NL Outfield Rankings: June
Previous rankings:
March/April (Preseason)
May
* * *
The more I do this, the harder it gets. Each month I struggle with shedding my preconceived notions of a player’s value and coming to grips with the performance we have actually observed. And then there’s the additional element of teasing out what’s real and what’s not. Occasionally, there’s no change. That makes it easy. But for the guys who have made strides or taken big steps back — that makes it a bit harder. And then there’s accounting for over- and under-performance. Trying to anticipate when regression will occur, if at all, makes my head hur.
Also, there are just so many outfielders. And so many of them seem to be performing at a high level this season. It can be excruciatingly difficult to tease them apart. At a certain point, we’re splitting the microscopic hairs that grows on regular hairs. Full tiers become indecipherable blobs.
You know the rules, but if you don’t: hitters are pretty fluid within tiers. It’s not feasible to talk about every single guy, so feel free to ask questions (or leave criticisms) in the comments. (I know I left off a lot of hitters who make up the shallow side of a platoon or ride the pine. ) If I omitted a legitimate someone, let me know; unless it’s a part-time guy or a prospect, I probably just forgot. It happens from time to time.
I love Bob’s Burgers, so I’m going to name the tiers by my favorite episodes of all time. Because I can! This is off the top of my head, though, so I’ll probably screw up my own list. Oh well. Fight me!
Weekend at Mort’s
Kids are amazing! Even if they try to burn you alive in a coffin. And they will do that. But it’s good. Because you see your whole life pass before you as you’re burning. And every pair of pants you’ve ever worn. And you’ll see the love of your life, dancing salsa, in Jamaica, by herself!
Harper is the ESPN Player Rater’s 4th-best National League outfielder, and that’s with a .229 batting average on balls in play (BABIP). He’s not human, right?
Burgerboss
Ryan Braun
Gregory Polanco
Kris Bryant
Yoenis Cespedes
Starling Marte
Andrew McCutchen
Giancarlo Stanton
I can tell when you’re lying, Bob. Whenever you lie, your eyes get crossed a little.
None of this is surprising except that Polanco is the highest-ranked Pirate, and Stanton barely cracks the National League’s top-10. The tricky part about these rankings is I have to anticipate how a player will perform for the rest of the season. Marte will not sustain a .400 BABIP. But he’s running like crazy, which kind of makes me mad because I predicted his fantasy utility would finally slip once the wheels slowed down. They haven’t.
McCutchen’s have, though. As I mentioned this offseason, his durability and high floor will keep his value afloat. He’s just not a juggernaut anymore.
As for Stanton, he is what he is. The Miami Marlins don’t give him the run-scoring opportunities he needs to be a true powerhouse, and Stanton’s tenuous relationship with contact (such as his 15-strikeout ordeal in May) will put his owners through some really rough patches. The power is obscene, but he’s not untouchable. If he was, Chris Davis should be, too, but you never really hear the two compared that way. This will probably put me in some hot water, but I have maintained that Stanton has always been a little overrated.
An Indecent Thanksgiving Proposal
Dexter Fowler
Odubel Herrera
Melvin Upton Jr.
Wil Myers
Ben Zobrist
Charlie Blackmon
Stephen Piscotty
Hunter Pence
Michael Conforto
Randal Grichuk
Matt Holliday
Lance the Turkey: Bob. Bob! BOB!
Bob: Yes?
Lance the Turkey: Can you turn the light on? I get scared.
Bob: [chuckles] Sure thing, buddy.
Lance the Turkey: It’s too bright.
OK, so here’s where things get really murky. You have your dual power-speed threats. That’s basically everyone here. And if they lack either power or speed, they make up for it in plate discipline or batted ball skills. In other words, they aren’t one-trick ponies, and they see ample (full) playing time to buoy their values.
Melvin and his brother, Justin Upton, must have pulled off some Freaky Friday stunt or something. Once a Mendoza Line enthustiast, Melvin has parlayed better batted ball skills to make his power-speed combination much more palatable. But nothing looks too different, so it’s worth wondering if the BABIP will slip down to their intolerable levels from a couple of years ago. The fact that I’m basically calling him a top-10 NL OF is utterly absurd.
Blackmon has been a legitimate top-5-overall outfielder the past few years, but he has resumed baseball activities very slowly since being reinstated from the disabled list. He derives most of his value from his legs, but he has barely used them thus far. This is a glass-is-half-full approach to a dude who may have seen his somewhat brief stint as an elite fantasy option come and go. If you’re pessimistic, sell; until July, I won’t have a very good idea of what to expect from him.
