2023 Outfield Preview, Part 1
Here’s what we’ve done so far:
I don’t know why I write “we” like I did above, clearly it’s just me doing this, but here we are.
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Now let’s talk about some outfielders.
Landscape
The landscape really depends on what kind of league you’re playing in. In a five-outfielder situation, it’s fair to call it a pretty shallow position. By the time pick you are past pick 100, you are mostly taking outfielders with injury concerns or just generally low ceilings. There are about 20 outfielders in the top 100 - so if you’re in a five-outfielder league I would probably want two outfielders in those first 100 picks.
Seven outfielders go in the first round on average, and a dozen go in the first fifty. As I’ve said before, I am prioritizing 3B the most, but right behind that position in terms of priority is outfield when I’m in a five-outfielder league.
In three outfielder leagues, things are a bit different. Fewer outfielders will be drafted, and plenty of valuable names will surely pop up during the season that can be had on the waiver wire. Regardless, my ideal first-round is either Jose Ramirez or any of these tier-one outfielders.
Tier One
Ronald Acuna Jr.
Julio Rodriguez
Aaron Judge
Kyle Tucker
Juan Soto
Yordan Alvarez
Mookie Betts
I suppose each player here has a slight flaw, so let’s go through them all.
Acuna Jr: Health questions lingering after the ACL surgery in 2021 and the 15-homer output last year. The surgery is well behind him now and all of the reports are good. I expect him to be back to the normal Acuna, but you can’t completely ignore that stuff.
Rodriguez: He’s only done it in the Majors for one year. Will the league adjust to him in 2022? We have seen plenty of sophomore slumps in the past - and there is really no room for decline with his price.
Judge: He’s a top half of the first round player because of the ridiculous season he had last year, which surely won’t be repeated. He’s also being projected for double-digit steals, but I don’t think that’s right. It’s possible the steals were just a contract-year thing as he wanted to show that he could do everything, and he could go back to a five-steal guy this year.
Tucker: Okay I lied, I don’t see any flaws with Tucker besides maybe the “good but not great” barrel rate of 10.2%. He’s probably my favorite price-considered first round pick.
Soto: The bad batting average last year and questions about the steals.
Alvarez: Health questions and no steals.
Betts: Aging, Dodgers getting a little bit worse, less than convincing power numbers and the steals are really slowing down.
We’re being quite nitpicky here, but that’s what you do in the first round. As I said, my favorite first-round pick is picking at like #8 and getting Tucker. I feel like that sets me up nicely, and I don’t see any reason why Tucker couldn’t be a guy that goes in the top three next year. He’s so good at everything.
Tier Two
Mike Trout
Michael Harris II
Randy Arozarena
Cedric Mullins II
Luis Robert
As always, Trout could be in the first tier, but the injury and age questions bring him down to tier two for me. I am happy to draft him in the second round, and I don’t think I’d pass on him in the third, but yeah - you know the deal with Trout at this point.
The toughest name here is Harris II. I’ve written about him a bunch already. He hits the ball extremely hard and is extremely fast and played like a first-round hitter last year - but he chases a lot of bad pitches, strikes out more than you’d like to see, and hits the ball on the ground a ton. He also will likely hit near the bottom of the lineup against left-handed pitchers, which is not a concern for any of these other names. I’ve drafted him a couple of times already but I will probably stop unless the price drops.
The next trio there gets a lot of their value from the steal. I just don’t think we need to pay the premium for the steals guy this year, although that does short them all a bit because they can all hit enough homers to not hurt you and they will all rack up a good amount of counting stats if they’re healthy and on the field. You really have those durability questions with Robert as well.
My general advice would be to get someone in tier one and skip this tier. Even if you don’t get a tier one guy, I’d probably still likely skip this tier and then hit the next tiers really hard (2 or 3 quick outfield picks), I just don’t really love any of these guys inside the top 50 where they’re going.
Tier Three
Kyle Schwarber
Adolis Garcia
Corbin Carroll
Teoscar Hernandez
Eloy Jimenez
Starling Marte
Bryan Reynolds
Byron Buxton
Tyler O’Neill
Seiya Suzuki
This tier encompasses picks 50-100, so a pretty wide range. We are into the range where you’re missing a category or two with each guy, here’s what you’re missing with each guy:
Schwarber - AVG, SB
Garcia: AVG (and his huge strikeout and whiff rates make him risky overall)
Carroll: HR (probably)
Hernandez: AVG? I’m actually not sure, I like him a lot!
Jimenez: Safety of playing time (injury)
Marte: If he doesn’t steal a bunch of bases he’s not very helpful
Reynolds: He’s not great in any category
Buxton: Safety of playing time (injury), some AVG concerns
O’Neill: AVG, safety
Suzuki: Safety - we just haven’t seen much of him
I do like the tier a lot and I think I’ve drafted one of these names in almost every draft. The guys I’m most interested in at this point are Hernandez, Jimenez, and Suzuki. I think those three have the best combination of skills, floor, and price.
Tier Four
Jake McCarthy
Steven Kwan
Taylor Ward
Christian Yelich
Nick Castellanos
Anthony Santander
Kris Bryant
Giancarlo Stanton
Hunter Renfroe
Ian Happ
This is the last tier I feel pretty confident in. That being in terms of starting one of these guys every day.
That doesn’t apply to everyone, however. I see a risk with McCarthy with the power being hard to believe in as well as the fact that there are a bunch of outfielders there competing for playing time. Kwan is also just not a guy I want to use a top-ten-round pick on given his lack of power (I’d be surprised if he hits 10 homers), but the rest of these names I like just fine.
Ward and Yelich seem to be the highest-upside players. We know what Yelich did in 2019, and Ward was doing pretty similar things early on last year. You also have some nice category specialists here that aren’t egregiously bad at anything. I like drafting Santander, Stanton, and Renfroe quite a bit to catch up in power - and again, they really don’t kill your team in anything. Ian Happ is a nice get for playing time and some hopes that he can recognize the ceiling we know he has. He can be a 20-20 guy, so maybe the revitalized Cubs lineup will push him this year.
Those are your first four outfield tiers. That covers up to about pick 160 as things currently stand, so about halfway through a standard draft.
In a five-outfielder league, I absolutely want three of these names if at all possible. That doesn’t always happen if some SPs fall too far to let them go, and that’s not the end of the world in leagues where you can patch up the outfield later on - but things get pretty ugly from here on and I don’t want to be depending on three of the guys we have left to talk about to be starters for my team.
In a three-outfielder league, I’d love to still have three and just be done with the position, but that is probably not the optimal build given how many guys we are likely to find in-season that can replicate the kind of production you can find above. Give me one of the top seven outfielders and then a solid guy with upside like Seiya Suzuki as my two and I’ll be good for a little while in those more shallow leagues.
I will be back later this week to do the second half of the draft and give you those deep sleeper names of which there are plenty of! Thanks for reading!
Hi Jon, Appreciate your info. Don't see Springer in the OF ratings. Tier 2/3?