Building a strong starting rotation is crucial to winning your fantasy baseball leagues, regardless of what format you are in. A position that has become volatile due to the level of devastating arm injuries has a lot of fantasy players timid to spend the big auction bucks or an early-round pick on a top-flight arm. I don’t know about you, but every time I watch a baseball game I feel as though at any moment, on any pitch, I am going to see a pitcher start shaking their arm and making that now infamous yet familiar grimace that ultimately leads to the end of their season and beyond. For that reason it is imperative we add depth and make valuable picks later in our draft.

This is why I’ve found five breakout candidates. While their names are not marquee, like Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer, or Chris Sale, they are on the verge of a big season.

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Kevin Gausman (BAL)

The training wheels are finally off. Gausman hurled a combined 190 innings and 33 starts last season (179 innings and 30 starts in the majors). He is officially stretched out and ready for a 200-inning campaign, something only 15 MLB pitchers achieved last year, an all-time low.

In his final eight starts last year, the big right-hander finished strong. In those starts (six of which were against division opponents) he pitched to a 2.39 ERA and held opposing hitters to a .652 OPS. Don’t be turned off by the 9-12 record, especially as we are all beginning to realize how absurdly arbitrary wins and losses are when it comes to evaluating a pitcher’s value.

Considering improvement every year on his K/9 and K/BB ratios over the last three seasons, Gausman, 26, is just entering his prime and with a 95 mph fastball and green light to pitch a full workload. He is primed to take the leap the Orioles have been waiting for and become a top of the rotation starter in 2017. If he builds off last season this could be the last time we see him ranked in the second half of fantasy drafts.

Marcus Stroman (TOR)

The 25-year-old Stroman was one of 15 MLB pitchers to throw over 200 innings last year. A post-hype fantasy sleeper, Stroman comes off a tale of two halves in 2016, as he returned from tearing his ACL early in the 2015 season.

Don’t be turned away by his total stat line from last year. The second half was outstanding.

 
Legs are a huge part of a pitcher’s strength, and it’s no surprise it admittedly took Stroman a few months to move beyond the timidity of using his knee full force and regaining the strength he had prior to tearing his ACL. The pitcher we saw from July on is the pitcher we will see in 2017, more reminiscent of the kid who burst onto the scene in 2014. A full season at full strength will launch Stroman into the first five round discussion next year, but right now you can have him in the 12th. In his case, 200 innings with 200 strikeouts and 15 wins is not out of the question. Stroman’s breakout was delayed due to his knee injury, but his time has come.

Aaron Nola (PHI)

Sometimes luck isn’t on our side. Sometimes we improve ourselves in every way, but the results stay the same, or get worse. Sometimes that happens to major league pitchers, which is exactly what happened to Nola last year until his injury. Nola’s “baseball card” stats showed an unattractive 4.78 ERA and dismal 6-9 record in 20 starts. It appeared he had taken a step back in his development, but that is just not accurate. Nola improved his game in almost every way possible last season, but he didn’t get the preferred bubble-gum card stat line due to a lot of bad luck.

 
The only metric Nola didn’t improve on was his BB/9, which hardly changed. He struck out more batters, induced more ground balls, decreased fly balls, and increased the amount of soft contact made.

Nola also used his curveball much more in 2016 which helped decrease contact on pitches outside the zone by five percent. When something looks like a meatball and falls off the table that will happen. Contact is down, swinging strikes are up, and if he can stay healthy and put his 2016 elbow scare behind him, he can take a huge leap forward and become the ace the Phillies thought they drafted in the first round in 2014.

Lance McCullers (HOU)

For a microcosm of the problems we face with pitchers in regards to fantasy baseball, look no further than McCullers. He is a young, hard-throwing strikeout machine whose season ended early due to elbow soreness. The stats were all there, the metrics lined up with the standard line. He struck out nearly 12 batters every nine innings and had the second best ground ball percentage in baseball at 57 percent (didn’t qualify due to minimum inning requirement).

The downside with McCullers is control, as he simply walks too many hitters. Walking 45 batters in 81 innings is not going to cut it. I don’t care who you are, walks kill. Thankfully the right-hander sported a shiny 81 percent left-on-base percentage that helped minimize damage, due in large part to his ability to put hitters away himself with the strikeout. Then, of course, there is the elbow issue and the unknown future that comes with it. McCullers said he adjusted his mechanics this offseason to significantly reduce the stress he puts on his arm in his delivery in hopes to put the injury behind him and pitch a full healthy season.

McCullers won’t sniff 200 innings this year after never throwing more than 125 in a season to date, but his innings should be high impact, so when he does toe the rubber expect a lot of strikeouts with a very good ERA and WHIP. If he can improve his control (he has 14 strikeouts to two walks in eight innings this spring), he will be a breakout stud that can be had in the 14^th round of your draft.

Robbie Ray (ARI)

A lanky lefty strikeout machine on the Diamondbacks. No it’s not the Big Unit, but 25-year-old Robbie Ray. Like Aaron Nola, his baseball card stats looked awful last year, with a 4.90 ERA and 8-15 record. He is currently ranked as a late-round flier in fantasy drafts because of it, but that is a mistake. Ray was in the top 10 in baseball in some extremely vital categories.

 
Ray was second only to the late Jose Fernandez in K/9, one of twelve pitchers with more than 200 strikeouts, the eighth best x-FIP in the sport, and he is going in the 19^th round of standard drafts. This guy is on the verge of a big season. If he continues to develop his two-seam fastball and sinker and create more groundball contact, he will become one of the top pitchers in the National League within the next year or two. My top breakout candidate of the group, don’t sleep on Ray. In fact, reach for him on Draft Day, because the breakout is coming, and it’s coming now.

Statistics provided by Fangraphs.com and Baseball-Reference.com. ADP provided by FantasyPros.

• 1B Breakout Candidates
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• 3B Breakout Candidates
• SS Breakout Candidates
• C Breakout Candidates
• OF Breakout Candidates
• RP Breakout Candidate

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John Hoey is a featured writer with FantasyPros. For more from John, check out his archive and follow him on Twitter at JohnnyCrashMLB.