All Time Greatest Breakouts

Jeff Sullivan ran a post for Fangraphs/Fox Sports suggesting Bryce Harper's 2015 season was a breakout for the ages. This is undoubtedly true, but I ran a few queries that seem to better quantify the "breakoutness" of a breakout.

Jeff did a number of year 1/year 2 queries that look at the greatest improvements from one year to the next. This can be misleading in terms of a breakout season because the player could just as easily have had an off-year or an injury year prior to his "breakout" and create the illusion of a major jump in performance.

So here we are looking at the greatest jumps in wRC+ from a player's breakout year to his previous high. I used the same 300 PA requirement used in the article for both seasons.

Harper falls to 29th on the list of greatest breakouts by this method, comparing his 197 wRC+ in 2015 season with his previous high of 137 in 2013 nets him a jump of 60 points, not quite as high as the top ten:

All time Breakouts 

#	Name	Age	Season	wRC+	PA	previos high wRC+	JUMP	previous high season	previous high PA	Years since previous high	Years since breakout
1	Al Kaline	20	1955	156	681	76	80	1954	535	1	2
2	Tito Francona	25	1959	168	443	92	76	1956	500	3	3
3	Cito Gaston	26	1970	144	629	68	76	1969	419	1	3
4	Chick Hafey	24	1927	159	394	84	75	1925	375	2	3
5	Fernando Tatis	24	1999	141	639	67	74	1998	350	1	2
6	Eli Marrero	28	2002	100	446	26	74	1999	343	3	5
7	Fred Dunlap	25	1884	214	478	142	72	1881	369	3	4
8	Clyde Barnhart	27	1923	150	386	78	72	1921	505	2	3
9	Devin Mesoraco	26	2014	146	440	74	72	2013	352	1	3
10	Danny Thompson	25	1972	100	624	29	71	1970	318	2	2

Devin Mesoraco's showing inside the top ten is surprising to me, perhaps he's been forgotten about already since a dismal injury-plagued follow-up in 2015.

Al Kaline jumps from fifth in the article to number one here, but with just two full seasons before his breakout year.

Other recent notables include Jose Bautista's 2010 breakout at #19, Justin Turner and Brandon Moss at #26 and Alex Avila's standout 2010 tied with Harper.

And personal favorite John Lowenstein broke out in his 12th year as a major leaguer to hit for a 173 wRC+ 65 points higher than his next best performance previously. He was 35 years old.

Here is the top 100:  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iF8gb76VmxzXUUjLIBs8dbkzWlVn1vSlknrkJOQCees/edit?usp=sharing


Here is a picture of a face, parts of it belonging to the author, parts to John Lowenstein: