RADIO
We love finding value when it comes to fantasy drafts. We love it so much that we've made the term "sleeper" almost meaningless, throwing it around in all sorts of situations. We want to know who the next Cedric Mullins or Robbie Ray might be. But sometimes winning a league can actually come down to who you don't draft.
Our obsession with finding the next breakout performer sometimes leads players to rocket up draft boards well beyond the price that we got so excited about at first. If a good fantasy baseball draft is all about finding value then it's important to understand that your team having players with good value doesn't have to mean that every single pick will far surpass their draft cost. Sometimes the best pick for your team is simply a player picked at the right spot when others around him as primed for disaster.
In this article, I'm going to highlight some outfielders I'm fading at their current ADP. These are not all guys that I don't want to draft, but I don't want to draft where they are going. Through my research this offseason, covering articles on barrel rate, xBA, xSLG, Pull%, O-Swing%, and Contact%, I've seen a few players pop up on a couple of lists, raising some red flags for me. Below, you'll get an explanation of why I'm fading them and an indication of where I would draft them. For the purpose of the rankings below, I removed players who are not most often started in the outfield for fantasy purposes, like Ketel Marte, Tommy Edman, Kris Bryant, Daulton Varsho, Chris Taylor, etc. I'm also using NFBC ADP from January 27th to February 17th.
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Randy Arozarena, Tampa Bay Rays
NFBC ADP (OF, Overall): 17th OF, 60th overall
Eric's OF rank: 22nd OF, 89th overall
I was the low man on Arozarena last year, and I'm OK with being there again. Yet, I'd like to differentiate between being "low" on a player and being "off" of a player. Arozarena is clearly a valuable fantasy asset. Anybody who has a 20/20 season with 94 runs scored is valuable. I was just cautious coming off his playoff outburst, and I still think people are quick to praise his bright moments without keeping the bigger picture in mind.
Arozarena's 2020 regular-season sample size was only 23 games, and it was relatively solid but not spectacular production. Then he went ham in the playoffs and our expectations rose. In 2021, he was far closer to his 2020 regular season self than the postseason one. We already knew that his 46.7% HR/FB rate in 2020 was a fluke, and the 16.7% rate he put up in 2020 is closer to what he did in his minor league career. His FB% dropped in 2021 and his GB% rose close to 50%, which is where he was for the majority of the time in the minors and is not the profile of a home run hitter.
To top that off, his rate of barrels over 100 mph dropped by over 4% from 2020, and his xwOBA, xBA, and xSLG were in the bottom 20th-percentile in all of Major League Baseball, so I'm not sure I agree that there is an extra level of power that he can unlock with consistency. Plus, you have a batting average that could also be a potential concern going forward.
So now that we established that Postseason Randy is not the real Randy, and we should be calibrating our expectations based on the power he's actually shown in the regular season, there is some cause for optimism. Arozarena made some clear gains in his contact profile in the second half of 2021. He seemed to get less aggressive, cutting down on his Swing% and swinging-strike rate (SwStr%). He actually was in the 16th-percentile in swing rate in the second half, which means he could have been too passive; an idea backed up by the fact that his strikeout rate jumped up 3%, meaning he may have been watching more strikes. However, he also hit the ball much harder. His barrel rate jumped from 6.8% to 10.5%, his exit velocity on balls in the air went from 49th-percentile to 86th-percentile, and his rate of barrels over 100 mph went from 42nd-percentile to 73rd-percentile.
All of which is to say that Arozarena's improved SLG, OPS, and ISO in the 2nd half seems real. However, his home run totals were identical, and his HR/PA rates, pull rates, and groundball rates didn't change. That means that we already saw the clear improvement in his quality of contact and yet got no growth in his home run totals, so I'm not clear where else he can pull huge power production from. We shouldn't expect a massive power surge to come from his improved contact unless Arozarena drastically changes his profile to become more of a pull-oriented fly ball hitter; something he has never been in the past, even dating back through his minor league career.
The Harder contact could mean that Arozarena ends up as a better batting average hitter than his profile suggests, but I still have some worries. Arozarena hit .308 in the second half, in large part due to the aforementioned changes to his contact profile. However, even in that hot second half, he was in the 10th-percentile in contact rate in the entire league and, as mentioned before, the 16th-percentile in swing rate; yet, he only walked 8.9% of the time in the second half. What that means is that he was a relatively passive hitter, who didn't make consistent contact, and also seemed to be looking at a lot of strikes since the BB% went down and the K% went up. That's typically not the profile of a high average hitter and is a big reason why his xBA over that hot second half was still just .229.
That's a MASSIVE difference from .308. Part of that can be explained by his speed, and I imagine he will always outhit his xBA because of it, but his overall approach is a bit concerning to me. I think that Arozarena is likely a true .260 hitter who I can't see hitting more than 25 HR. He does possess 20 SB upside, which, when all combined, makes him a good player, but does it make him one that we should be taking over Tyler O'Neill, Eloy Jimenez, and Ketel Marte? I don't believe so unless you're in dire need of the 20 SB he'll give you.
Ryan Mountcastle, Baltimore Orioles
NFBC ADP (OF, Overall): 28th OF, 110th overall
Eric's OF rank: 39th OF, 156th overall
This is a little bit about the changes to the stadium in Baltimore but also about Mountcastle's concerning plate discipline. Baltimore will move the left-field wall at Camden Yards back 30 feet, while also raising the fence from seven feet to twelve feet. As Nathan Ruiz covered, "As of 2020, Camden Yards’ 333-foot distance from home plate to the left-field corner was about average for the 30 major league stadiums, though its 364-foot distance to left-center was one of the league’s most reachable for batters.