Lobsterfest
Marcell Ozuna
Carlos Gonzalez
Curtis Granderson
Jayson Werth
Matt Kemp
Jay Bruce
Denard Span
Yasiel Puig
Josh Harrison
Ben Revere
Christian Yelich
Jason Heyward
Chris Owings
Gerardo Parra
Uhhhh Linda. Uhhhhhh Linda. I don’t feel well. I don’t feel well. … I did this?
Cool. Cool, cool, cool. What a helpful tier. I think how you rank the hitters here depends on your preferences. Power tends to be a bit flashier than speed, so your power hitters are up top. But guys like Span, Harrison, Yelich, even post-hype Owings — they provide a little bit of power, a little more speed, and solid batting averages. They epitomize “not flashy,” but they provide plenty of utility, especially in points leagues where you’re docked points for strikeouts. Plate discipline plays up in those formats.
It’s worth casting extra spotlight on Owings. He’s quietly putting together a nice campaign in A.J. Pollock’s absence, and he could put together an Ender Inciarte-esque eight home runs and 25 stolen bases.
Revere, like Blackmon, should be given a bit more time to ensure his legs haven’t turned to stone. Had he been healthy all year, he could have threatened to lead the league in steals. And he typically hits for a high average. Be patient.
Nude Beach
Mallex Smith
Joc Pederson
Ender Inciarte
Adam Duvall
Brandon Moss
Billy Hamilton
Yasmany Tomas
Brandon Drury
Jorge Soler
Trayce Thompson
Michael Taylor
Jon Jay
Nick Markakis
Derek Dietrich
Jeremy Hazelbaker
Kirk Nieuwenhuis
David Peralta (DL)
Angel Pagan (DL)
Domingo Santana (DL)
Maybe it won’t be so bad.
And, here, we find guys who don’t see full playing time. Pederson, Duvall, Moss, Hamilton — they’re all one-trick ponies who receive at least occasional rest. There are some interesting new names in here — especially Drury and Thompson. Neither of them ever figured to be standout prospects, but they both flashed their fair share of power in the minors.
Bobs burgers FTW
Also really upset at myself for not getting a single Polanco share. Many predicted a breakout year but he’s absolutely crushing it right now, and is finally putting up fairly good numbers against lefties like he showed in the minors. Seems like that contract, and batting a little lower in the lineup caused him to relax more and really do his thing.
I think we’ve certainly reached the point where we an safely say Ozuna is definitively not in the same tier as Chris Owings. But maybe that’s just me.
Not sure why Yelich isn’t higher too, unless he’s being rated lower because of his back.
Where do you see Ozuna and Yelich at the end of the season? Right now, they’re roughly 40th and 50th for me among outfielders, respectively. Ozuna won’t hit .300; Yelich will barely scrape 10 home runs. I think their best days this season are already behind them. Such is the nature of regression.
Would it be possible for the update next month to be based on The National albums? It worked for Bob’s Burgers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r96G9NlFo-k.
“Marte will not sustain a .400 BABIP. But he’s running like crazy, which kind of makes me mad because I predicted his fantasy utility would finally slip once the wheels slowed down. They haven’t.”
Why would his wheels slow down at 27 years old?
http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/the-stolen-base-aging-curve-depicted/
Marte’s attempts per 100 PAs, by year:
2012: 9.3
2013: 9.9
2014: 7.5
2015: 6.3
Do you see the trend? Then, suddenly:
2016: 10.3
A largely unpredictable spike.
Re: Bob’s Burgers, I went to college with Eugene Mirman, and he wrote a paper on “the science of laughter” which included a footnote that said, “Made you look.”
LOL. Yelich has a solid track record of above-average production, has a lower BABIP last year with 80 more points of ISO…yet he’s not as good as Wil Myers and his 98 wRC+ in Petco?
And don’t even get me started on Ozuna. Get out.
Normalize his HR/FB and his ISO drops about 40 points. Still better than his career mark and previous seasons. But it’s also not like we haven’t seen this before.
Yelich’s 2014 ISO
April: .113
May/June: .201
July-Sept: .083
Player performance ebbs and flows. It’s easy to be blinded by small samples.
Is it not also easy to be blinded by past performance without recognizing when real changes have been made? I know we at Fangraphs are looking for regression everywhere but is it not easier to believe a 24 year old player has made real changes than it is believing a 31 year old player has found a second wind? Even if you want to say Yelich reverts all the way back to 2014 Yelich, is that not still an awfully valuable player? Yelich’s 2014 is just as, if not more, valuable than Melvin Upton’s 2016.
