As we move into draft season, I will be updating these rankings occasionally, when there is news to justify changes. The original rankings will stay at the bottom of the article to maintain my player notes. The original outfield rankings were posted 1/30 and the most recent update is 2/28.

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The Outfield Part II Preview episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Ray Murphy

First Pitch Florida

Strategy Section

• Projections
  • The basics of what goes into generating player projections
  • How should you use projections?
  • Blind spots of projections
    • What does the human eye do better than the computer?
• Pricing Players
  • SGP vs. Z-Scores vs. PVM
• Outfield Player Pool
  • General observations
  • Are there specific stats that you need to get from the OF position?

ATC Undervalued Players

• Outfielders
  • Masataka Yoshida
  • Brandon Nimmo
  • Cedric Mullins
  • Riley Greene
  • Taylor Ward
  • Bryan De La Cruz
  • Jung Hoo Lee 이정후
    • Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
  • Austin Hays
  • Sal Frelick

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The Outfield Part I & Utility Only Preview episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Brian Entrekin

Strategy Section

• Snake Draft Strategy
  • General KDS Strategy
  • This year’s KDS Strategy
  • Mapping stats & positions in future rounds
• Outfield Player Pool
  • General observations
  • 3 OF vs 5 OF leagues
  • OF Stars & Scrubs approach?
  • OF Waiver wire viaiblity
• Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week
• Are platoon players viable to roster?
  • In which formats?
• Designated Hitter / Utility Only Players
  • Is it worth it to “clog” up your utlilty spot with a utility only player?

ATC Undervalued Players

• Outfielders
  • Yordan Alvarez
  • Michael Harris II
  • Nolan Jones
  • Bryan Reynolds
  • Kyle Schwarber
  • Nick Castellanos
  • George Springer
  • Teoscar Hernandez
  • Anthony Santander
• Utility Only
  • Eloy Jimenez

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Before the holidays, Lucas Kelly ran through his keep or cut decisions in the outfield, part of our ongoing series heading into the keeper deadline on January 31. To catch up with him, Chad Young and I are finally getting around to our entries in the series before we move onto pitchers next week. I’ll run through three players on my bubble and where I think the keep line could be for each of them. All P/G projections are from the 2024 Steamer projections.

–

Cedric Mullins OF
Salary: $15
Average Salary: $17.1
2023 P/G: 4.37
Projected 2024 P/G: 4.80

We’re now two years removed from Cedric Mullins’ huge breakout in 2021 and it really seems like that was his high water mark. In the two years since posting a 136 wRC+, that metric has fallen year-over-year to just a point below league average last year. He did struggle through a recurring groin injury that cut into his playing time and definitely affected his ability to use his speed to his advantage. Now we’re left with plenty of questions about how valuable he’ll be moving forward.

There are a few encouraging signs under the hood though each of them is tempered by a red flag. After seeing his ISO drop from .228 during his breakout season to .145 in 2022, he was able to punish the ball more often last year, pushing his ISO back up to .183. That improvement was backed by an improved barrel rate and a batted ball profile that leaned even more heavily into pulled contact in the air. Elevating his batted balls was one of the keys to his success back in ‘21, though he might have gone a little too far last year. His groundball rate was the lowest of his career and nearly half of his batted balls were categorized as fly balls, but the expected wOBA on that elevated contact was nowhere near where it was two years ago.

His sweet spot rate — the rate at which he makes contact at ideal launch angles — was at a three-year low last year. Despite elevating his batted balls on the regular, he was hitting far too many at uncompetitive launch angles or without much power behind them, leading to a ton of weak fly balls.

On the plate discipline side of things, Mullins cut his chase rate to the lowest it’s been since a brief cup of coffee back in 2018 in his first exposure to big league pitching. That helped him post a career-high 9.5% walk rate. Unfortunately, his contact rate also fell three points and the corresponding increase in whiffs drove his strikeout rate up to 22.2%.

The other complicating factor is that the Orioles started to platoon Mullins pretty heavily last year even though his platoon split was pretty even. It’s hard to take that split seriously since he only accumulated 119 plate appearances against left-handed pitching last year but it’s something to monitor, especially with a crowded outfield in Baltimore.

Keep or Cut?
As much as I’d like to dream about Mullins reaching his 2021 heights again, I don’t think he’ll be worth $15 this year. Steamer has him bouncing back in 2024 with a .317 wOBA which would be higher than what he posted each of the last two years. Still, that’s more like a $8-$10 outfielder, not the $20 outfielder he was in 2021. I’m gonna cut and see where he goes in the draft because I think a lot of people will be overlooking him due to his struggles.

