Baseball's best bets for a breakout season in '08

By Joe Sheehan, BaseballProspectus.com

Recently I wrote about Jeff Francoeur, who I believe is on the brink of a very big breakout season. The question naturally follows: Which players will join him in taking a big leap forward in 2008?

David Wright (left) might have deserved the NL MVP in 2007, but Ryan Zimmerman will be better in 2008. Greg Fiume/Getty Images Sport

There are a number of ways to define a breakout season. In compiling the list below I went looking for players who have been in the league for two-to-three years, are young enough to have development left but have established a certain level of performance. There are players such as Billy Butler, Phil Hughes and Tim Lincecum who I expect to have strong '08 seasons but who don't have enough career preceding them to fairly call them breakout candidates. There are players such as Dustin McGowan, Jeremy Hermida and Corey Hart who I'm bullish on but who can fairly be said to have broken out in '07. Veterans such as Carl Crawford, Felix Hernandez, Jeremy Bonderman and Robinson Cano look poised to improve, but don't quite fit the category.

What do true breakout players look like? Well, a little like this...

Rickie Weeks: Weeks looked like he improved in 2006, but he actually took a big step forward last season. Consider that prior to '07 Weeks had drawn 68 walks and struck out 194 times in 841 career PAs. (All references to walks in this piece are to unintentional passes.) Both his plate discipline and power had been stable from '05 into '06, but a 40-point jump in BA made it look like improvement. Last year, however, Weeks walked more often, struck out less often and hit for more power than ever before. He also went 25 for 27 on the basepaths and grounded into just three double plays all year.

Now that's the sunniest view of Weeks' season. What that doesn't show is that on Aug. 1 the Brewers sent Weeks, hitting .212/.330/.363 and not showing improvement defensively, to Triple-A for two weeks. This was, in part, a reaction to the team's summer malaise, which Weeks was a part of but not the sole reason for. Even with his low batting average Weeks' walk rate, K/BB and isolated power were career highs or close to it, showing growth. Weeks was recalled nine days later, and was one of the best players in the NL down the stretch: .273/.442/.553, 38 walks drawn in 197 PA, 15 for 15 stealing bases.

If you just look at Weeks' seasonal OBP and SLG you end up missing the impact of an unusually low batting average, the improvement in his core skills, and the way he played after the demotion. Weeks is 25 now and ready to be one of the best second baseman -- at least at the plate -- in the National League.

Dioner Navarro: Affectionately known as Bandwagon for my insistence that everyone will be on his in 2008, Navarro has been a completely different player since being traded to the Devil Rays in 2006. At the time of the deal Navarro had a career OBP of .360. With Tampa Bay his OBP is .292. That kind of drop-off at 22 and 23 is alarming, and deserves investigation. When you look deeper you see that Navarro's decline has been concentrated in his strikeout rate, up about 15 percent, with a concomitant drop in his walk rate.

Navarro was one of the worst players in baseball in the first half of 2007, batting .177/.238/.254, with a 36/13 K/BB in 229 plate appearances. To the Rays' credit, they didn't bury him, allowing him to remain the regular catcher throughout the season. They were rewarded with a significant improvement in the second half: .285/.340/.475, with a better K/BB (31/17 in 209 PA) and the best power of his career.

Now, with both Weeks and Navarro, it's fair to wonder whether emphasizing a subset of performance is the correct way to analyze them. After all, if a full season isn't always enough to ascertain player quality, is six weeks or three months an appropriate window? In these two cases the players' youth, their core skill sets and the way in which their late-season work fits with their career curves make me believe those smaller samples indicate improvement, rather than merely being a statistical blip. Navarro doesn't have Weeks' upside, and I would suggest that both his .285 second-half BA and 190 ISO are a bit over his head. As a switch-hitting catcher with good defensive skills and the ability to post a .360 OBP, however, he's a tremendous asset. Navarro, still just 24 years old, is in line to be an above-average player for the next three seasons.

Ryan Zimmerman: Zimmerman may seem like an odd choice for the list, given how well he's played in his first two full seasons. However, Zimmerman's raw stat lines have been held down by his home park, RFK Stadium, which just killed power, especially right-handed power. Zimmerman's home/road splits do not reflect this gap he's slugged .501 at RFK in his career, .435 on the road, but a guiding principle of performance analysis is that an individual's home/road splits, even over two years, do not mean that player isn't being affected by his home park. We know what RFK did to run scoring and power, and moving to a new park should enable Zimmerman to convert some of his doubles to home runs. Throw in development -- he's 23 this season -- and you have the recipe for a breakout. David Wright might well have been the most valuable player in the National League last season; Zimmerman will be a better player than Wright in 2008.

1 of 2