After a year hiatus, I’ll be presenting my Ottoneu tiered positional rankings alongside Chad. If you’re wondering about the format and methodology, you can find all of that in Chad’s introduction to these rankings. I’ve matched his tiers so that it’s easy to compare across rankings and to provide a common language to discuss these rankings.

Jake Mailhot’s Ottoneu Position Rankings: OF
Chad Young’s Ottoneu Position Rankings: OF

Here are few more notes about my process:

• 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. Currently, the projections below only include Steamer and the ZiPS25 projections that were posted last year, not the updated 2025 projections that Dan Szymborski is currently rolling out.
• 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 three or four plate appearances when they start a game. 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.

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. Generally, if you’re able to fill at least three of your OF spots with full-time, consistent contributors, you can grab a handful of low cost players to mix and match and platoon based on matchups.

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

You can’t go wrong with either of these guys at the top of the rankings. Chad has Judge in a tier all on his own above Soto but I think they’re closer in value simply based on Soto’s age. On that basis alone, you could make an argument that Soto should be ranked first — I won’t make that argument, but you could.

I understand the trepidation behind Chad ranking Acuña lower in his rankings, but the projections absolutely believe that he’ll return from his knee injury and simply continue producing like one of the best players in baseball. It probably won’t be as simple as that, but the talent is undeniable and he’s still just 27 years old.

I also have Tucker and Tatis Jr. swapped in the rankings and that’s mostly due to the wide gap in the projections between the two. There’s a pretty significant cliff between the two of them, and all things considered, I’d rather have Tucker around $50 than Tatis Jr. at the same price.

Although they’re in the same tier as Chad, I’ve ranked that trio of young outfielders a little lower ordinally. Both Carroll and Rodríguez struggled to some degree in 2024 and Chourio only just got his first taste of the big leagues last year. The sky’s the limit for all three of them, but I think you’re going to suffer though some growing pains with all of them before they really hit their ceiling.

I originally had Trout in the tier above in my first draft of these rankings but I think I agree with Chad; we really just don’t know what to expect from him anymore and the reality is that you’re probably paying for a partial season and will be pleasantly surprised if he can stay healthy for 150 games.

I also have Rooker a tier above Chad though ordinally ranked the same. I believe in the changes he’s made to his plate approach last year and the contact quality is undeniable. Plus, he’ll be playing in a much friendlier home ballpark in Sacramento.

This is a really interesting tier because you’ll find stable veterans who will consistently produce in Yelich, Suzuki, and Reynolds alongside youngsters who broke out last year in Duran, Greene, Merrill. Do you want that stability or would you rather dream on a guy who could grow? I think most Ottoneu players would say the latter, which means the former is a little undervalued, especially for teams who need just a piece or two to push for a championship.

I like Duran a bit more than Chad and a lot more than the projections. Duran improved his barrel rate by nearly four points while simultaneously improving his plate discipline in his breakout 2024 season. Steamer sees a pretty significant step back from that level of production but I believe in the changes and think he can replicate it this season.

For Soler and Bellinger, I think their new home ballparks will give them both a boost into a higher tier.

Lee and Buxton both have great projections but their health is a huge question mark. If you’re okay with that risk, they could both be really solid players for your team, except they may only be available for half a season.

Friedl is probably the biggest disagreement between me and Chad’s rankings. I get that all of Friedl’s underlying batted ball metrics look pretty terrible, but his plate approach is stellar and I think there’s a bit of Isaac Paredes in him. His pull rate was over 48% in 2024 and I think he’s selective enough to do damage on his pulled contact while still slapping singles around the field. The biggest reason his production fell last year was because his BABIP cratered to .229; in 2023 when he posted a 115 wRC+, his BABIP was just a hair above league average at .308. He also doesn’t have a traditional platoon split; rather, he has a reverse split where he’s been able to thrive against left-handed pitching by putting the ball in play while reserving all of his pulled and elevated contact against right-handed pitching.