–

Seiya Suzuki OF
Salary: $18 and $24
Average Salary: $21.8
2023 P/G: 5.76
Projected 2024 P/G: 5.53

In his second season stateside, Seiya Suzuki improved across nearly every significant offensive category. But simply looking at his full season stats hides some of the ups-and-downs he experienced during the season and I think some of that narrative is affecting how he’s valued heading into this upcoming season. Here’s his rolling 20-game wOBA from last year:

He had an early slump, dealt with a few minor injuries, and really slumped in June and July and was finally benched for a short time in early August. But from August 9th onwards — the day he returned to the lineup full-time — he was the second best hitter in baseball, a hot streak that salvaged his full season stat line. So which version of Suzuki is the real one?

As Ben Clemens laid out in the article linked above, the adjustments Suzuki made in August were specific to his approach and directly addressed the reasons why he was struggling in the first place. He was specifically hunting breaking balls located in the zone while continuing to wallop the fastballs he saw up the middle and to the opposite field. It was a change to his approach that got him out of the middle ground between trying to adjust to hard and soft stuff. As Clemens put it, “This isn’t some fluke of soft line drives falling in all over the place or grounders finding holes in the infield. He’s just pummeling the ball, and doing it in a way that suits his game.”

It’s possible some of the hesitation around drafting Suzuki is related to his bearish Steamer projection. It sees him taking a slight step back in 2024, with a .345 wOBA that sits right in between what he’s accomplished over the last two years. But remember, his .358 wOBA from last year included those two significant slumps during the first half of the season. With another season of exposure to major league pitching under his belt and the assurance that he was able to make significant adjustments to his approach on the fly, I’m thinking he’s got a good shot at beating that projection this year.

Keep or Cut?
I’m extremely happy to keep at $18 and I’m trying to find room in my budget to keep him at $24. I’d think I’d be comfortable keeping him at up to $26 or even $28 depending on the league context and cap situation.

–

Masataka Yoshida OF
Salary: $20
Average Salary: $23.4
2023 P/G: 5.16
Projected 2024 P/G: 5.63

When Masataka Yoshida made the leap from NPB to the majors, the biggest question was whether or not his low-strikeout, high-walk approach would translate against big league pitching. It’s a little complicated but I’d say his rookie year was a modest success; he posted a 109 wRC+ though his overall value was seriously hurt by his lead glove in left field. His defense isn’t a concern for fantasy baseball, but even his offensive production had some curious red flags.

Through the end of June, he was posting a 129 wRC+ with a good 8.7% walk rate and a great 11.3% strikeout rate. More importantly, he was hitting for power and generally looked like he had made the transition without much fuss. From July 1 through the end of the season, he took just seven walks total, his strikeout rate spiked to 17.0%, and his power output dried up a bit. The contours of his season look pretty ugly once you pull up his 20-game rolling averages.

Even though his plate discipline fell apart in July, he was still producing at the plate. Once the calendar flipped to August, that production dried up and he slumped all the way through the end of the season. Looking under the hood, it really seems like he started pressing as soon as he started to struggle. His patient approach went right out the window and he started aggressively swinging at everything.

His overall swing and chase rates spiked during the second half as he tried to swing his way out of his troubles. That led to a collapse of his walk rate and a corresponding spike in strikeout rate. The good thing is that his contact rate stayed relatively unchanged. He wasn’t generating as much power with his swing during his slump, but he was still putting the ball in play regularly.

Keep or Cut?
Were his second half struggles indicative of what to expect moving forward or was it just a particularly bad slump compounded by an aggressive turn to try and break out of it? Steamer seems to think it was just a blip and is projecting a pretty significant improvement in 2024. I’m leaning towards believing in the projection but there’s still some risk involved here. $20 feels right without leaning too heavily into that risk. I’m not excited to keep him at that salary but I don’t think I’d be able to get him any cheaper in the draft.

We hit a bit of a lull over the holidays, but we are back in full swing, continuing our series of tough keep/cut decisions as we get closer to the Ottoneu keeper deadline (1/31). Lucas covered his decisions back in December, now here are mine.

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The month of June was an interesting time for the playoff-bound Orioles. When the month concluded, two of their brightest stars, Adley Rutschman and Anthony Santander, had wRC+ marks below 100 for the month. But the story of the Orioles in 2023 isn’t isolated to a few stars. In fact, it’s the opposite. The story of the Orioles 2023 regular season, is a combination of stories from rookies, to established everyday contributors, to veterans who all performed well at various points in the season. When one player was off, another one came out of nowhere to lift the team. Interact with the graph below by clicking on each player’s name to turn their data on and off and visualize the O’s wRC+ production in June:

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As I did in the 1B piece, I’ll ask that we not get too hung up on the actual phrasing of “breakout”. These are guys I like above their market price and have them easily outperforming their draft cost.

