He's Going To Break Out This Year! Promise!

ITEM!

Although it comes as part of a fantasy baseball preview, we're going to count this as the first Rickie-Weeks-to-break-out-this-year article of this year.

Stop me if you've heard this before:

You can player-hate on Weeks because of his strikeout rate, suspect defense and .245 career average, but you should not completely forget how big of a talent he is. The two-time NCAA Division I batting title winner can hit for a better average, and his Triple-A manager once went on record as saying Weeks has better power than eventual 50-homer man Prince Fielder. Oh, Weeks can also run.

Or this:

Weeks has had wrist issues that hindered him the past few years, but he turned the corner after the All-Star break last year. After a hitting .217 in the first half, Weeks posted a more respectable .263 average, .378 OBP and .451 SLUG after the break. Those are reachable levels that can make Weeks a top five Fantasy second baseman because of his rare speed-and-power mix.

Apparently, 27 is a big year for baseballers (for fantasy baseball purposes). Presumably, good fantasy baseball stats equate to good actual baseball stats.

With Weeks, I'll believe it when I see it. And this is coming from someone who absolutely HAD to have Rickie on his fantasy team, so much so that he traded Jose Reyes for Weeks in a keeper league about 4 years ago. Yeah, that has worked out well. WV is very proud of that trade.