I think the other big difference between me and Chad — and this is going to be true for every position — is that I just don’t value prospects all that highly. If I’m rostering a prospect, I want them to be nearly MLB-ready, have a clear path to playing time in the near future, and they need to have a high FV grade. Rostering a 50 FV prospect who is two to three years away from even sniffing the majors just doesn’t feel like good value to me. By the time they’re established and producing for your fantasy team, their salary is likely to be $5-$7 higher than what you’re rostering them for currently. That’s why there’s that group of prospects at the tail end of my $0-$1 tier who are all ranked higher by Chad.

I typically start with catcher and work my way around the infield, but I went straight to the outfield grass this year. Is it because OF is the most important position? Or because I have deep thoughts about OF this year? No, it is because it covers the most players which makes it the most painful to write notes for, and I wanted to be done with it.

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After covering difficult keep/cut decisions at the infield positions the last few weeks, the RotoGraphs Ottoneu team will turn our attention to the outfield this week (and possibly next week too). Here are five guys on my keep/cut bubble.

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Michael Harris II, OF
Salary: $27
Average Salary: $18
2024 P/G: 4.55
Projected 2025 P/G: 6.02

Michael Harris’ struggles in his third big league season were all the result of the hamstring injury that cost him two months of the season, right? When you split his season pre-injury and post-injury, things don’t really line up with that narrative. Before he hit the IL, he was posting a rather disappointing .250/.295/.358 slash line, good for an 80 wRC+ with a particularly conspicuous absence of power. After he returned from his injury, he was a lot more productive at the plate, slashing .283/.318/.506 (125 wRC+) but stole just two bases through the end of the season.

Under the hood, everything looked right in line with the norms he had established for himself through the first two seasons of his career. His hard hit rate, barrel rate, xwOBA, and wOBA were all well above league average and his aggressive high contact approach at the plate remained intact. It wasn’t just simple bad luck either, though his BABIP did fall 34 points from 2023; his BABIP was nearly exactly the same before and after his hamstring injury. The only thing I can see is a batted ball mix that was a little out of whack early in the season; his groundball rate was over 53% through mid-June and his pull rate was nearly 10 points higher than what it was the year prior. Both of those metrics came back down towards his norms in August and September and his results on balls in play benefitted.

And then there’s his Steamer projection for 2025. The computer is enamoured with his potential to breakout next year and ZiPS shares in the optimism. Harris will turn 24 under a month before Opening Day and apparently his rebound during the second half of this season was enough to convince the computers that his struggles during the first half were just a mirage.

Keep or cut?

I’m keeping Harris at $27 (or I would have if I hadn’t just traded him away in that league for a $43 Corbin Carroll). Still, that feels like a ceiling for him. It assumes the projections are right and that he’s due for a significant improvement in 2025, but it doesn’t leave much room for him to produce much surplus value if that improvement comes to fruition.

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Luis Robert Jr., OF
Salary: $29
Average Salary: $28
2024 P/G: 4.03
Projected 2025 P/G: 5.07

A hip injury sustained in early April sidelined Luis Robert Jr. for two months of the season and he never really recovered once he returned to the field. Between the injury, the constant trade rumors, and the historically bad team surrounding him, it was a miserable year for Robert. His strikeout rate spiked to 33.2% and his power output dipped to just a .155 ISO as he limped to a career-worst 84 wRC+.

There’s certainly some cause for concern when looking at his peripherals. His hard hit rate dipped slightly but his barrel rate fell by more than five points. That tells me that his overall quality of contact was intact but something else in his batted ball mix was leading to a lower power output. Indeed, his pull rate fell nearly 13 points, down to 34%. In the two seasons where his pull rate has been higher than 40%, Robert has posted wRC+s of 155 (43.1% pull rate) and 128 (46.8%); in his other three seasons in the majors with a pull rate under 40%, his wRC+ has been 111 or lower.

And then there’s his plate discipline issues. He’s always been an aggressive swinger, but the amount of damage he was capable of doing on contact helped him offset some of those strikeout issues. Well, he cut his overall swing rate by more than five points but his contact rate continued a two-year downward trend so the result was a lot more called strikes and a nearly five point jump in strikeout rate.