• Catchers
• First Basemen
• Second Basemen
• Third Basemen
• Shortstops

Lars Nootbaar | STL  

My Projection: .267/.357/.451, 23 HR, 76 R, 69 RBI, 8 SB in 583 PA

Yep, I’m on the Noot Train. I’m just a sucker for a plate profile like that (0.72 BB/K – 16th highest among hitters with 300 PA, tied with Nolan Arenado). He’s got enough pop to chase down a biiig homer number, too (30+). I thought he was going to be a Wide Awake Sleeper – sleepers on every list, robbing them of any real draft value – but the early Main Event drafts saw him dropping so you can still get him as a reasonable price (ADP 188). He does have 6 SBs in 471 MLB PA, too, so I wonder if he could be a sneaky double-digit guy by taking advantage of the new rules. He is 2-for-2 on the bases in the WBC.

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We’ll wrap up my position player rankings with a look at the outfield.

Jake Mailhot’s Ottoneu Position Rankings: C | 1B | 2B | SS | 3B | OF | SP | RP
Chad Young’s Ottoneu Position Rankings: C | 1B | 2B | SS | 3B | OF | SP | RP

I really like the format of Chad’s ranking so I’ll try and emulate them a bit here. Here are few more notes about my process:

1. Tiers > Ranks. While these players will all be technically ranked ordinally, the tier they’re placed in really matters. The order within the tiers doesn’t matter as much, though that isn’t to imply that the players within each tier are interchangeable either.
2. Projected points. I’ve been building my own homebrewed projections for the past decade plus, ever since I started playing Ottoneu, and they form the basis for the rankings below. They’re nothing overly complicated; essentially just a MARCEL-esque projection using three years of historical data filtered through a rough aging curve and adjusted for the current run environment. I also include a collection of three public projection systems (ZiPS, Steamer, and PECOTA) to provide some additional context. That gives each player six data sources that form their projection.
3. P/G vs P/PA. Points per game played is the gold standard by which you should be evaluating players in Ottoneu. I won’t argue with that. That measure does have some drawbacks, particularly for players who pinch hit, pinch run, or are used as defensive substitutions often. Those limited appearances can skew a player’s P/G lower than what they’re producing when they’re getting full-time playing time. To provide a little more context for these kinds of players, I’ve also included points per plate appearance below. That measure should give us a better idea of how a player produces no matter how he’s used by his team.
4. Dollar amounts are pre-inflation. The dollar amounts assigned to each tier are pre-inflation but are easily adjusted for your league context.

Rather than give notes on every player like Chad, I’ll give my general thoughts on the position below and discuss a handful of players I like more or less than his rankings. Let’s get into it.

NOTE: I’ve included Util-only players in my OF rankings. In general, they’ll be listed at the bottom of whatever tier they’re placed in because of the lack of positional flexibility. In addition, Shohei Ohtani is listed in a tier as if he were only a batter — obviously he provides a ton of value as a pitcher as well and he would be my top ranked player in Ottoneu if I listed his combined value.

In Ottoneu, you’re afforded five starting spots for your outfielders. That creates a situation where the position is simultaneously deep and shallow. The top of the position is filled with superstars but you’ll be able to find solid production all the way down into the middle tiers. There does seem to be a pretty significant drop off once you get 40 deep which means you’ll likely be filling out the last couple of spots in your outfield with flawed players.

Having deep rosters and daily lineups are definitely benefits as you try and find five viable outfielders to start. I’ve found that platoons work especially well at this position. Players like Jesse Winker, Joc Pederson, and Josh Naylor all have much higher value in Ottoneu because you can really squeeze out as much value out of them when they’re facing the platoon advantage. Personally, I like to try and fill at least three of my OF spots with full-time, consistent contributors, and then grab a handful of players I can platoon.

Three Guys I Like More than Chad
Michael Harris II – I understand the trepidation surrounding Harris. He only played in 43 games above High-A before making the leap up to the big leagues, he really struggled against left-handed pitching, and his surface level plate discipline metrics looked pretty poor in his rookie season. Despite those nits to pick, Harris was a genuine revelation last year. His power surpassed anything he was able to do in the minor leagues and his underlying batted ball peripherals support his newfound power profile. A mid-season swing change after being called up helped him unlock that tool. And the approach at the plate? It too improved as the season went on and he became more settled in at the game’s highest level; he cut his chase rate from around 50% in late-June to just over 35% by the end of the season and improved his in-zone contact rate correspondingly. Those adjustments on the fly as a 21-year-old really speak to his talent, coachability, and drive to succeed.

