Previous rankings:
March/April (Preseason)
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For this post, I had written something entirely different, but I woke up early to change it. All of it. I didn’t dream about it — no, not quite. But I came close. This month has proven to be pretty difficult. Maybe “finicky” is the word.
So many hitters are producing at similar levels with similar peripherals to support them that it’s hard to tease them apart. I tried a full re-rank and I had clustered something like 20 or more guys together twice. I try to limit each particular tier to maybe a dozen hitters, so coming away with only three-or-so tiers was problematic. That’s why I decided to wake up early and do this over. The ranks haven’t changed much, but certain guys have moved a lot, and I will try to identify which guys are most likely to move up or down by the time the June iteration of these rankings roll around.
Also — and this is totally unrelated — I think more readers were infuriated by my omission of Tommy Pham (who has all of one plate appearance this year) than my ranking of A.J. Pollock over Bryce Harper. Y’all crack me up sometimes.
You know the drill: I rank National League outfielders, you yell at me in the comments. Consider all rankings fluid within tiers but not between them (except at the top and bottom of each tier, perhaps). Normally, I would tell you that players should be reserved to their respective tiers, but I think there’s much more opportunity for movement here than ever before (ever before, in the context of me doing this since the beginning of last year). Lastly, if I omit a name, politely let me know in the comments.
Unless it’s Tommy Pham. Then shhhhhhhhhh.
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