Honestly, between the lackluster season in 2024, the injury issues, and the red flags in both his batted ball and plate discipline peripherals, it’s agonizingly difficult to evaluate Robert. We know that when everything clicks and he’s firing on all cylinders, he can be a phenomenal offensive producer, but the inconsistency will kill you. His 2025 projection isn’t very rosy either.

Keep or cut?

I’m cutting at $29 and I’d cut all the way down to around $15. Unless he’s traded to a much better team environment this offseason, I’m avoiding him wherever I can.

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Spencer Steer, 1B/OF
Salary: $8, $14, $18
Average Salary: $12
2024 P/G: 4.66
Projected 2025 P/G: 5.02

I really loved Spencer Steer for his multi-positional eligibility which is why I rostered him wherever I could. Now that he’s lost 2B and 3B eligibility, I’ve got to figure out how to evaluate him as an OF with a bit of flexibility at 1B. The player pool at his new position isn’t as shallow as it was at 2B or even 3B but it can be tricky to roster five reliable outfielders to fill all five of those lineup spots in Ottoneu. He’s lost a bit of value by simply going from four eligible positions down to two, but not as much as I think you’d expect.

As for his actual on-field production, 2024 was a bit of a weird year for him. Everything in his peripherals looked stable; his batted ball data was solid and his plate discipline even slightly improved. Despite all that, his wOBA fell from .355 to .316 thanks to a 58 point drop in BABIP. There’s nothing amiss with his batted ball data or his plate approach — it really seems like he was just the victim of old fashioned bad luck.

The projections don’t see his BABIP returning to his 2023 levels and nor should they; he isn’t very fast and he elevates too much of his contact to take advantage of a high line drive rate. A BABIP just below league average is a pretty good bet to make and that’s exactly where the computer pegs him.

Keep or cut?

I’m happy to keep him up to $15 or $16 I think. $18 is probably too high, especially without the positional flexibility that made him so valuable the last few years.

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Nolan Jones, OF
Salary: $10
Average Salary: $9
2024 P/G: 3.16
Projected 2025 P/G: 4.97

Are you willing to pay for a breakout that’s now two years removed? That’s the central question surrounding Nolan Jones. His season in 2024 was marred by a recurring back injury and he had plenty of issues reproducing his outstanding season from ‘23 when he was on the field. His hard hit rate actually increased by three and half points but his power production cratered despite all the hard contact. It’s not hard to figure out what happened either; his groundball rate jumped almost 10 points and his pull rate fell by more than 10 points. That’s a seriously bad combination for a power hitter.

Assuming he’s healthy in 2025, it’s difficult to know what to expect from Jones. The projection essentially splits the difference between his breakout season and injury marred season. We can be pretty assured that his .401 BABIP from 2023 won’t happen again but his power gains all looked legitimate. If he can figure out how to start pulling and elevating his contact again, his home ballpark and fantastic contact quality give him a pretty high ceiling. There are a lot of “ifs” that need to go right for his 2025 season to be successful, making the risk pretty high if you opt to keep him.

Keep or cut?

I think I’m fine with keeping at $10 but no higher. That feels like a decent price to pay for the potential that he’s healthy and figures out all his batted ball issues. It’s also cheap enough that he becomes an easy cut if his 2023 breakout turns out to be just a flash in the pan.

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Matt Wallner, OF
Salary: $4 (x2)
Average Salary: $6
2024 P/G: 5.36
Projected 2025 P/G: 4.90

Chad asked me to include Wallner here because I just acquired him in one of our shared leagues in exchange for Jazz Chisholm Jr. I understand the hesitation surrounding him. He’s got an extremely volatile profile full of strikeouts and tons of power. The highs will be excellent — like the 169 wRC+ he posted from July 7 through the end of the season — but the lows will likely be unplayable. To make matters more complicated, he’s likely to be platooned heavily since he’s absolutely atrocious against left-handed pitching. Thankfully, he’s on the strong side of the platoon, but a part-time player is a little more difficult to roster.