Teoscar Hernández – It feels like a lot of the concerns surrounding Hernández involve his move to Seattle where he’ll play his home games in the pitcher’s paradise that is T-Mobile Park. Just comparing the park factors, his new home isn’t nearly as bad as its reputation for right-handed batters; Rogers Centre has a factor of 106 for right-handed home runs to 102 for T-Mobile Park. The real issue for batters in Seattle is finding hits that don’t fly over the fences. Hernández certainly has the power to overcome whatever ballpark he calls home anyway. His exit velocities and hard hit and barrel rates all sit in the top 5% of baseball and have for the last three seasons. Perhaps you’re looking at his 129 wRC+, a three-year low since his breakout in 2020. Hernández strained an oblique early in the season and missed about a month on the IL, but he didn’t really get right until a few weeks after being activated. From June 1 onwards, he posted a 146 wRC+ with 23 of his 25 home runs. That beat his career-best mark he posted in 2020 and indicates he was just as productive last year once he got healthy.

Hunter Renfroe – At this point in his career, Renfroe’s power should be unquestioned. He’s blasted 153 home runs over the last six seasons and possesses a career isolated power of .247. The reason I’m so high on him is because he’s seemingly figured out the swing-and-miss issues that plagued him earlier in his career. Over the last two seasons, he’s cut his strikeout rate from 28% during his first five seasons to just under 23%. The biggest difference has been a significant improvement to his overall contact rate. He’s also gotten a little more swing happy with that change in approach, which has helped him put more balls in play with his better bat-to-ball skills. With his power, that’s definitely a good thing and it’s a big reason why his wRC+ jumped up to a career-high 124 last year.

Three Guys I Don’t Like as Much as Chad
Randy Arozarena – Arozarena is almost certainly a better 4×4 or 5×5 player than he is an Ottoneu contributor. His power and speed combo is perfectly suited for those formats that reward stolen bases. In the FanGraphs points format, his speed isn’t nearly as valuable a tool and his power actually isn’t all that impressive. For one, more than half of his batted balls were put on the ground last year. Second, when he does elevate, his hard hit and barrel rates are merely average; he outperformed his expected slugging by 63 points in 2022. Third, he’s notoriously streaky, with significant periods of abysmal production throughout a season. If I’m paying more than $20 for an outfielder, I want a little more consistency and a higher ceiling than Arozarena can provide.

Steven Kwan – The argument against Kwan is somewhat similar to Arozarena; he’s a better 4×4 or 5×5 player than he is a points league accumulator. Granted, Kwan (5.28 P/G) just outproduced Arozarena (5.22 P/G) in his rookie season, but leagues that value runs, average, and stolen bases are where Kwan shines. In Ottoneu, Kwan’s contact-heavy approach leaves too much to chance on all those balls he puts in play. That was the story over his first two months in the big leagues where he put up a .259 BABIP and a 105 wRC+. Without any power to speak of, he’s just too reliant on getting hits to fall to produce points consistently when his batted balls are falling into gloves instead.

Oscar Gonzalez – Gonzalez came out of nowhere to post a 122 wRC+ in 91 games last year and was a postseason hero for the Guardians. The power was just a continuation of a breakout season in 2021 where he blasted 31 home runs across two minor league levels. But the plate discipline leaves so much to be desired. His 48.4% chase rate ranked third-highest among all batters with at least 300 plate appearances. It’s a testament to his bat-to-ball ability in two-strike counts that his strikeout rate sat below 20%. But such an aggressive approach means that he’s walking a knife’s edge, and if all those swings start coming up empty, he could find himself cratering.

The Outfield episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Sara Sanchez

Strategy Section

• Blind spots of projections
  • When can the human eye do better than projections?
• Masataka Yoshida
• Outfiled Player Pool
  • General layout
  • Platoon players strategy
• Juan Soto vs. Freddie Freeman

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

ATC Undervalued Players

• Outfielders
  • Nick Castellanos
  • Taylor Ward
  • Jake McCarthy
  • Lourdes Gurriel Jr.
  • Alex Verdugo
  • Mitch Haniger
  • Randal Grichuk
  • Austin Hays
  • Manuel Margot
  • TJ Friedl
  • Tyrone Taylor
  • Garrett Mitchell
  • Ian Happ

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I’ve always found OF a tricky position because with all the superstars at the top, it feels deep until you realize that everyone needs at least 5 in the standard format plus the fact that some will be taken for an infield position where they qualify. In the drafts I’ve done so far, I start to feel the OF pinch pretty early as the foundational options really dry up and you are taking guys with real question marks in your OF2/3 spots if you wait too long. There is plenty of talent and you can definitely hit on those question marks, but if you want to feel good about your OF, consider early investments.

I didn’t list the two major catchers who qualify because you really shouldn’t be using Varsho or Melendez at OF in any circumstance. Their value is greatly improved by being C-eligible, so if you are using them at OF, you are using a sub-optimal lineup.

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