Fantasy Baseball 2012 Outfield Tiers

Outfielders have many different skill sets that fantasy owners can take advantage of. The 2012 bunch of outfielders I believe is incredibly deep and valuable players can be found late. The important thing before drafting any outfielder is to identify the needs of your team. It’s quite simple but it’s often forgotten during the drafting chaos. If you need power, draft a power hitting outfielder. If you need speed, find those stolen base numbers you need. Don’t select the guy at the top, because Yahoo rankings tell you to. Instead, choose the guy that can best help your team and eliminate a weakness. There are many quality outfielders so use the tiered system to make your selection the right choice.

Tier 1

1. Matt Kemp 2. Jacoby Ellsbury 3. Carlos Gonzalez 4. Justin Upton

You can’t really go wrong with any of these guys based on the 2011 season but this isn’t the 2011 season. I don’t think Matt Kemp will produce at the same rate which means he is overvalued. Jacoby Ellsbury is simply not going to hit 32 homeruns again so I’m passing on him as well. The player that I like the most in this position is Carlos Gonzalez. Gonzalez, much like the other four, is a five category stud. I believe Carlos Gonzalez is the left handed version of Ryan Braun but with a little more speed. Gonzalez has the ability to be a 30/30 guy with 100+ runs and 100+ RBI. You really can’t miss on any of the tier one guys unless they get hurt. CarGo’s “down” year last season might find give you little more draft position value than you would find in the other tier one outfielders. Also knowing that Gonzalez plays at Coors Field has to give fantasy owners some comfort.

Tier 2

5. Josh Hamilton 6. Andrew McCutchen 7. Mike Stanton 8. Ryan Braun 9. Carl Crawford 10. Matt Holliday 11. Curtis Granderson 12. Hunter Pence

The second tier of outfielders is full of players that can produce and it’s hard to argue one over the other but there are differences that need to be addressed; Josh Hamilton has his well documented drug problems, Ryan Braun could be suspended, Carl Crawford might not able to stand the Boston pressure and Matt Holliday might be attacked by another moth. All these questions might have you guessing, but if I had to choose one of these players I would select Andrew McCutchen. If you haven’t figured it out yet I’m high on players that can significantly help your team in multiple categories and McCutchen can do everything. He has best combination of power and speed of all of them. Unfortunately, he plays for a terrible team. It appears that he will batting third for the Pirates which will help his chances of getting some RBI. The guy is going into his fourth season in the bigs and this is usually when players put it all together. If McCutchen reaches his potential you could have a year like Matt Kemp had last year. I’m not quite anticipating it to be that great but 80+ runs and 80+ RBI along with 20 homeruns and 30 stolen bags is a fantasy season owners should expect.

Tier 3

13. Drew Stubbs *see below* 14. Jay Bruce 15. Nelson Cruz 16. Michael Bourn 17. Desmond Jennings 18. Shane Victorino 19. Jason Heyward 20. Corey Hart 21. Ichiro Suzuki 22. Carlos Beltran 23. Shin Soo Choo 24. BJ Upton 25. Chris Young 26. Cameron Maybin 27. Nick Markakis 28. Brett Gardner 29. Logan Morrison 30. Alex Gordon 31. Jason Werth 32. Mike Trout

The length of tier three should be very encouraging to fantasy owners. Outfield usually has good depth and this year is no different. I have often found that stacking up on position players early and not picking an outfielder until tier three has been a winning strategy for me. The problem is you need to draft carefully to fulfill your teams holes. If you don’t have any speed, you need to draft Michael Bourn, Brett Gardner or BJ Upton. If you need power and RBI, go with Nelson Cruz, Jay Bruce, or Carlos Beltran. Combination players such as Drew Stubbs and Chris Young could also be helpful but they need compliments to be real assets. All that said you will need to adjust who you take in this tier based on the other players you have. One player that I like is Logan Morrison because of consistency. He has great discipline at the plate and should steadily produce the entire season. The addition of Jose Reyes also helps the Miami Marlins lineup considerably and could move Morrison either into the two or five spot in the lineup. Either way Morrison’s RBI chances should go up. I see Logan Morrison putting up around 80 RBI, 20 HR, while hitting .280, if he does that he could be a steal at the bottom of tier three.

*Check out further analysis on Drew Stubbs at http://voices.yahoo.com/fantasy-stubbs-10942292.html?cat=14


People also view

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *