Four Outfielders: Marte, Doyle, Stowers, & Butler
Syndication: The Enquirer
With no ADP yet, I’m going to start diving into some deeper outfielders. For the players, I used the last outfielders drafted in the first 11 rounds of the Too Early Meatball Draft. One caveat: I’m not going to feature anyone who is still playing (sorry, Andy Pages) or should be a free agent. I want as much information as possible on the player. There are plenty of outfielders to examine now and then later.
Noelvi Marte (Pick 126)
I want to believe in the 24-year-old, but he has several red flags. On the positive, he’s a 20/20 threat with a solid .254 AVG while qualified at third base and the outfield. For his career, he has 21 HR and 25 SB in 725 PA. That’s a solid season.
The “problem” with Marte is figuring out who he is. He’s only accumulated just over one season’s worth of plate appearances during the past three seasons. His best core results were in 2023, then they tanked in 2024, and partially rebounded in 2025.
Season: avgEV, Contact%
2023: 91.3, 77.0%
2024: 87.0, 71.5%
2025: 88.5, 75.6%
And just looking at his 2025 splits, he tanked in the second half
Half: K%, BB%, ISO, OPS
1st: 16%, 8%, .263, .884
2nd: 27%, 3%, .156, .695
To add to the confusion, the right-handed hitter has a massive career reverse split.
Split: OPS
vs LHP: .593
vs RHP: .727
Finally, here are some core trait comps from each of his first three seasons.
2023 (average 120 OPS)
2024 (average 83 OPS)
2025 (averaged 108 OPS)
Besides the comps from two seasons ago, most of the names aren’t that exciting.
If a person wants to invent a good or bad narrative about him, there are stats to back the story up. With his profile all over the place, I’m going to value him with a non-adjusted projection. Right now, his Steamer600 has him with 19 HR, 18 SB, and a .256 AVG. That works.
Final Take: Over his first three seasons, Noelvi Marte showed several different versions of himself, with any narrative having an explanation. His value is tough to set beyond a basic projection.
Brenton Doyle (Pick 132)
Doyle was having an amazing season (.888 OPS) until he and his wife found out the horrifying news of losing their unborn child. From that point on, he posted a .622 OPS. Before going on Bereavement Leave, Doyle played 13 games, so here is his career 13-game rolling OPS.
His early-season ups and downs were not out of the norm until a talent crash started in late August (.181/.209/.276 from August 4th on).
Here is his monthly OPS
Month: OPS
Apr: .712
May: .544
Jun: .431
Jul: .751
Aug: 1.028
Sep: .448
The stretch from July to August gives me hope for the future upside.
Comparing his 2024 to 2025 stats, his 2025 stats are just a little bit worse across the board, but no stat tanked. That should be expected considering what he was going through.
In all fairness, I’m giving the guy a mulligan on the season and going back to his 2025 preseason projection of .246 AVG with 21 HR and 26 SB. That he even played the rest of the year after getting that news ought to be lauded on some level.
Final Take: The 2025 season was a turbulent season for Brenton Doyle on and off the field. I’m going to give him a mulligan and rewind to his 2025 projections.
Kyle Stowers (Pick 134)
After struggling to make enough contact to pair with his power, Stowers solved that problem and then some in 2025. He raised his Contact% from 66% to 70%, lowered his K% from 35% to 27%, increased his ISO from .125 to .256 and Barrel% from 11% to 19%. Among qualified hitters, his 11.6% Barrel/PA is the fifth highest.
The power increase can be seen with his maxEV going from 109.7 mph to 113.7 mph. And the same numbers improved from the first half to the second half.
Half: ISO, K%
1st: .250, 28%
2nd: .274, 25%
It was a solid improvement.
It’s not all roses for Stowers. He has a defined platoon split (.801 OPS vs RHP, .669 OPS vs LHP). The Marlins didn’t seem to care, with him starting against six of the last seven lefty starters before going on the IL (oblique). Before going on the IL that lasted until the season’s end, he was struggling (.694 OPS in August). He could have been playing through the oblique injury. There has been no news on Stowers since mid-September. An update would be nice.
