The American League outfield has a wide mix of both talent and age. On one hand there is Mike Trout, and then on the other there is Vernon Wells. And that diverse situation is just on one team in the AL.

This is the first week of AL OF Tiered Rankings, and they’ll be coming out on the first Monday of every month. On the later Mondays of each month we’ll be looking at individual AL outfielders and examining them much more closely.

Tier One
Jose Bautista
Jacoby Ellsbury

Putting Joey Bats first here was a pretty easy call. His transformation has been well documented, but it never ceases to amaze me that a man can reinvent himself on a random September day and then become one of the best hitters in baseball for the foreseeable future. Pairing Bautista with Ellsbury was something that I really wrestled with. I don’t expect 30 home runs again, but his combination of power and steals (I’m thinking 20 HR and 55 SB) and his .300 career average tilted me in favor of putting him here. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve finally made it through the offseason.

We survived the 3 am games in Japan, the Marlins’ home run statue didn’t come to life and vengefully destroy the new stadium last night, and the reward for our patience is back-to-back days of real, meaningful baseball from morning to evening.

While most owners probably aren’t looking to revamp their rosters just yet, injuries and spring swoons may have some looking for an early season ringer. So, with the pageantry of Opening Day as a backdrop, here’s the season’s first Waiver Wire.

Jose Tabata (ESPN: 9 percent owned, Yahoo!: 47 percent owned)

Tabata fits in a category of player I’ve mentioned before, namely the guys who feel like they’ve been around forever, even though they aren’t that old. Tabata is just 23, he has fewer than 200 major league games to his credit, but because of personal issues, his name has been around since he was in the low minors. He lacks the power to be a 20/20 threat, but he easily has the speed, as he swiped 16 bases last year despite playing in just 90 games.

Health is key for Tabata this season. He’s part of the Pirates long-term plans, so playing time won’t be a concern as long as he’s physically able to take the field. He missed 50 games with a right hand contusion last summer, and then broke his left hand in September, which ended his season. Neither injury should linger into this season, so he’s a clean slate.

He’s certainly not going to replace someone like Michael Bourn, but the choice between Tabata and, say, Austin Jackson (53 percent owned on ESPN and 59 percent owned on Yahoo!) is pretty close. Jackson is almost certainly going to be driven in more often, but Tabata is going to provide a better average.

Lorenzo Cain (ESPN: 44 percent owned, Yahoo!: 45 percent owned)

Spring training produces two major batches of sleepers. The first group is the guys who start out red-hot, produce a ton of hype, and then have their draft stock rise to the point that they’re really no longer a bargain: Delmon Young is probably this year’s best example. The second group is the guys who just have a strong spring from tip to tail or who really start hitting at the end of camp. There tends to be less time for the hype machine to inflate their value, which means they can be had for a value price. Cain belongs to the second group.

His spring numbers were fantastic: .371/.450/.743 with 5 HR and 11 2B, but since he didn’t go on a huge HR binge or do anything except play consistently well, he didn’t get the overwhelming push of coverage, which means he went undrafted in about 50 percent of leagues across both ESPN and Yahoo. Like Tabata, Cain is part of the Royals future and he shouldn’t’ have trouble getting playing time as the team’s best center fielder. ZiPS has him set for a .259/.314/.370 season with 17 SB, which strikes me as overly conservative. I don’t quite buy Cain as a guy who will carry that .700+ slugging percentage into the season, but he’s a career .295 hitter in the minors, so I think he’ll provide a better average than a .260 to go with the steals he’ll provide. He is an inexperienced player, so there may be some growing pains, but he should be a great option in leagues with 4-5 OF slots or as a potential bench option in shallower leagues.

In past years, I have posted 20 bold predictions for the upcoming season. Just because our little RotoGraphs contest among authors only required 10 doesn’t mean I was going to stop there! So here are another 10 bold predictions to ridicule me for, or cause your eyes to open in wonder as to how I could be such a brilliant prognosticator. And before you read on, take another gander at my first set of boldies to refresh your memory.

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Juan Francisco is in Atlanta. Paul Janish is headed to Louisville. That means Todd Frazier has made the Cincinnati Reds. He probably deserves more attention than your typical final roster guy.

For example, take a look at how his last two years at Triple-A stack up against popular middle infield sleeper (and 27-year-old) Zack Cozart:
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In light of his very nice contract extension, which Brandon Warne covered extensively earlier this week, I figured giving my thoughts on Alex Gordon would be timely.

Gordon was a fantasy MVP for many teams last year. If you took a flier on him in your draft last season, you were rewarded greatly as almost nobody expected the type of season he had. Everyone understood that Gordon was talented, but a .300 average along with 23 homers and 17 steals was surprising to even the biggest Gordon optimists. He put it together, much like his fellow outfielders Melky Cabrera and Jeff Francoeur did, for the first time in his career.

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Jason Bay is owned in 32% of Yahoo leagues. Those 32% must not be Mets fans.

If you’ve been watching Bay in the blue and orange, there hasn’t been much to like for two years now. Well, his strikeout and walk rates have held steady so far, but it’s the power that disappeared and never came back, and it was the power that put all those zeroes on his last contract. Maybe that home run derby appearance was a harbinger — since his last year with the Red Sox, Bay has hit fewer fly balls and more ground balls every year. And his isolated power has come down from his peak to his nadir accordingly.

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The regular season may have officially started with the Mariners and Athletics last week, but the rest of the league kicks off the year a few days from now. Here’s an early-season waiver wire for you folks itching to do some fantasy roster tinkering…

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In 2008, Andre Ethier had a breakout season for the Dodgers, hitting .305/.375/.510 for a team that made it to the National League Championship Series. His .382 wOBA that year was good for 10th among all MLB outfielders, impressive for a player who had spent much of his first two seasons in the big leagues battling lesser players like Luis Gonzalez & Juan Pierre for playing time. The following year, the Dodgers made it back to the NLCS, and Ethier was a huge part of that success; while his wOBA was slightly down to .370 (which still made him a top-20 outfielder), he increased his home runs from 20 to 31 and left behind a string of lasting memories, since it seemed that every time you looked up in 2009, Ethier was hitting a walkoff and being mobbed by teammates at home plate. At 27 years old, Ethier had a career line of .291/.363/.490 in four seasons and had established himself not only as an up-and-coming star but as one of the few feathers in general manager Ned Colletti’s cowboy hat, considering he’d been stolen from Billy Beane & the Athletics when it became clear Milton Bradley had to go after 2005.

While the future may have looked bright for both Ethier and the Dodgers at that point, it hasn’t really worked out that way for either party. The Dodgers, saddled by the whirlwind controversies brought on by the excesses of owner Frank McCourt, went just one game over .500 over the last two seasons, not sniffing the playoffs either time. Ethier, while still relatively productive despite battling injuries, has seen his power all but disappear. A slugging percentage that was .508 in 2009 has fallen to .493 in 2010 and down to .421 in 2011, when he hit just 11 homers and had a .343 wOBA that barely placed him within the top 30 among outfielders.

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I almost wish I played in a league where Box Jump and Leg Press were scoring categories, because at least then I would know where to draft Yoenis Cespedes. There’s surely more to the Cuban import than just what he showed in his YouTube video that went viral earlier this offseason, but exactly whether he’ll be able to translate his physical prowess into practical production is still very much an open debate. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve got your consensus outfielder ranks, but it helps to put guys in tiers, especially for your NL-only players out there. So, just to make sure we have you covered, here are your National League Outfielder tiers.

All is well here. Shortstops get one guy in the top tier and outfielders in the National League alone get four. How do you like your 30/30 outfielder served?
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