But let’s look at what he’s capable of. The 169 wRC+ over the final three months of the season was fantastic, but that came with a .410 BABIP and a 34.2% strikeout rate. What he does have going for him is outrageously good contact quality. His hard hit and barrel rates, xwOBA, and max exit velocity all sat in the top 5% in the majors. He may not make much contact, but when he does, ball go far.

Keep or cut?

I don’t want to overhype a player because the red flags in Wallner’s profile are certainly glaring, but he’s got a lot of prime Joey Gallo in him and he was an incredibly valuable player in Ottoneu for a long time. I’m happy to keep at $4 on the chance that Wallner actually does turn into the second coming of Gallo, but even if he settles in as a lesser version of Gallo, that’s still a valuable player in a format that rewards power and patience. The ceiling is a bit trickier to determine but I think I’d keep Wallner up to $6 or $7 and there’s probably a good chance he’ll go for even more at auction.

The Elias Sports Bureau episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Matt Martingale

LABR League Update

• Recent trade – Ariel gets Josh Bell & Tommy Pham for Harrison Bader and Ryan O’Hearn from Matt

Elias Sports Bureau

• What does Elias do?
• Elias and fantasy sports
• ATC Projections

Strategy Section

• Spring training statistics
  • Predictive value in spring training stats
  • Players who start slow
• Predictive value of spring training manager tendencies

Who’d You Rather?

• C – William Contreras, Willson Contreras, Salvador Perez, Will Smith
• OF – Jarren Duran, Jazz Chisholm Jr., Corbin Carroll, Luis Robert Jr.
• OF – Anthony Santander, Kyle Schwarber, Teoscar Hernandez, Adolis Garcia
• OF – Taylor Ward, Brandon Nimmo, Ian Happ
• OF – Christopher Morel, Giancarlo Stanton, Jorge Soler, Bryan De La Cruz

Waiver Wire

Pitcher Preview

Injury Update

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Updates

• I quickly reran the rankings with a big boost to Sean Bouchard’s and Estevan Florial’s playing time.

Outfield Overview

The outfield position allows a fantasy manager to a certain player at all points of the draft. Early speed, late speed. Early power late power. Also, there is always a balanced player available.

The big oh-no moment happens around the 90th-ranked outfielder is that strong-side platoons start.  There are around 20 players with at least dual eligibility but that still leaves about 70 good full-timers to draft. In a 12-team, five-outfielder league, the total needed is 60, so the starters are covered, and most of the bench bats. It’s when a league is 15-team or deeper, platoon bats come into play.

With each additional revision, I will expand the list beyond 110 guys and include more writeups. I will put all of the changes here at the beginning so there is no reason to go searching the article for them.

Changelog

• 3/20/2024 – Possibly the last ranking.
• 3/11/2024 – Reranked a few guys but not much of a change
• 2/23/2024 – Boost to Sean Bouchard’s and Estevan Florial’s playing time
• 2/13/2024 – Jorge Soler and Jurickson Profar signed.
• 2/8/2024 – Reworked playing time on many guys and wrote a few more evaluations.
• 1/31/2024 – Added new projections to my base evaluation.
• 1/22/2024 – Added writeups on a few players and added a few more prospects.
• 1/15/2024 – Added about a dozen players and included a few more player writeups.
• 1/8/2024 – Expanded outfield list. Note changes for three traded players and Hernandez signing. Added another tier on part-time players.
• 1/4/2024 – Harrison Bader signed and a new tier added.
• 1/4/2024 – First Release

Ranking Methodology

• ADP is based on 30-day rolling NFBC Draft Champions Leagues.
• $ Values are based on standard 5×5 12-team league using the FanGraphs Depth Charts and these Auction Calculator settings. They default to a player’s most valuable position, so if the first base list includes a catcher, it will show that player’s value at catcher.
• ADP and $ Values are updated as of the last update date on this post.
• 5-game eligibility was used for these lists to cast the widest net.