Finally, no part of his portfolio points to his .288 AVG and .356 BABIP being legit. Projections point to a .230 AVG, and my batted ball comps point to a ~.250 AVG (career .253 AVG). A .240 AVG with 30 HR and a few steals is still a useful bat.
Final Take: Kyle Stowers turned his career around with career bests in power and contact metrics. He should be good for 25 HR to 35 HR. His batting average could dip as his BABIP regresses downward, but at least the average isn’t a major drain like in his first two seasons.
Lawrence Butler (Pick 143)
After a breakout season in 2024 (22 HR, 18 SB, .262 AVG in 451 PA), the 25-year-old took a step back last season (21 HR, 22 SB, .234 AVG but in 630 PA).
The major culprit behind the decline was a drop from a 75% Contact% to 70% Contact%, with his strikeout rate jumping from 24% to 28%. Additionally, his power numbers were slightly down across the board.
Stat: 2024, 2025
ISO: .228, .170
Barrel%: 11%, 9%
HardHit%: 47%, 44%
avgEV: 91.1, 90.5
Finally, he was slower. His Sprint Speed dropped from 27.6 ft/s to 26.9 ft/s.
While there was no reported injury during the season, news came out after the season ended that he would need knee surgery.
A’s outfielder Lawrence Butler underwent successful surgery on his right patellar tendon Friday with Dr. Mike Banffy at the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopedic Center in Los Angeles. Dr. Banffy performed a partial tendon tear repair and debridement of chronic scar tissue. Lawrence also received a PRP injection into his left patella tendon, under ultrasound guidance, to address chronic tendonitis.
Butler will rehab throughout the offseason in preparation for Spring Training 2026.
The injury explains the backtracking, but the line that worries me the most is “chronic tendonitis”. I’ll have to ding his projection, which has no idea of the chronic injury.
Besides the injury, Butler struggles against lefties. Over his career, he’s posted a .656 OPS against lefties, and that value was down to a .570 OPS in 2025. Against righties, it’s a .751 OPS for his career and .745 OPS this year. The team noticed the decline. In the last eight games which the team faced a lefty starter, he only started in three of those games.
One final note, here are Butler’s Steamer600 comps.
All four of the outfielders profiled today make the list as power-speed threats.
Final Take: After a breakout 2024 campaign, Lawerence Butler took a step back, likely because of a couple of knee injuries, one chronic. Additionally, he started getting platooned to end the season. Mute expectations because his talent and playing time could be at risk.
Jeff, one of the authors of the fantasy baseball guide,The Process, writes for RotoGraphs, The Hardball Times, Rotowire, Baseball America, and BaseballHQ. He has been nominated for two SABR Analytics Research Award for Contemporary Analysis and won it in 2013 in tandem with Bill Petti. He has won four FSWA Awards including on for his Mining the News series. He's won Tout Wars three times, LABR twice, and got his first NFBC Main Event win in 2021. Follow him on Twitter @jeffwzimmerman.
Hi Jeff where did you find steamer600? Are they updated after 2025? Thanks & great work as always!
https://www.fangraphs.com/projections?pos=all&stats=bat&type=steamer600u
Well that explains where the insane catcher valuations and rankings the last couple of years at FG comes from. And respectfully, there has been more misses than typical with FG rankings and articles with analysis and projections the last couple of years. I say that because I have to imagine the staff has talked about it and it’s on your radar, that’s been typical with FG forever as they push to improve every year.
It’s Steamer dude. Steamer has a catcher issue, and it’s so central to the work FG that it’s bled over. I guess with Eric too, because the catcher issue was present on his list too. It’s led the whole site to overvalue catchers, obviously based on something in their defense that’s not resulting in whatever it thinks it should be resulting in.
J.C. Escarra as the 14th most valuable player in baseball with 4.7 WAR! After steps back at AAA and the majors this year too, where the heck was he ranked going in to 2025?!
I can buy Raleigh at the 17th most valuable player and 4.6, Will Smith as the 58th and 3.3 WAR, and William Contreras at 62nd and 3.2 WAR. Two of them feel a smidge low, even..
I’m also not going to die on the Alejandro-Kirk-at-23-and-4.2-WAR hill either, though I disagree with assessments of his defensive value and lean more towards his 2025 being worth the 2.3 WAR that BR has than the 4.7 that FG has, but again, fine, have it, Kirk might be one of the 30 best position players and worth nearly 5 wins a season, at least there is a basis there to have that argument..
