The Kansas City Royals made a surprise run to the World Series this year. Lorenzo Cain was a significant factor in that outcome, relatively speaking. Jeff Sullivan welcomed the center and right fielder to stardom last month. (The anecdote at the beginning is priceless!) The 2014 ALCS MVP kind of arrived.

Fantasy baseball players found Cain to be pretty likable, too. He hit .301 with five home runs, 55 runs, 53 RBIs, and 28 stolen bases. He was the 100^th outfielder taken, on average, around the main roto/head-to-head Webiverse, according to Fantasy Pros. His average preseason ranking from the four horsemen was 82^nd. He finished 37^th, per Zach Sanders’ end-of-season outfield rankings, in roto money earned. That’s tidy profit.

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In his first season in New York, Jacoby Ellsbury didn’t crack under the pressure of a $153 million contract, hitting in Yankee Stadium didn’t kill his swing and despite something of an injury label, he managed to appear in 149 games, putting together what can only be described as another fine season for those who drafted him as a top outfielder.

At the same time, he struck out more frequently than he had before at the big league level, his batting average finished 20 points below his career mark and he posted his lowest OBP over the course of a full season, finishing 13th among outfielders in Zach Sanders’ rankings despite being tabbed as a top-five option before the year.
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Hindsight is 20/20, so the old saying goes, but in retrospect, it shouldn’t be that surprising that Jay Bruce had a season like he just did. Looking at his 2011-2013 seasons, he was already regressing in many ways. However, when you’re still hitting 30+ homers annually, it’s easy to overlook things like an uncharacteristically high .322 batting average on balls in play, that made his 2013 look better than it probably was.

Bruce had been one of the game’s most reliable power hitters over the past several seasons, but some crucial trends in his data pointed to the fact that — if he struggled in any unexpected ways — his value could drop off a cliff, which is exactly what happened in 2014. The reason I phrased that the way I did is that Bruce had already been steadily declining, in areas where he could expectedly continue to struggle. Throwing another negative variable into the equation did him in.

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Episode 179

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!

Eno Sarris and Nicholas Minnix talk about, among other newsy topics, the Jason Heyward–Shelby Miller swap and the signings of Billy Butler and Russell Martin. Of course, we also discuss outfielders! The end-of-season OF rankings went up a week ago this past Monday. Those visited in this episode: Jayson Werth, Christian Yelich, Starling Marte, J.D. Martinez, and Billy Hamilton. The topics inevitably lead us to converse about strategy, and as a result we answer a listener question that had been waiting patiently.

As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us or comment with fantasy questions so that we may answer them in our next episode.

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And by does it, I mean that he doesn’t. Unless we’re talking about disappointing fantasy baseball players, in which case: repeat performance. The Tampa Bay Rays’ center fielder hit .244 with 10 home runs and 15 stolen bases in 542 plate appearances in a dull campaign. He finished the season on the disabled list, of course, so if we extrapolate to 600 PAs, which is about how many he accumulated in the season prior, then he’d have recorded 11 homers, 71 runs, 40 RBIs, and 17 thefts, all of which are about … worse than how many he accumulated in the season prior.

Why does Desmond Jennings continue to disappoint? It’s a valid question. It may not have a simple answer. But, just as well, it might.

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Over the next few months, we’ll find out if the Cubs plan to contend in 2015. Team president Theo Epstein teased as much during a press conference at the end of the season, and if a pitcher like Jon Lester or Max Scherzer joins a rotation that has already dramatically exceeded expectations thanks to the breakouts of Jake Arrieta and rookie Kyle Hendricks, there will be little reason to doubt him.

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I don’t think that there’s much to analyze about Leonys Martin the player. The Texas Rangers’ center fielder isn’t a great player. On offense, he’s not even a good player, at least in terms of his weighted value as a hitter. He’s just a player, one who happened to be, based on his ADP (according to Fantasy Pros and his RotoGraphs preseason rank) compared to Zach Sanders’ end-of-season standings at the position, properly “valued” this past season.

Martin the fantasy baseball asset is a slightly different case. He batted .274 with seven home runs and 31 stolen bases. He earned about $12 this season in a typical 12-team mixed league. Judging from his typical cost in CBS leagues and the NFBC as well as the rankings of a couple of folks on the RotoGraphs preseason rankings panel (see here), some fantasy baseball players had hoped for a bit more, it seems.

This is the type of player who’d be on my secondary or tertiary target list next season. Here’s why.

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I wanted to go with a title that likened Matt Holliday to the smokin’ Diane Lane. But I don’t really look at Holliday the way I do the smokin’ Diane Lane.

Anyway, that Holliday ended up as the 18^th-ranked outfielder in Zach Sanders’ end-of-season rankings for the position might surprise some fantasy baseball players. The St. Louis Cardinals’ regular left fielder hit .272 with 20 home runs and four stolen bases in 667 plate appearances. OK, not bad, those marks seem good enough to place him 18^th. But he hit a mere six home runs in 339 at-bats (400 PAs) prior to the All-Star break, so he appeared to be on course to fall short of 20 bombs for the first time since 2005, his second year in the majors. It might just surprise some folks to find out that he recovered so well.

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I felt very strongly about Marcell Ozuna coming into the season, writing a lengthy piece in which I wondered if a balky wrist was to blame for his 2013 power outage. I also used one of my “Bold Predictions” to claim that the 23-year-old would hit more than 20 homers, one year removed from hitting just three long balls in 291 plate appearances.

I’ve already had the opportunity to pat myself on the back for getting this one right, so let’s dig into how Ozuna transformed from our preseason No. 85 fantasy outfielder into the season’s No. 27 player at the position. (As I noted in my Bold Predictions recap column, his average fly-ball distance increased by a ridiculous 36 feet, from 255.5 feet last year to 291.5 feet in 2014, which is a pretty darn good place to start.)

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Episode 178

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!

Eno Sarris and Nicholas Minnix talk strategy; the re-signing of Victor Martinez; the Devon Travis–Anthony Gose trade; Yoan Moncada; Kwang-Hyun Kim; a Twitter question about head-to-head leagues; and, of course, outfielders! The end-of-season OF rankings went up this past Monday. Under discussion: Michael Brantley; Charlie Blackmon and Corey Dickerson; and Matt Kemp, for starters.

As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us or comment with fantasy questions so that we may answer them in our next episode.

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