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Is your roster a little topsy-turvy? Do you have most of your value standing on the in-field dirt, waiting out in the bullpen, or just about one season away from being in the big leagues? You know you have to fill all of those outfield spots too, right? Maybe you do have an outfielder, literally one outfielder, and he’s a good one. Well, that’s nice, but you’re still going to need at least four more. Part of the challenge of playing Ottoneu comes from the fact that much of your competition is in the same boat, they need cheap outfielders too. You’ll need to be smart about it, but you can find valuable outfielders who cost next to nothing. When it’s time to go to the auction before the season begins, mark these outfielders and hope you can sneak in and out, only paying a few dollars or less.

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There’s no such thing as a playing time lock, but…

Luis Rengifo, LAA
Avg Salary: $5
ATC Projected PA: 533

This switch-hitting 27-year-old had a breakout year in 2022 when he stepped into the batter’s box 511 times and hit 17 home runs while slashing .264/.294/.429. He walked a lot more in 2023. His low 3.3% BB% in 2022 jumped to 9.2% in 2023. He repeated his .264 batting average in 2023 but improved the rest of his slash-line with a .339 OBP and a .444 slugging percentage. His approach changed, he stopped swinging so much and dropped his contact rate out of the zone. That came at the detriment of his in-zone contact rate, but getting on base with more passivity allowed him to score 10 more runs for his team in a smaller amount of plate appearances (445). Rengifo’s ATC projection suggests his slash line could regress (.256/.315/.420), but his playing time looks solid. Angel’s beat writer Jeff Fletcher reported Rengifo could be the leadoff hitter in 2024 and that would certainly bring his production up a tick:

Ron Washington gave us his *current* lineup thinking today…

1 Rengifo/Moniak
2 Schanuel
3 Trout
4 Rendon
5 Ward
6 Drury
7 O’Hoppe
8 Adell/Hicks
9 Neto

He changed his mind on Schanuel leading off because he wants more speed. All of this subject to further change, obviously.

— Jeff Fletcher (@JeffFletcherOCR) February 22, 2024

Rengifo is one of the more expensive targets in this article, he’s rostered in 76.1% of FanGraphs points leagues. He has positional flexibility (2B/SS/3B/OF) and most of what I’ve written above has been well noticed by fantasy leaguers. If you’re lucky, and you can snag Rengifo for under the $4 average, you will have an excellent value.

Mark Canha, DET
Avg Salary: $3
Projected PA: 508

Canha has been a steady contributor for fantasy teams in the past few seasons. Last season, he finished with 4.32 points/per game and was only rostered in around 33% of leagues. In November, I calculated points league replacement level at 4.33 points per game for outfielders in 12-team leagues. Canha went over that mark in both 2022 (4.64 P/G) and 2021 (5.17 P/G) and finished the season at 5.27 points per game in the 204 plate appearances he accumulated with the Brewers. In each of the last three seasons (2021-2023), he played at least 139 games. Canha is an accumulator, so don’t get too excited about his individual stats. His batting average has outperformed his expected average in the past two seasons, and in the past three seasons, his slugging percentage has outperformed his expected slugging percentage. What can we expect from him in 2024? Regression, but only some. Here’s Canha’s ATC projection below his 2021-2023 stats:

Andrew McCutchen, PIT
Avg Salary: $3
ATC Projected PA: 459

It seems odd to categorize the 37-year-old veteran McCutchen as a “Playing Time Lock”, but who else is going to DH for the Pirates? If he can rebound from last season’s Achilles tear and stay healthy, McCutchen could certainly be a reliable, above-replacement level player in Ottoneu points leagues. Ready to read something crazy? McCutchen has never, not once, slumped below the 4.33 points per game mark that I hold as a replacement-level outfielder. Ok, ok, he did record 4.34 points per game in 2022, but that was a career worst. Last season, in 473 plate appearances, McCutchen turned in a 5.24 points per game season. He’s not a lock for playing time as he heads into his age 37 season, but he certainly benefits from the DH spot and could easily hit 10 home runs while slugging close to .400. I wouldn’t count on anything more than that. The graph below clearly shows what happens to a ball player’s production as they go through the inevitable:

