We continue our fantasy baseball breakouts and busts in the outfield, with two more players who could overperform their draft slot and two others who may not live up to the hype.
Fantasy Baseball Outfielder Breakouts
This pick was between Jo Adell and Stowers, but Adell is probably more precisely characterized as being undervalued because he's unlikely to take another step forward from his performance in 2025. That leads us to Stowers, who began his breakout in 2025 after receiving regular playing time for the first time in his career following his escape from the deep crop of talent in Baltimore.
In his 457 plate appearances, Stowers showcased the ability to make elite quality of contact. He had a 19.0 percent barrel rate, fifth among qualified hitters behind only Aaron Judge, Kyle Schwarber, Shohei Ohtani and Cal Raleigh. Stowers also ranked in the top six percent in other metrics such as xSLG and xWOBA. There's pretty clear power potential.
The primary concern regarding Stowers' skills profile is his ability to make contact. However, he brought his strikeout rate below 30 percent over his larger sample in 2025 and cut that to a 25 percent clip in 111 plate appearances following the All-Star break. Despite his relatively minimal experience, Stowers is also picking up soft tissue injuries at an alarming clip. His 2025 campaign was cut short by an oblique strain, and he's currently sidelined by a hamstring injury. However, he should be healthy well
We continue our fantasy baseball breakouts and busts in the outfield, with two more players who could overperform their draft slot and two others who may not live up to the hype.
Fantasy Baseball Outfielder Breakouts
This pick was between Jo Adell and Stowers, but Adell is probably more precisely characterized as being undervalued because he's unlikely to take another step forward from his performance in 2025. That leads us to Stowers, who began his breakout in 2025 after receiving regular playing time for the first time in his career following his escape from the deep crop of talent in Baltimore.
In his 457 plate appearances, Stowers showcased the ability to make elite quality of contact. He had a 19.0 percent barrel rate, fifth among qualified hitters behind only Aaron Judge, Kyle Schwarber, Shohei Ohtani and Cal Raleigh. Stowers also ranked in the top six percent in other metrics such as xSLG and xWOBA. There's pretty clear power potential.
The primary concern regarding Stowers' skills profile is his ability to make contact. However, he brought his strikeout rate below 30 percent over his larger sample in 2025 and cut that to a 25 percent clip in 111 plate appearances following the All-Star break. Despite his relatively minimal experience, Stowers is also picking up soft tissue injuries at an alarming clip. His 2025 campaign was cut short by an oblique strain, and he's currently sidelined by a hamstring injury. However, he should be healthy well in advance of Opening Day, and he should be a key part of the Marlins' lineup while being a strong source of power and RBI for fantasy managers. Seiya Suzuki (91 ADP) is a reasonable comp.
Merrill already has a pretty lofty price, but he comes at a discount relative to his 2025 ADP. Listing him as a breakout requires two things. The first is giving him a mulligan for a letdown of a sophomore season, and the second is a belief that Merrill will be in the top-50 conversation in drafts for the next several seasons — if not higher.
The case for the first point is straightforward. Scrolling through Merrill's old player notes suggests that he was never truly healthy in 2025. He suffered a hamstring injury roughly 10 days after Opening Day and missed a month of action. He then suffered a concussion in mid-June and was mired in a slump until the All-Star break following his return. Finally, an ankle injury in mid-August cost him another two weeks. Though he totaled 483 plate appearances, it's very reasonable to suggest that Merrill was unable to play at full strength starting in mid-April.
Even with that in mind, Merrill showed strong underlying skills. He ranked 80th percentile or better in xwOBA, xSLG, barrel rate and launch angle sweet spot, and he was 70th percentile or better in both sprint speed and xBA. Furthermore, Merrill will bat in the top half of the Padres' lineup and is at minimal risk of losing playing time against left-handed pitching. A 30-20 season with a strong batting average and counting stats is a reasonable expectation, a level of production that should be somewhere in the range of James Wood, Jackson Chourio, Pete Crow-Armstrong and Wyatt Langford, all of whom are being selected inside the top 35.
Fantasy Baseball Outfielder Busts
Altuve is clearly in the back end of his career, but the question for fantasy managers is just how far down that path he is. That's a trickier question for him than for many players due to how he's derived fantasy value for much of his career. For example, Altuve has never stood out for his ability to barrel the ball, but he has perfected pulling his fly balls to take advantage of a favorable home park. He's also generally been a part of very strong Astros lineups while hitting in a prominent part of the order, allowing him to rack up counting stats.
On the surface, Altuve didn't take a significant step back in 2025, as he blasted 26 home runs, the third-highest mark of his career. The problem is that he sold out to get there, hitting flyballs at a 40.1 percent clip paired with a 16.2 infield flyball rate. That led to a .265 average, the worst mark of his career with the exception of the shortened 2020 season. Depending on his preferred approach, Altuve may be able to provide above-average power or batting average production, but he's unlikely to provide both based on the skills he showcased in 2025.
Altuve's days as a prolific base stealer are also over. He was successful on only 10 of 16 attempts in 2025, while his sprint speed dipped to the 36th percentile. Finally, Houston's lineup isn't up to the same standard as recent seasons. That's particularly true in the bottom half of the order, so Altuve's run-scoring potential is also at risk.
There's some level of floor for Altuve due to his guaranteed playing time, but it's harder to envision any category where he stands out than it has been in the past. Given his declining stolen base production and the weakened Houston lineup, there are also fewer paths to him living up to this ADP.
Unlike Altuve, there isn't much risk that Soderstrom falls off completely, as he's entering his age-24 season and has proven to be a productive big-league hitter. However, this is about his ADP, the likely stats he'll provide and players that are available at later rounds in the draft.
It's certainly possible that Soderstrom improves, but his skills don't suggest another big step forward is coming, which is what his current ADP anticipates. The biggest issue is Soderstrom's type of contact. He had a 48.7 percent groundball rate in 2025 (career 49.6 percent) and had just a 12.1 percent pull air rate. Soderstrom is in a good position to replicate his 25-homer season in 2025 because he hits the ball hard, but he'll likely need to lift the ball more to reach elite production in the category.
Soderstrom's counting-stat output should be fairly strong, but he's projected to hit in the mid-.250s by most systems. He also won't chip in more than a handful of steals. That's solid fantasy production, but it's very comparable to the likes of Jo Adell, Kyle Stowers and Teoscar Hernandez, each of whom comes at a discount of at least 40 picks.
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