I cover the National League outfield beat, but I occasionally abdicate my duties. I’m easily distracted. I also enjoy constructing narratives from a player’s statistics, and being on the NL outfield beat, I can only cover the same dudes so many times. But it truly has been a while, and given that market inefficiencies will always plague player valuation, I hear an old go-to of mine calling my name.

I’ll offer three NL outfielders at varying level of ownership (per Yahoo!’s tallies), make a case for each, and offer names of other more-owned NL outfielders to drop (or trade, given their inflated perceived values) in place of them. Got it? Cool. Let’s get cracking. (Ownership rates are current as of June 27.)

Less than 60% owned

Melvin Upton Jr., SD
58% owned

I do not totally get this, but I also do totally get this. Upton was bad for a while. The last three years were difficult to stomach, with his volatile offensive profile finally succumbing to his poor contact skills. The strikeouts grew, and the power shrank, and Upton was but a shell of his former self. He left a bad taste in our mouths.

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The worst batted ball in baseball is the pulled grounder. It heads right into the shift, right into the waiting glove. The best batted ball is the pulled fly ball. It soars majestically into the night.

The line between the two is razor thin. Hitters want to get that good wood on the ball and yank it for power, but if they roll over the top at all, it’s the worst idea. That’s why up the middle is the safe idea. You build a safe, solid swing.

But what about the guys living on the razor’s edge? The guys pulling a ton of balls, but pulling them in the air? Maybe they’re doing something that makes their power more believable. They’ve got the best batted ball figured out.

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Just straight hitting the ball hard has its value, but there is an ideal angle. Hit the ball a million miles per hour into the ground, and you’re Giancarlo Stanton, grounding out to second base on the hardest hit ball so far in the Statcast era. You gotta hit it square.

People smarter than I am have determined that the ideal launch angle is between ten and thirty degrees. That combines the line drive angle (10-25 degrees) and home run angle (25-30), but in fantasy baseball, we’ll take a line drive or a home run, either’s fine.

So if we want to know who’s hitting the ball harder this year, it’s probably best to ask who’s hitting the ball harder in the right angles for success? That will tell us a little about some hot starts that are more believable because of what’s going on under the hood.

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The two players I’m recommending this week share almost nothing in common. One is young, powerful, and crushingly enticing. The other is nearing the end of a magnificent career with the same fleetness of foot he enthralled us with 15 years ago. Endless potential versus a potential storybook ending. And if you own either of them right now, you’re likely playing in a very, very deep league.
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Two months in, and you’ve got a millstone, the high draft pick that’s too good to drop, probably, and too bad to shop. Nobody wants them, and they’re starting to look bad in comparison to the options on the wire.

So let’s look at a trio of outfielders first — with their preseasons projections next to their projected end of season line — and then a couple of waiver options that might be better. We’ll see if there is actually a reason to cut bait on a guy we all thought would be studs going into the season.

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Last week I wrote about eight players who are under performing their xOBA, so it seems only natural to talk about a few over performers today. There are a bunch of great cases to draw from, including Odubel Herrera and Xander Bogaerts, and below you will find a table that the players with the 15 largest differences between their wOBA and xOBA. Whereas many of the under performers last week were generally slow runners, many of the over performers are fleet of foot.  I have tried to single out the guys who are closer to average runners to talk about today.

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Previous rankings:
March/April (Preseason)
May

* * *

The more I do this, the harder it gets. Each month I struggle with shedding my preconceived notions of a player’s value and coming to grips with the performance we have actually observed. And then there’s the additional element of teasing out what’s real and what’s not. Occasionally, there’s no change. That makes it easy. But for the guys who have made strides or taken big steps back — that makes it a bit harder. And then there’s accounting for over- and under-performance. Trying to anticipate when regression will occur, if at all, makes my head hur.

Also, there are just so many outfielders. And so many of them seem to be performing at a high level this season. It can be excruciatingly difficult to tease them apart. At a certain point, we’re splitting the microscopic hairs that grows on regular hairs. Full tiers become indecipherable blobs.

You know the rules, but if you don’t: hitters are pretty fluid within tiers. It’s not feasible to talk about every single guy, so feel free to ask questions (or leave criticisms) in the comments. (I know I left off a lot of hitters who make up the shallow side of a platoon or ride the pine. ) If I omitted a legitimate someone, let me know; unless it’s a part-time guy or a prospect, I probably just forgot. It happens from time to time.

I love Bob’s Burgers, so I’m going to name the tiers by my favorite episodes of all time. Because I can! This is off the top of my head, though, so I’ll probably screw up my own list. Oh well. Fight me!

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Hyun-Soo Kim (3% Yahoo, 2.4% ESPN, 8% CBS): Kim’s comic book plate discipline numbers in Korea made him a favorite of mine entering the season. I wrote about him here during the pre-season and in following my own advice, drafted him in multiple leagues. Even when writing about Joey Rickard’s hot start, I couldn’t help but lament that it came at the expense of Kim’s ABs and that my endorsement of Rickard was contingent upon his benching. Well, there’s a lesson to be learned here: just hit .400 long enough and you’ll get your shot.

Kim has now started six straight for the Orioles, batting 2^nd in each of the last 4. His walk rate on the year is a shiny 12% and his strikeout rate just marginally higher at 14%. Kim has certainly benefitted from his share of good fortune over the 58 plate appearances he’s amassed so far but that’s hardly the point here. Aside from the sample size, most of those 58 plate appearances came in piecemeal playing time so it’s quite difficult to take anything away from his stat line, especially batted balls.

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I had no idea how I was going to follow up my extremely well-received article from last week, but then I realized it is the last Wednesday of the month which means it is time for my AL Outfield Tiers! Hooray! As always, these are my rest of the season ranks for the position and you can check out my previous versions below as well as Alex Chamberlain’s NL versions. Read the rest of this entry »

So, Jackie Bradley Jr. hit another home run last night. It’s his seventh of the season and his sixth since May 5. That’s six home runs in 13 games to go with a .404/.474/.762 line. All the while, he extended his hitting streak to 24 games. It’s pretty crazy. He’s on a tear, for sure.

But I’ve seen some overenthusiastic Tweets about his breakout being legitimate. That, I don’t fully understand. He doesn’t seem like a fundamentally different hitter than the JBJ we saw in 2013. Or 2014. Or 2015.

Obviously, the .271 ISO (isolated power) is impressive for a relatively tiny dude. It’s not far off his .249 ISO from last year, so it looks like it might be something sustainable. His strikeout rate (K%) is way down, too, which is undoubtedly a boon to his triple-slash line. But red flags abound with JBJ, all (or most) of which I will detail here.

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