If that graph scares you away, no one can blame you. Smart fantasy players aren’t betting on McCutchen taking a step forward, but holding just above the replacement level line is a realistic expectation. The full picture should be taken into consideration when someone else bids $2 during an auction draft. Going up to $3 might not be worth it.
–

Shared Playing Time Puzzle Pieces

Willi Castro, MIN
Avg Salary: $3
Projected PA: 445

The 33 bases Castro stole in 2023 will make him a target in all formats, but if your league-mates are devaluing his uncertain playing time, you can sneak in and take a chance. The Twins have a lot of injury risks and Castro can fill in nearly any position in a pinch. Both his batting average and on-base percentage ticked up between 2021 and 2022 and then again in 2023 and that was fueled by improved plate discipline:

While his hard-hit rate did not change much between 2022 and 2023, his barrel rate did, moving from 3.5% in 2022 to 6.8% in 2023. To recap, Castro gets on base more often than the average hitter, then he steals bases. He has begun finding the barrel more often by finding better pitches to swing at. That sounds good to me. I’m buying in.

LaMonte Wade Jr., SFG
Avg Salary: $4
Projected PA: 470

Even with the ultimate tinker-er in Gabe Kapler, Wade still accumulated 519 plate appearances in 135 games. Wade, a left-handed hitter, actually hit better (.269) against left-handed pitching than he did against right-handed pitching (.254) in 2023. However, his OBP and SLG were much better against righties. Last season’s .262/.373/.417 overall slash line was far and wide better than his .221/.305/.359 line from 2022 and seeing more reps likely contributed to the advancement. FanGraphs writer Kyle Kishimoto wrote about potential playing time issues for the Giants in 2024, but it was written before Matt Chapman was signed and J.D. Davis was cut. Now, Wilmer Flores and Wade are likely in a platoon split with Wade on the strong side. 2023’s step forward was good for 4.8 points per game in Ottoneu, above replacement level and worth as much as $2 in 2024.

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Playing Time Gambles

Estevan Florial, CLE
Projected PA: 284

I was excited when I read in Jeff Zimmerman’s late February “Mining the News” that Florial has a chance to become an everyday player:

It might seem obvious, but Guardians hitting coach Chris Valaika was the first to go on record this week and say Myles Straw is competing for his job this spring. Marking him in the lineup every day is no longer a given. Ramón Laureano has plenty of experience in center, but Florial is the one Vogt called “a specimen.”

As of this writing, Florial has a high spring training strikeout rate, of 42.1%, and a high walk rate, of 10.5%. This combination is typical of Florial’s profile as he has an MLB 30.6% K% in 115 at-bats. Still, he’s never been given a chance to gain consistent playing time and I am, at least, interested to see what he can do. It’s probably too little too late as many baseball fans have been waiting for Florial to show off his tools for too long and have given up. It was over three years ago that Eric Longenhagen wrote this in his analysis of Florial as a prospect in the Yankees system:

I’ll gladly eat crow if Florial ends up being a consistent big league hitter for a half decade because that’ll mean we’ll have gotten to see his electric tools (he has one of the best throwing arms I’ve ever seen), but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

However, for $1 wouldn’t you like to see if the raw power Florial has been known for can be tweaked just enough to actually connect with the bat for something like 10 dingers? 10 dingers for a dollar here! 10 dingers for a dollar! It’s a gamble, but it’s certainly within the range of outcomes should Florial out-compete his teammates in spring training.

Aaron Hicks, LAA
Avg Salary: $1
Projected PA: 373

Hicks was a 4.86 points-per-game player last season for the O’s and if he can manage another 90 games in Los Angeles, then he very well could hold that mark. Father time may be coming for his power, but Hicks is still finding the ball in the zone and has shown a resurgence in the past few seasons in both his wOBA and his slugging percentage:

Unfortunately, he’s already had issues with soreness this spring and his projections don’t seem to be buying that he’ll be on the field enough for steady plate appearance totals by the end of the year. To further put a damper on Hicks’ fantasy potential, he outperformed his statcast expected average, wOBA, and slugging percentage in 2023. Perhaps the right approach here is to believe the regression projection systems bake in and hope for a little more. $1 and no more.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.