Once again, Matt Holliday is entering the 2015 season outside of many fantasy baseball experts top 15 OF's. Holliday has consistently been a 20+ HR, 90+ RBI, 80+ Run (generally more) player who flirts with .300 every season. Granted, he did have arguably his worst season in the past decade, which was still a good season, hitting 20 HR, 90 RBI, 83 R, and batting .272.
Let's compare Holliday's numbers to the likes of Justin Upton, Adam Jones, Yasiel Puig, and Matt Kemp who are all ranked amongst the top 10 OF's and are all going several rounds before Holliday in most mock drafts.
Player |
AVG |
HR |
RBI |
R |
OBP |
OPS |
Holliday |
.272 |
20 |
90 |
83 |
.370 |
.811 |
Jones |
.281 |
29 |
96 |
88 |
.311 |
.788 |
Upton |
.270 |
29 |
102 |
77 |
.342 |
.833 |
Puig |
.296 |
16 |
69 |
92 |
.382 |
.863 |
Kemp |
.287 |
25 |
89 |
77 |
.346 |
.852 |
For those sabermetrics nerds out there, here are some advanced hitting stats comparing these 5 OF's numbers from last season. Granted, these numbers aren't necessarily important in fantasy terms, but I thought I'd add them in.
Player |
wOBA |
wRC+ |
ISO |
wRAA |
Holliday |
.360 |
132 |
.169 |
25.8 |
Jones |
.340 |
117 |
.188 |
15.8 |
Upton |
.363 |
133 |
.221 |
26.3 |
Puig |
.379 |
147 |
.185 |
34.1 |
Kemp |
.369 |
140 |
.220 |
27.3 |
As you can see, besides HRs, which Holliday falls a little behind, he matches up pretty evenly across the board in all statistics amongst these 5 OF's. You also have to take into account the move of Upton and Kemp to pitcher-friendly Petco Park. I could very well see Holliday putting up better power numbers than Upton and Kemp this season and finish higher in fantasy rankings.
I'm not saying Holliday has more upside than these other four players, considering he'll be 35 years old this season, but I am saying that Holliday is a solid fantasy OF. He will put up close to the same numbers as the before mentioned players who you can draft 2-4 rounds later and solidify other weaker positions earlier in the draft.
All data courtesy of FanGraphs.