Every fantasy team deploys multiple outfielders, yet there are only so many big-ticket studs at the position to go around. Fortunately, this year’s outfield crop is full of talented bats whose uneven performance in 2016 has lowered their cost heading into 2017 drafts. Here are five outfield-eligible players whose underlying numbers from 2016 point to a resurgent 2017.
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Andrew McCutchen (OF – PIT)
Once treated as among the safest of early-round picks, McCutchen now finds his 2017 draft stock significantly depressed after submitting the first sub-.800 on-base plus slugging (OPS) season in his Major League career. Still, treating 2016 as a tale of two samples is a little kinder to Cutch. In the 431 plate appearances before his three-game mental-rest benching in early August, the former All-Star compiled a subdued .241/.311/.408 slash line to go along with a bloated 24.8 percent strikeout rate and an underwhelming 33.1 percent hard hit rate. But he righted the ship in August, slashing .284/.381/.471 over the season’s final two months while sporting a strikeout rate just over 14 percent and a stellar hard-hit percentage over 40.
McCutchen’s final line wasn’t anything to write home about, but many underlying indicators (below-average grounder-to-fly ratio and above-average line drive rate) suggest that reports of his sudden decline have been overstated. Age concerns and stolen base decline aside, it’s hard not to look at Cutch’s current average draft position (19th off the board among outfielders, per FantasyPros ADP data) as a strong buying opportunity.
Jose Bautista (OF/DH – TOR)
After seeming to shake off the “injury prone” label with two straight 150-plus game seasons in 2014 and 2015, Bautista took the field for a mere 116 games last year while succumbing to multiple lower-body injuries. Add to these health woes a .217 ISO that was Bautista’s lowest mark since before his out-of-nowhere breakout in 2010, and we seem to have all the earmarks of an aging slugger in decline.
But the underlying 2016 numbers weren’t all bleak for Joey Bats. Last year Bautista posted a 41-percent hard hit rate that was the highest such mark of his entire 12-year career, along with an 18.8-percent line drive rate that was his best in over a decade. To be fair, Bautista’s once-elite ability at making contact outside of the zone has decreased markedly over the past four seasons, culminating in a near-20-percent strikeout rate that was his highest since before his 2010 breakout.
Still, his other plate discipline stats show his trademark patience as well as above-average contact rates overall, so a graceful, productive decline still seems very much in the cards for Bautista, barring health. A perennial early rounder just a handful of years ago, Joey Bats now barely clings to a top-100 ADP slot, so it won’t cost too much to see if the Jays’ slugger can squeeze out a little more late-blooming magic.
Carlos Gomez (OF – TEX)
Gomez wore out his welcome with the Astros in a hurry last year, with his sub-.600 OPS over 323 plate appearances leading to the once-promising outfielder being outright cut by Houston in August. The unceremonious exit seemed to motivate Gomez, who joined the Rangers later that month and submitted a surprising mini-revival.
Gomez finished the season on a 32-game run of .900-plus OPS work at the plate, slugging eight homers and swiping five bags. Gomez’s hot final month earned him a modest one-year deal with Texas, and the speedy outfielder appears in line to earn 500-plus at-bats atop the Rangers’ lineup in 2017.
Of course, Gomez is unlikely to return to the stud-like production that pushed him to the top of fantasy draft boards just a couple of seasons ago. The near-.350 BABIP rates that he posted during his Milwaukee renaissance have tailed off significantly, not exactly a surprise considering he’s hitting more ground balls and making less hard contact. That said, the career-worst marks in contact in the zone (69.5 percent compared to a career average 75.1) and strikeout rate (30 percent compared to a career 23.3) seem very likely the product of a miserable, lost first half in Houston.
In turn, it’s hard to treat his .231 batting average from 2016 as a baseline for what to expect in 2017. If Gomez can push the average closer to .260 while contributing high double-digits in homers and steals, his current ADP ranking outside of the top 200 will seem like highway robbery. This is especially if the steals market remains so top-heavy.
Shin-Soo Choo (OF – TEX)
Choo is coming off a lost 2016 where he played only 48 games due to a litany of injuries, including a hamstring strain, back inflammation, and a fractured forearm. Snakebitten as he was by poor health, when active Choo evidenced some strong peripheral stats at the plate, including a five-year-low 1.53 grounder-to-fly ratio and nine-year-high 43.2 percent hard contact rate.
Indeed, MLB Statcast highlights Choo as an above average power performer in 2016, albeit in a small sample, with his average exit velocity on liners and flies a strong 95.5 MPH, just a tick below marks from Freddie Freeman and Edwin Encarnacion. If a healthy Choo can sustain this sort of power stroke over a full compliment of starts, a 20-homer season with 10 or so steals is very much in the realm of probable outcomes. Well outside the top 300 in current ADP, Choo makes for a promising bench stash, especially in on-base-percentage leagues where his strong walk rate masks his declining batting average.
David Peralta (OF – ARI)
Like Choo, Peralta is glad to have an injury-riddled 2016 behind him. The D-backs’ lefty tallied only 183 plate appearances in 2016, with a measly .728 OPS that seems to have thrown early drafters off of his scent.
But clearly, Peralta wasn’t himself in 2016, with a mere .731 OPS against righties falling more than 200 points short of his mark during his first full big league season in 2015. With Peralta’s line drive and hard contact rate fairly stable across the injury-shortened sample, it makes sense to expect a swift return to upper-double-digit power on plus batting average, with a handful of steals thrown in for good measure. Not bad for the 70th outfielder off the board.
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10 Low-Cost Hard Hitters to Target
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Tom Whalen is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Tom, check out his archive or follow him @drillguitar.
