Players who "break out" or see a big jump in production are the holy grail of fantasy baseball. Players like that can make your fantasy season. On the other hand, if you invest too heavily in breakout potential, you can end up breaking your season when they fail to produce the hoped for return. We'll start a series on breakout candidates with Matt Olson, 1B, Oakland A's. He's a big guy at 6'5", 230 lbs., B-L, T-R. He is a former 1S round draft pick from 2012 who has worked his way up through the A's farm system. He was called up in late May 2017 and struggled in his first month, then caught fire. His overall line for the season was .259/.352/.651, 24 HR, 10.2 BB%, 27.8 K%, .238 BABIP in 216 PA. In the second half, Olson hit .286 with 20 HR in 158 PA.
If you look back at his minor league record, the numbers are not dissimilar. Some would say he has already broken out, but his 2017 HR's project to 70 over 600 PA while his 47 dingers combined between AAA and MLB likely offer a reasonable projection of what he might do in 2018. The A's traded Ryan Healy at least in part to give Olson a clear shot at full time play. He does have a fairly extreme L-R split and his numbers my suffer if he has more exposure against LHP's.
Just for comparison, let's look at Cody Bellinger's stat line for 2017: .269/.352/.581, 39 HR, 11.7 BB%, 26.6 K%, .299 BABIP, 548 PA. Bellinger will likely get drafted much higher than Matt Olson for what is likely to be very similar production.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment