Fantasy Baseball 2017 Positional Preview: Outfield

Check out my top 250:
Fantasy Baseball 2017 Top 250

We finished off the offensive side of fantasy baseball today with outfielders. In addition to giving you the top players to draft at the position, I’ll offer up breakout players, sleepers, busts, and an overall strategy of how to go about drafting the position. Here we go with a preview of the outfield.

*PR stands for 'Player Rater' which is a measure of how good a player was in a standard 5x5 roto league

Breakout players – Gregory Polanco, Stephen Piscotty, Andrew Benintendi
Sleepers – Rajai Davis, Max Kepler, Aaron Altherr
Busts – Andrew McCutchen, Justin Upton, Jose Bautista

Position Overview

We’ve made it to the last offensive position in fantasy baseball. Thanks everyone for checking these things out the past few days and I hope you’ve been enjoying them and also using them.

Outfield is a tough position to describe. Is it deep? Is it shallow? Where are the values? Well, the answer to each of those questions depends on your league context. A three outfielder league, for instance, means that most likely no one past OF #50 gets drafted. This makes the OF position rather deep. A five outfielder league leads to around 75 outfielders being taken. This is where the position starts to fall off. It is filled with platoon players and either less than stellar veterans or unproven prospects.

The fewer outfielders I’m required to roster the less important the position gets. This means the outfield position as a whole moves up or down depending on how many you need. My strategy at the position will be to take the best available player approach until I fill half of my OF spots. At that point, I’ll take a break on OF for a while, depending on how far along the draft is. I like filling out the last few OF spots with high upside players who I can draft in the final quarter of the draft. This gives you a potential top 30 option or someone who is easily droppable for the hot hitting waiver wire add.

Look to find players who can contribute across the board in the early rounds of your draft. Then, finish filling the position based on needs. Grab a player like Hernan Perez for steals or someone like Jorge Soler for cheap power. Also, be aware of your scoring format. Matt Holliday, Alex Gordon, and Shin-Soo Choo make for excellent values in points leagues. Also, don’t over think it, Mike Trout is the #1 player in fantasy baseball! #ExpertAnalysis

Check back tomorrow for a look at starting pitchers! See you then and thanks for the read.

Other positional previews:
Catchers
First Base
Second Base
Shortstop
Third Base
Starting Pitcher
Relief Pitcher