With the top 150 fantasy baseball players all reordered and reranked on the latest big board, it’s time to continue rolling out the individual position rankings.
After providing some sequencing to the shortstops last time out, next up is outfield, which is where owners need to add a lot of top-tier talent as well as all sorts of diverse skill sets to their rosters.
In other words, because most leagues allow for up to five starting outfielders, this is a position where you should be looking to get a stud, like Andrew McCutchen (pictured) or Adam Jones, in the first round or two.
Then you’d do well to add another proven performer, like Shin-Soo Choo or Jay Bruce, with one of your next selections before making sure to address specific category needs, like home runs and RBI (Nelson Cruz or Domonic Brown), stolen bases (Starling Marte or Billy Hamilton) or runs scored (Austin Jackson or Brett Gardner) a little later.
In short, your outfield should start with a star (or two) and then be tailored to fit your team’s needs as the draft progresses.
Here’s the top 50 fantasy outfielders and a batch of others you should watch.
These rankings consider three factors:
First, everything is based on 10- or 12-team mixed leagues with standard five-by-five rotisserie scoring (BA, R, HR, RBI, SB for hitters; W, ERA, WHIP, K, SV for pitchers).
Second, lineup construction accounts for 22 active roster positions consisting of: one each for catcher, first base, second base, third base, shortstop, corner infield, middle infield and utility, along with five outfielders and nine pitchers.
And third, to be eligible at a particular position, players either must have played at least 20 games there in 2013 or be in line to start there in 2014. Additionally, players are listed in the rankings at the position where their fantasy utility would be most useful.
Statistics courtesy of Baseball Reference and FanGraphs.