Archive for ranks

Previous rankings:
August
July
June
May
March/April (Preseason)

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It’s hard for me to feel like these rankings are worthwhile. Something like two-thirds of you are in your respective league’s playoffs or have already been eliminated. For those of you to whom this pertains, now we’re rolling the dice on small sample sizes — something inherently subject to volatility. Also, we’re practically a week into the month already.

So I won’t waste too much breath here. The following rankings reflect classic 5-by-5 rotisserie (“roto”) formats. Just please remember: this is your playoff hunt. If you play in a roto league, you know which categories you need to chase. I can’t answer that for you. But that category (or plural) are inherently more important to you, and you should value National League outfielders who contribute meaningfully to that category (or plural) accordingly. If you play in a points league, find power bats who minimize the split between their strikeouts and walks (assuming you are punished for the former and rewarded for the latter).

With that said, let’s dig in.

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Previous rankings:
March/April (Preseason)
May
June

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To this day, I think I don’t fully understand what y’all want. With these monthly rankings, do you want end-of-season rankings or rest-of-season rankings? For the record, given we just eclipsed the halfway point of the season, end-of-season rankings would equally weight players’ first and second halves. Rest-of-season ranking, meanwhile, would unequally weight a player’s second half in favor of his first half. First-half performance informs second-half rankings, but more in the sense that “regression will hit this guy hard” and so on.

I ask because, man, y’all rip into us pretty good with these rankings sometimes. And I know I’ve failed to adequately communicate my criteria for ranking particular players a given way because I simply don’t have enough words or time.

With that said, I will provide for you here rest-of-season rankings for National League outfielders, complete with anticipated regression and all that. Tiers will be named in order of my favorite Every Time I Die albums, which is totally not obscure in any way. Enjoy! (Or not.)

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Previous rankings:
March/April (Preseason)

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For this post, I had written something entirely different, but I woke up early to change it. All of it. I didn’t dream about it — no, not quite. But I came close. This month has proven to be pretty difficult. Maybe “finicky” is the word.

So many hitters are producing at similar levels with similar peripherals to support them that it’s hard to tease them apart. I tried a full re-rank and I had clustered something like 20 or more guys together twice. I try to limit each particular tier to maybe a dozen hitters, so coming away with only three-or-so tiers was problematic. That’s why I decided to wake up early and do this over. The ranks haven’t changed much, but certain guys have moved a lot, and I will try to identify which guys are most likely to move up or down by the time the June iteration of these rankings roll around.

Also — and this is totally unrelated — I think more readers were infuriated by my omission of Tommy Pham (who has all of one plate appearance this year) than my ranking of A.J. Pollock over Bryce Harper. Y’all crack me up sometimes.

You know the drill: I rank National League outfielders, you yell at me in the comments. Consider all rankings fluid within tiers but not between them (except at the top and bottom of each tier, perhaps). Normally, I would tell you that players should be reserved to their respective tiers, but I think there’s much more opportunity for movement here than ever before (ever before, in the context of me doing this since the beginning of last year). Lastly, if I omit a name, politely let me know in the comments.

Unless it’s Tommy Pham. Then shhhhhhhhhh.

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You can’t please everyone. Not that being a fantasy baseball analyst is like being the president, but being a fantasy baseball analyst is like being the president. You can never make everyone happy, and Eno Sarris occasionally asks you for foreign policy recommendations. Worse, the people who are happy don’t vocalize their contentment while the people who are pissed are more than happy to let you know. Such is the nature of the beast.

It’s all good, though. This is my second year ranking National League outfielders, and you know what? I’m ready. My skin is a little thicker, my stomach a little rounder. It’s a new year, new me. Put it on a shirt!

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At 1 pm EDT, we will begin to chronicle September call-ups and their potential contributions in a running post organized by David Wiers. Stay tuned.

NL OF Tiers: August
NL OF Tiers: July
NL OF Tiers: June
NL OF Tiers: May
NL OF Tiers: Preseason

What’s most interesting about September, from a purely statistical standpoint, is small-sample volatility. Just like the unpredictability of April, anyone can go off — or fall flat — in the home stretch. If I’m contending, I’m trying to maximize playing time, although I will stream or start certain specialized players if I’m chasing a particular category.

I’m in a head-to-head standard roto league with two weeks of regular-season play left before two one-week rounds of playoffs. In the last four weeks, my team has roared back from a miserable 9th place to a legitimately-contending 6th, and I’m already off to a strong start this week. In other words: a lot can happen in a month, so certainly half of a lot can happen in two weeks. Hang in there.

I drafted one of my fantasy football teams this weekend. My tiers shall assume the names of my six most expensive players.

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Edit (12:59 pm EDT): Left out a bunch of dudes (Cespedes, Pederson, Moss) and wrongly included a bunch of dudes (Gomez, Revere). I basically I forgot all about the trade deadline, so if notice another name omitted, leave it in the comments. Thanks (and sorry)!

NL OF Tiers: July
NL OF Tiers: June
NL OF Tiers: May
NL OF Tiers: Preseason

Prior to writing for FanGraphs, I never took time to systematically reevaluate players. That’s not to say I never evaluate players after draft day — of course I do. But I typically only concern myself with the players I own and compare them to those on waivers. Occasionally, if my team is wildly imbalanced, I’ll evaluate other owners’ players for potential trades.

Because it’s tedious to thoroughly re-rank all the players at one position, let alone in all of Major League Baseball. I can’t complain, though, becauseI’ve learned something new with every re-rank, the most prominent lesson being baseball players exist to humiliate you. I’m being hyperbolic, and perhaps Carlos Gonzalez is, too, but his recent results speak volumes: CarGo more than doubled his home run total between my July re-rank of National League outfielders and now.

I also learned I need to learn to stand my ground. After mindlessly over-ranking Carlos Gomez in June, I slotted him at the top of the fourth tier (roughly 20th overall) in July. I got slammed for it and I backpedaled on my stance a bit when responding to comments, but, like clockwork, Gomez has continued to underwhelm, hitting .230/.373/.410 with two home runs and nary a stolen base. Sure, the 17.3-percent walk rate (BB%) the last 30 days is nice, and it brings him back up to normal Carlos Gomez levels, but his batted ball profile continues to resemble the generally uninteresting pre-breakout Carlos Gomez.

Anyway, iers will conform to my ranking of feature-length films directed by Hayao Miyazaki, with emphases on directed and feature-length. To not see a Miyazaki (or Studio Ghibli) film is to ignore a cherished corner of cinematic history. Like my hotly contested Coen Brothers tiers, these will be very difficult for me to rank.

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NL OF Tiers: May
NL OF Tiers: Preseason

I love Bob’s Burgers. That love stems from a love of H. Jon Benjamin, which stems from a love of Home Movies. However, I do not find Archer all that funny. It is the lesser show, and that’s that.

I’m sorting the tiers by secondary characters in Bob’s. It’d be too easy to rank Bob’s family. Or would it? Should I? No, I won’t. I’ll stick to the game plan.

Aside from the top tier, the rest of the hitters are ranked loosely in their respective tiers. An argument could be made for all of them to move up or down a couple of spots.

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Every year, we here at RotoGraphs publish tiered rankings for every position and update them throughout the year. What you will read below are, more or less, my end-of-season projections for National League outfielders, since the season hasn’t started yet. However, these rankings will change as the year progresses, and I would be a fool to tell you the tiers below will look the same in September.

No doubt, this is a contentious matter, and you can tell me how much of a moron I am in the comments.

Without further ado, here is the 2015 season’s first installment of tiered rankings for NL outfielders.

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