Get hyped for another round of AL OF rankings! As usual, these reflect what I believe the hitters will accomplish the rest of the season, not necessarily what they have done thus far. For funsies I’ll be separating the tiers by my favorite films of 2014. Our own Brett Talley thought last year was weak in films, and I strongly disagree.

I really liked a lot of what I saw, but of course I didn’t see everything and some genres aren’t for me. With apologies to The Hobbit and The Hunger Games for me failing to see them, lets dive right in. (Note: I really liked all of the films listed here.)

Whiplash
Mike Trout
Jose Bautista

I really don’t mean to be boring here. I just loved Whiplash and Trout continues and should continue to do Trout things. Bautista jumps up a level because his surrounding cast is incredibly strong. His counting stats could look bonkers at the end of the season, though I am keeping an eye on the uptick in his K%.
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Let’s cut straight to the chase. Take a look at the statistical snapshots below:

Obviously, Player 1 is benefiting from a higher batting average on balls in play while Player 2 is getting burned a bit by his. Still, take away their triple-slash lines (but leave the isolated power) and you have two players with almost identical numbers, down to the six steals on eight attempts and the meager isolated powers (ISOs). Where they differ a bit is in plate discipline: Player 1 has a much healthier walk rate than Player 2 and a couple fewer strikeouts. So while Player 1 is benefiting from the a higher BABIP, he can also reasonably be expected to post a marginally higher batting average and noticeably higher on-base percentage. Most importantly, the two hitters are eligible at the same position and are, thus, substitutable.

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I have been a pretty big A.J. Pollock fan for some time now. I made a bold move that could be conceived as an overpay for Pollock in a dynasty league (Ryan Braun for Pollock and Odor – with prospects moving on both sides), which I believe shows how much of an advocate I am for Pollock – and Odor for that matter.
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Josh Reddick has had an interesting career. Playing top tier right field defense along with having decent power has allowed him to be a two win player in each of the past four years despite only eclipsing 500 plate appearances once. However, he has only really been useful in the fake game once, in 2012 when he hit 32 homers and stole 11 bases.
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It’s hard to believe the current incarnation of Curtis Granderson could show up, by default, at the very top of any FanGraphs leaderboard for positive reasons. Yet there he is: the Grandy Man leads all National League outfielders in chase rate (O-Swing%), at 16.7 percent. Only Brett Gardner and the fabled Joey Votto have offered at fewer non-strikes than Granderson among qualified Major League hitters.

Granderson has seen 128 pitches outside the strike zone. Of those pitches, he has swung at 21 of them. And of those swings, he has made contact with 17. For the mathematically disinclined, that’s a grand total of four swings and misses on pitches out of the zone. That’s the fewest of any hitter who has seen at least as many pitches as Granderson has.

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We’re going to take our dumpster dive to the Big Apple this week and look at two players who have seen some significant playing time in the early going and are already providing help to owners. As a note, most of the players discussed in this column are better suited for mono leagues, and the ownership percentages come from CBS.
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If fantasy baseball were a marathon, we’d all have run about a mile and a half. Most races don’t even have their volunteers stand with trays of water cups this early on, so you’d better pace yourself if you’re already tired. I think I forgot to stretch.

Here’s an obligatory sentence reminding you about the caveats about small samples while attributing a shred of validity to them. OK, now that the formalities are out of the way, let’s talk ownership trends. National League outfielders are a promising bunch, especially in regard to the youth movement. I’ve been sold on a handful of them prior to the start of the season, and I’m surprised by their meager ownership numbers. They aren’t completely unowned, as my misleading title alleges, but they’re close enough.

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This is always the most challenging time of year for me as a fantasy writer. Every statistical sample size is way too small to analyze. I haven’t been to any minor-league games yet, so I don’t have any scouting reports to share. There’s just not a whole lot to write about yet.

Point is, this is a great time to discuss more general topics, because that’s far more interesting for me — and hopefully you — than my hot takes on Ian Kinsler’s awesome first week. With that in mind, let’s dive into a topic that’s been on my mind quite a bit lately, that of the lightly owned super-utility player.

There’s nothing sexy about the lightly owned super-utility player — to be henceforth referred to as a LOSUP — but the ability to use that player to plug multiple lineup holes is a somewhat underrated commodity. In relatively deep leagues with a reasonable number of bench slots, I always like to have a LOSUP floating around.

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I’m really not privy to the whole daily fantasy baseball thing, as proctored by FanDuel or DraftKings. It’s probably good that I’m not because I’m 98 percent certain I would immediately fall in love with it.

Still, I’m intrigued, mostly because it takes streaming to the extreme. And I love streaming. It’s a tedious, somewhat painstaking process, what with combing through splits, looking for the juiciest matchups that are also cost-effective.
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An apology is due here, and I’m sorry. I whiffed on Seth Smith in my American League outfield rankings, even though those are mostly for 5×5 formats. I nearly blanked on him in my home league as I barely set my lineup in time, and it is an on-base percentage league! This type of mistake won’t happen again with Smith, mostly because he’s too productive to be forgotten.
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