Rankings are subjective and should be taken with a grain of salt of course, but I can’t imagine any league type where players like Jayson Werth and Matt Kemp are valued anywhere near players like Ozuna and Yelich (among others). I would struggle to roster Werth or Kemp even in 16 team, 5 OF leagues. Even if we assume a healthy amount of regression for everyone, going both ways.
Justin Upton?
is not in the NL?
Oh no. Delete! Delete!
His name is Melvin now.
C Gonzalez should definately be in the tier above.
Whoa! Highly suspect rankings. There are a too many absurdities to point out, but what jumped out at me most is seeing Melvin Upton and Wil Myers ahead of guys like Zobriest, Piscotty, Blackmon, Pence, Grichuk, CarGo, Ozuna and Yelich. You are aware that the Padres play in the worst hitting park in MLB and are 27th in runs this seaso, right? If a manager from my league were to cut Carlos Gonzalez for Upton, there would be tremendous upheaval and that person would not be invited back next year. Fangraphs should really consider polling multiple writers because I would never visit this site again if I thought that these rankings spoke for consensus of the staff.
Calm down, big baby. This must be your first year playing fantasy sports. Simply read the article, take the information in and weight it against your own opinions. Then move along. Take a deep breath.
They’re not a consensus. I’m also very down on CarGo. He can’t hit lefties to save his life. He has a 79 wRC+ against them this year, and that’s after hitting an uncharacteristic four home runs off them this year. To compare, he hit only five off lefties last year — the other 35(!) were against righties. So I have no problem being down on CarGo.
As for Upton/Myers alongside Zobrist/Piscotty/Blackmon/Pence/Grichuk, they are all in the same tier, and I specifically state that “hitters are pretty fluid within tiers.”
I stand by my original statement: anyone who would drop Melvin Upton for CarGo would be banned from my league and the team with the top waiver would be licking his chops. Even with Upton having his best season since leaving the AL, Gonzalez still has him beat by 40 spots in the overall rankings. Last year, Upton was ranked 33rd in my 5×5 root league. Upton? 871st. There is no basis for Upton to be rated a tier higher that Gonzalez, period.
Bottom line is these rankings make an otherwise talented group of contributors look bad. Your editor should have spiked this entry.
Is dropping Puig for Steve Pearce in an OBP league commit-me-to-an-institute level insane? Puig has not been walking at all (or doing much else, for that matter), and Pearce’s Walk and K rate is looking real nice, even if the power disappears.
In OBP… honestly, maybe not. I know how hard it can be to cut bait on a marquee name like Puig. But even before considering OBP, I almost kind of like Pearce more. Puig really needs to make an adjustment here soon.
Polite feedback: Echoing others, I would have to think Yelich and Ozuna >> Myers and Melvin. In a manner like… this isn’t even close. I’m a Wil Myers fan, too.
Agree with Mort’s being #1.
3 other great episodes sadly left off (not that I blame you): “Art Crawl” (Cat Butts,) “Tina-rannasarous Wrecks” (“Turn in literally any direction but this one!”), and “Lindapendent Woman” (the one where Tina pulls a bandaid off a grocery store stockroom boy.)
I almost considered making more tiers just to cite more episodes. I loooove Art Crawl. YOU smell like ointment and pee!
Is there any hope for Puig?
Is there any hope for any of us?
(Real answer: Yes, but not until makes some kind of adjustment… which it seems like he hasn’t really done yet.)
With a roster full of hitters like Puig, J Upton, Franco, Rizzo, and Grandal, I changed my team name to the regression fairies, hoping they will come visit my team one night!
Even in an OBP league, is it time to cut bait on Heyward? I have Betts, Springer, Mazara, and Odubel while also holding out hope for Justin Upton.
Carlos Gonzalez is at least a tier too low. The guy is incredibly streaky and is starting to lock in.
It pains me to say it, but I think we need start talking about taking Stanton down a peg unless he can turn the K-rate around in the next few weeks. Yes, he’s always had swing-and-miss in his game, but if you’ve watched him recently, he really looks lost at the plate.
MLB tonight had a great little segment where they showed him going through batting practice talking to Bonds and Mattingly, and they basically laid out how Stanton was getting onto his front foot, which is what’s driving the increase in GB% and Weak%. Bonds and Mattingly were trying to get him to stay back; stride forward, but lock the front leg like Bonds iconic swing. And you can see Stanton trying to stay back, but its leading to his head pulling off the ball, which is why he whiffed so much in May. He just seems so lost right now its hard to have much hope.
Ozuna is in the wrong tier.