Every March, I post a list of players who I think are primed for significant upticks in their performances in the coming season. These are players who've already lost their rookie status but either haven't performed at all in the majors or perhaps just haven't lived up to expectations. Last year's list had several players who did indeed break out, including Shelby Miller, Xander Bogaerts and, to a lesser degree, Jason Heyward.

This year's list has nine players on it, broken into two categories. The first six are true breakout prospects, players who have yet to reach anything close to their full potential as big leaguers, all of whom were at one point significant prospects. The remaining three had success in less than a full season last year, so I'm projecting them to perform at a comparable or better level over the course of the entire 2016 season.

True breakouts

Jake Lamb, 3B, Arizona Diamondbacks

Lamb's 2015 season was wrecked by a foot injury that cost him about a third of the season, and seemed to have sapped his power even after he returned. Lamb can hit and should be a 40-doubles guy this year or next if he gets 500-plus at-bats, with 12-15 homers and a better average and OBP than he showed in 2015. This is more like the season I thought he was going to have last year after I saw him several times last spring training and saw how easy the swing was and how well he could square up quality pitches.

Wil Myers, 1B, San Diego Padres

Myers appears to be fully recovered from the wrist injury that ruined his 2015 season and required surgery to remove a bone spur, making more and better contact of late after a brief return to the back fields. I've always believed in Myers' bat, and did not believe much in his glove, at least not the way the Padres did last spring, but with the move to first base -- which is, by all accounts, going well -- he'll have one fewer thing to focus on going forward, and can become the hitter I long thought he'd be. Devil's advocate: Myers has not made any mechanical changes -- he doesn't use his lower half well and can get too uphill -- so my forecasted improvement is based on health and the expectation of a better approach.

Rougned Odor, 2B, Texas Rangers

Odor was forced into major league duty ahead of schedule in 2014 at age 20, but he held his own, making much more contact than expected though not producing much offense. In 2015, the quality of his contact improved, but the quality of his at-bats didn't change much. Odor isn't undisciplined and has a good two-strike approach, but he could stand to lay off more pitches out of the strike zone, really the main avenue available to him for improvement because he's already hitting for about as much power as most folks (myself included) expected in his peak years.

Speaking of young Rangers players, I was shocked at how low Martin Perez's strikeout rate was after his return last year, and if nothing else gets better for him, I'd expect that to rise in his first full season back from Tommy John surgery, given how good his changeup is.

C.J. Cron, DH, Los Angeles Angels

Cron is never going to be much of an OBP guy; he posted a .300 OBP last year, with a walk every 25 plate appearances, and I doubt that improves much at any point in his career. However, he's more aggressive than undisciplined, and for this type of hitter, he makes more contact than you'd expect, especially on "bad balls" outside the zone. I think his contact rate will creep up this year, and with a full season of at-bats, he'll get to 25-30 homers, enough to make him one of the more valuable hitters in a relatively thin Angels lineup.

Jonathan Schoop, 3B, Baltimore Orioles

Schoop has really been mishandled by the Orioles, given regular major league playing time before he was ready after being promoted aggressively through the lower minors. Schoop's plate discipline borders on the atrocious, but his swing works and he has plus power, hitting 15 homers last year in roughly half a season of plate appearances. Schoop wasn't always this kind of hacker; he drew 92 walks in 256 minor league games in 2011-12, which, compared to his total of 22 in the past two major league seasons, makes his minor league self look like Ted Williams. I think this is an example of a young player struggling to stay above water, one who should regain at least some of his lost discipline as he gains major league experience. He could be like Jose Guillen, another player rushed to the majors too soon who had a long major league career but never improved his patience, but I'm not ready to go there yet.

Aaron Hicks, CF, New York Yankees

Hicks, like Schoop, came up before his bat was ready -- his glove was ready, but his bat had developed gradually over the previous three years -- and in hindsight it appears skipping Triple-A was the wrong move for him. He was a different hitter in 2015, becoming much less passive, taking fewer strikes and looking more for pitches to drive when he was ahead in the count. Now he's moving to a better park for power and will have a full-time job from day one. Devil's advocate: Even in a mild breakout year in 2015, he was still substantially better when hitting from the right side.

Full-season breakouts

Robbie Ray, LHP, Arizona Diamondbacks

Ray was traded twice before reaching the majors in 2014 with Arizona, and the Diamondbacks did an outstanding job last offseason working with him on his delivery, which used to be short and lacked power but now gets him extending better over his front side for better stuff across the board. He added a couple of miles per hour to everything he threw, and his changeup, his best off-speed pitch in the minors, became more of a swing-and-miss weapon for him. He might not be so lucky with home runs in 2016, but I think he'll improve his control in his second year with the new, easier-to-repeat delivery.

Joe Ross, RHP, Washington Nationals

Ross had a great half-season for the Nats last year working primarily as a two-pitch starter, barely using the changeup that was his best pitch coming out of high school. The Padres had dropped Ross' arm slot slightly after he missed most of his first pro season with shoulder soreness; the shift gave his fastball more life and got him to a better slot for throwing a slider, rather than the curveball he threw as an amateur. He destroyed right-handed batters as a rookie for Washington but struggled with lefties because he didn't use his changeup enough, and when he did, it wasn't effective. (According to the pitch f/x data at baseballsavant.com, Ross threw only eight changeups in two-strike counts in 2015, all to left-handed batters.) So while his BABIP is very likely to increase this season, using that third pitch more should make him more effective against left-handed hitters and perhaps even raise his strikeout rate a little further.

Ketel Marte, SS, Seattle Mariners

I was too light on Marte when he was still a prospect, and perhaps a little too cavalier about his status because he appeared to be thoroughly blocked at the position he was best-suited to play (second base). He has played a lot of shortstop now and shown no indication that he can't stay there and be at least an average defender. I like his right-handed swing a little more, but he's not vastly different from the left side; he loads high and can't generate loft, but he has quick enough hands to continue to generate contact at a very high rate, with enough patience (which has been improving the past few years), to maintain what he did in Seattle last season.