeks, killed it. Through 14 games he had five homers, a .580 SLG and a .391 wOBA. He was a star. Then reality reared its ugly head. Despite that killer start here’s what happened the rest of the way: he hit .155 with a homer, and a .522 OPS over 65 plate appearances. He was dreadful. Actually, he was worse than dreadful – he was embarrassingly awful (he struck out 36 times in 58 ABs). This happens a lot with rookies. Even success early doesn’t mean success long-term will occur.

2 – Jesus Montero was a top-five fantasy prospect in 2010 and 2011. He’s posted a .693 OPS over 865 plate appearances thus far in his career.  

3 – Domonic Brown was a top-five fantasy prospect in 2011. He had a great month in 2013. That’s all he’s done in a career that has seen him post a .246/.305/.405 line over 493 at-bats.

4 – Jurickson Profar, Dylan Bundy and Oscar Taveras were top-five fantasy prospects in 2013. To this point, well you know that none has had the success that was predicted due to injury (R.I.P. Taveras).

This is “cherry-picking” you say? If you did say that, you would be right. That’s why in this year’s Draft Guide I wrote a piece titled Don’t Depend on Rookies. As I pointed out in that review of the last three seasons, only 16.7 percent of the top-20 rookies heading into each season had a campaign of fantasy significance. That’s roughly 1-in-6 rookies folks. The odds of “hitting” big on a rookie are exceedingly low. Realize, that in the four bullet points above, and in the cursory overview in the Draft Guide, that I’m talking about the top prospects in baseball. The top-20 prospects each year have a massive fail rate. I’m not talking about the Twins' ninth prospect or the Pirates' seventh fella, I’m talking about the top-20 prospects in all of baseball. They simply fail more times than not in their first go round.

So what is my answer to the question? My honest answer is – I don’t know. I can offer an educated guess, but that is all it is – a “guess.” Realize that is all anyone is doing when they are answering this question – guessing. Predicting any rookie to perform like a fantasy star in their first big league season is a losing battle. You’re not going to be right, face the facts, so my advice would be to simply not to worry about it.

Corey Seager and Jose Berrios… but they are just guesses.