I’ll also limit my comment on Rutschman at 75th at 3.0 wins to I think the O’s would actually be pretty happy with that if it were to occur, which is sad. I don’t think Steamer’s wrong, I expect projection systems across the board to be in this range, but what a fall. It almost follows the Matt Weiters trajectory, which ain’t a good thing, and has got to feel terrible for Baltimore to see happen again..
But Gabriel Moreno at 31st overall with 4.0 WAR in 450 PA is nuts., that rounds up his 2025 spread over 450 PA, and he’s never had another year all that close to it on a rate basis according to FG. His statcast improvement this year wasn’t in batted ball quality, it was in launch angle. His K’s went up, and he rode his .323 BABIP to a .285 AVG, but something has to give. You can’t give him credit for increasing his FB rate 10 points over his career avg, and along with it sustained an elevated IFFB%, while shaving 12 points off his GB rate, but let him keep his historically high BABIP that comes from not hitting fly balls.. LD isn’t sticky, and he’s alternatted 18._% and 23._% the last 4 years, so he didn’t establish a new ceiling. Or give him credit for the elevated HR rate when he’s not pulling the ball more or hitting it harder, all because his launch angle. If he’s going to find more power, it’s going to come at the expense of his BABIP and average, it just has to. And for a slow-even-for-a-catcher guy turning 26, I’d bet that is what happens, but idk, that’s not the point, the point is no slow footed runner who’s never been a savant at hitting line drives as much as he’s a savant at avoiding soft contact, which comes with an abnormally high amount of medium contact, a new 35%+ FB rate that comes with a ~9% IFFB rate, should be expected to both maintain that and grow his power results.. And I only dig in on Moreno because I think this was the most defensible of the head scratchers.
I won’t go into the others bc I think J.C. Escarra probably provides the answer to what’s wonky, but Austin Wells at 42, Patrick Bailey at 43, Dillon Dingler at 74th and Jake Rogers at 83rd are others that stand out. And I get that Rogers and Dingler are on the same team and STEAMER is giving them equal PT, and they’re projected right where the list first blobs so they both have 3.0 WAR projections, so they’re not necessarily egregious, at least not Dingler. But the projection for Rogers isn’t NOT egregious either… It’s egregious-adjacent, at the very least..
Then take that process, and apply it to Alvarez and Torrens. Freddy Fermin is projected to have his best rates ever and I’m not sure why. Yasmani Grandal is ready to throw the clock back 5 years but he wasn’t that good in his limited AAA time this year. Or last year. And will be 37, and saw the last of his elite D back in 2019. Drake Baldwin, OTOH, is going to experience regression both offensively and defensively? So is Carlos Narvaez (the young one), while Jose Trevino is going to outperform them all at 33 with his best offense since 2020, when his O was exacty 1 wRC+ better than the projection, the only time he’s ever actually hit to that projection in his career? Coming off a 68 wRC+ that Statcast says was earned?
And I think Steamer must have an aging curve problem where it gives catchers growth into their mid 30s but negative regression until their late 20s, just unnecessarily because catchers age differently. At least that would explain Baldwin and Narvaez, along with Hunter Goodman losing half his value, Yainer Diaz having his second worst full season on the back of career best defense and even lower production with the bat, and Logan O’Hoppe nowhere to be found in the top 400..
Pedro Pages shows that it’s not as simple as that, as his bat is projected to improve despite the fact that he was a bit lucky to get the results he got this year, but I’m sure that has something to do with his minor league walk rates, which just won’t translate when you’re getting the bat knocked out of your hands like he did..
I’m telling you guys, the Steamer catcher projections are throwing everything off and having a snowball effect on the site. On rankings, articles, projections, the Board, team projections, etc.. It hit me like a tidal wave as soon as I saw Escarra, with Steamer being so central, it explained so much in an instant..
FWIW, my $0.02, but there IS something to look into there, Escarra proves that..
I ain’t reading all that. That Escarra Steamer600 projection is whack tho.
Maybe you are right, maybe you are wrong I just find it weird you would share this on a fantasy article.