You can tell the quality of a team and the direction it is going based on the quality of the breakout candidate chosen for that team. After all, the term breakout itself tends to eliminate several people immediately. Established stars cannot be breakout players by definition. With some teams (the Red Sox for instance), we ended up choosing what would traditionally be labeled a comeback candidate, but usually those players are eliminated as well. That has made the pickings rather slim in some cases.

With a team like the Houston Astros, there are no shortage of breakout candidates. Last season, their whole roster was a breakout. Now, we have a few established stars to go along with some breakout candidates. George Springer exists somewhere in between. He exists somewhere in between because he is a highly regarded fantasy prospect and yet has still not produced the kind of numbers overall reserved for such star performers. Essentially, fantasy owners are purchasing Springer on spec.

In each of the past two seasons, Springer has had stretches where he has looked like one of the top five fantasy outfielders in all of baseball. Unfortunately, he has gotten hurt in each the past two seasons just when that momentum threatened to carry him over the top. People are expecting him to put it all together this season.

Where he has been

People that look simply at the raw five categories miss most of what the excitement is about. What we see here is someone that would appear to have moderate power and speed, but someone that struggles to make decent contact. They don’t see the 11 percent walk rate (and how that might impact steals and runs) and they don’t see the prodigious power that seems to show up in streaks.

A look at his plate appearances would seem to begin to tell the story of someone capable of so much more. While the injuries he has suffered have had no lasting effects, the fact that they’ve happened two years in a row make people wonder if he is just going to be one of those guys that struggles to remain on the field. At first glance, it would appear that the experts think this will be a breakout campaign for him as well.

Where he could go

Obviously, they see him being healthier (which makes sense), but they don’t see him being particularly more productive. This represents the basis of debate between those that provide projections. A look at my rosy picture (coming up) will reveal which side of the debate I am on. Some people choose to focus on what a player has already achieved while others tend to want to predict growth. A player like Springer certainly invites this debate more than others.

Year two showed growth in a number of key areas. He made more contact and therefore had a much healthier batting average. He also had a better average on balls in play. The experts above are considering a marriage between year one and two and yet a regression on BABIP. Others see progress on contact continuing which could also lead to more power and an overall improvement in getting on base. Both arguments make sense and both will put him in much different positions at the end of the season. Let the debate rage on.

The Rosy Picture

I’ve never been very good at advanced math, but what I do know is that if you alter your methodology to fit what you think will happen then you really have no methodology. You are just guessing like everyone else. One could develop an algorithm to somehow account for growth (or decline) but that is outside my pay grade and most players tend to produce around the aggregate of what they have already done.

The above numbers obviously represent what Springer has done and that has been projected over 600 plate appearances. That alone is pretty solid and definitely worth everyone’s attention during the fantasy draft. The question is how much better he could be with natural growth between year two and three. That question is unanswerable with any real accuracy, so we will have to wait and see. I’d bet the over on the numbers above, but outside of that, there are few guarantees.