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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I told you Corey Dickerson was going to go 25/10 this season and while he missed those milestones by one homer and two steals, you should have listened to my prognostication! Of course, I failed to do so myself, as I drafted Dickerson in a total of zero leagues. That proved to be a mistake, as Dickerson completed a breakout year that resulted in fantasy earnings ranking him 15th among outfielders and 37th overall. That’s pretty crazy for someone ranked as our 77th best outfielder in our preseason consensus.

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I guess I could have said Austin Jackson hates rain since everyone thinks it pours 365 in the Emerald City, but then again, Safeco Field is civilized enough to have a roof so inclement weather doesn’t really apply. Digression. The point is, Austin Jackson, after the post-non-waiver-trading-deadline thing was pretty bad as a member of the Seattle Mariners. And in fantasy circles, pretty bad is generally accepted as being something one wants to avoid should one like winning shiny things. The question of course is was his level of badness, in a non-Michael-Jackson badness way, some product of dumb luck? Or is he going to, as Mike Tyson once said, “fade into Bolivian.”

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Santana ranked 26th on Zach Sanders’ rankings, behind Drew Stubbs and ahead of Lorenzo Cain.

The Twins have been painfully short on innovation the last four years — not incidentally all 90-loss seasons — but one of the most creative things the club has done was moving infielder Danny Santana from the infield to center field.

The beginning to Aaron Hicks’ career has not been pretty, and with the Twins’ pre-Fuld outfield loaded with trudgers like Josh Willingham, Chris Parmelee and Oswaldo Arcia, it was clear the club needed another option in center. In fact, even with Sam Fuld around both he and Hicks suffered concussions right around the same time — necessitating another option out there.

Santana came up in early May and stayed up for good. He played shortstop for about the first week and then was pretty much a full-time center fielder with the exception of a couple spurts at short — one a little ways down the road and then to end the season.

And that might be where Santana, whose minor league track record clearly doesn’t match what he did this year, will end up. The early indications from new Twins manager Paul Molitor is that Santana will likely be the club’s regular shortstop, which not only creates a second hold in a ghastly Twins outfield — left field being the other — but displaces the erstwhile Eduardo Escobar, who in fact had a rather nice season at that spot (.275/.315/.406). Read the rest of this entry »

Entering 2014, A.J. Pollock was seen as a league average hitter with excellent center field defense. The combination ensured that he would see plenty of action with the Diamondbacks. His ability to steal a few bases marked him as a useful, if unexciting, fantasy option.

Pollock looked like a fantasy monster early in the season. He posted a healthy .316/.366/.544 line in 177 plate appearances through the end of May, when a broken hand sidelined him for three months. A .370 BABIP and .237 ISO buoyed his numbers. Upon returning from injury, he hit .273/.326/.386 in 95 plate appearances which is more in keeping with his career numbers.

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Allen Craig stunk in 2014. We all saw it. He stunk for the St. Louis Cardinals. He stunk even more for the Boston Red Sox. He stunk all season for fantasy baseball players, for whom he lost money, and ended up in the hundreds among outfielders. A regular. The only guy who accumulated 500-plus plate appearances this past season and finished ranked in the hundreds.

Is that it, then? Does he just stink now? It’s possible. Maybe even likely. Perhaps close to definite. But we don’t know. I don’t think that we can know. At least not yet.

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I remember walking into a Phoenix area bar to meet my FanGraphs colleagues last spring. It was a convergence of baseball nerdery rivaled only by the SABR conference across town. Someone started talking about J.D. Martinez. He had changed his swing over the offseason and could tap into his latent power with a clean, easy stroke. The Astros were going to be pleasantly surprised.

It turned out that the Astros had already moved on internally. They weren’t willing to give Martinez another shot, but they were nice enough to grant his release rather than force him to drown at the bottom of the depth chart. And that’s how he latched on with the Tigers.

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Because I’m apparently a fan of writing about high upside young outfielders whose seasons were marred by injuries, I have to discuss another one in Wil Myers. We all knew about Myers shooting up the prospect lists based on his minor league performances through 2012. But he became much more of a household name after being traded from the Royals to the Rays after the 2012 season in a blockbuster for James Shields. He continued to mash at Triple-A the following year with his new organization, which earned him a promotion to the Majors, debuting in mid-June.

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Despite playing his age-35 season, Jayson Werth posted another strong fantasy season. His .292/.394/.455 line equated to a 141 wRC+ and he posted the fifth highest qualified on-base percentage in the league. Unfortunately his days of 20 steals are probably gone, but Werth did chip in nine steals and was only caught once. Rather than his speed deteriorating, the most alarming issue may be that even though he appeared 147 games, Werth managed just 16 home runs. Even without his normal 20+ dingers Werth managed to finish in the top-20 of Zach Sanders’ 2014 outfield rankings.
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I was wrong about Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Starling Marte. Last December, I wrote up Marte, and determined he “may be in for a precipitous fall next season.” Boy, was I wrong on that. Marte had the finest season of his young career, solidifying himself as one of the better young outfielders in the game. Looking over that article now, I realize that while the research seemed to fit, I let my personal biases color my evaluation of Marte. So, consider this an apology if you avoided Marte on my recommendation. Let’s try to avoid this mistake again.

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