Oriole Park was one of only eight ballparks with a wall shorter than 8 feet in left and had the shortest wall in left-center field of any venue. A 12-foot left-field wall would be tied for the sixth-tallest in the majors."
If you are a visual learner, there's this:
Obviously, this is not good for right-handed pull power. You can talk all you want about how Mountcastle only pulled nine of his Camden Yards home runs last year, but we know that pulled home runs are easier to hit than home runs to center or the opposite field. Also, Mountcastle is on this list because he is starting to pull the ball more, which will undoubtedly no longer be as beneficial as it was with the old stadium dimensions.
That's not to say that Mountcastle can't hit home runs in this stadium, but it will be harder. In 2021, he hit 33 home runs. According to Statcast, he would have only hit 19 if he was in Kansas City, 21 if he was in Arizona, 25 in San Francisco, etc. This is obviously a crude way of projecting power, and we simply won't know how the stadium truly impacts batters until we see games played there, but it certainly will hurt power production since that's what it is specifically intended to do. Especially since Mountcastle had an average exit velocity on balls in the air of 92.5 mph last year, which was in the 35th-percentile in Major League baseball, so he's not exactly consistently crushing the balls he elevates.
If Mountcastle becomes a 25-27 home run hitter that would mean we're drafting him too high based on some other issues in his profile, like a 27.5% strikeout rate, 16.2% SwStr%, and 24th-percentile contact rate. He also had the 6th-highest O-Swing% in all of baseball in 2021 and fourth-highest first-pitch swing rate, which pitchers took advantage of, which is why he really struggled in July and September and also hit just .160 against offspeed pitches on the season with a 41.4% whiff rate. If he's a 25-home run bat with a .250-.260 average, I'm not sure I see how he's much different from Michael Conforto, who is going over 80 picks later, or teammate Anthony Santander, who is going over 150 picks later. I currently have Mountcastle ranked 162nd and likely won't be getting him anywhere as a result.
Austin Meadows, Tampa Bay Rays
NFBC ADP (OF, Overall): 33rd, 134th overall
Eric's OF rank: 45th OF, 171st overall
There was a stretch in 2021 where it looked like Meadows was bouncing back, but at the end of the day, it just didn't happen. Sure, he hit .234/.315/.458 with 27 home runs over 591 plate appearances, but that only seems to be an improvement because he was so bad during the shortened 2020 campaign, posting a .667 OPS. However, when you dig under the surface on Meadows' numbers, you see that he had one strong stretch from the start of May to the start of June, hitting .275/.365/.625 with ten home runs over 126 plate appearances during that span. From then on, he hit .224/.290/.406 with 13 home runs over 352 plate appearances. That's not particularly good.
As many people have already pointed out, much of that might have to do with the way defenses are playing him. Teams shifted 75% of the time against him in 2021, resulting in a .304 wOBA against the shift as opposed to a .402 wOBA against normal defensive alignments. This may have caused him to try to go to the opposite field more, raising his oppo rate by over 5%. Only, that hasn't worked out for him given that he showed no overall improvement in production against the shift during the season
Also, despite making more contact, Meadows wasn't exactly making better contact. His slugging percentage, though better than 2020 was lower than both his 2018 and 2019 numbers, as was his OPS and wOBA, while his wOBA on contact was actually worse than 2020 as well. In 2021 he had a 37.9% hard-hit ball rate, which was good for 32nd-percentile in all of baseball. He had an 8.7% barrel rate (only 6.3% after that hot stretch) and had an average exit velocity on balls in the air of 91.9 mph, which was just 25th-percentile in the league. Altogether, that is not an enticing contact profile.
Part of it might be the swing path. His launch angle was up at 21.7-degrees in 2021, which was down from the 24.4-degree mark in 2020, but up from his 2018 and 2019 seasons. As a result, his FB% has climbed above 53% in each of the last two seasons, but his line drive rate (LD%) has plummeted to around 18%. Even during a stretch in September where his hard-hit rate spiked and his barrel rate climbed back up to 9.8%, he still had a 57% flyball rate, with 27.8% of those being pop-ups, according to Alex Chamberlain's Pitch Leaderboard. That's part of the reason he hit .222 with a .196 BABIP during that span despite his barrel rate and hard-hit metrics.
All of which makes me firmly out on Austin Meadows right now. I don't care if he's making more contact if the contact is poor. He seems to have shifted his approach to create more loft in his swing, but he's not hitting it in the air with much authority and is also trying to go oppo more to counteract the shift, which doesn't seem to jive with also trying to lift the ball. He could certainly change his swing back to his earlier mechanics and approach, but right now I see him as a .240 hitter who will hit 25+ home runs but might get platooned against lefties in Tampa Bay or traded away to a potentially worse lineup. I'll let somebody else take the chance on that profile at this point in drafts.
Robbie Grossman, Detroit Tigers
NFBC ADP (OF, Overall): 44th, 181st overall
Eric's OF rank: 48th OF, 191st overall
Robbie Grossman became a trendy name last year as a waiver wire darling en route to a season where he hit 23 home runs while knocking in 67 runs, scoring 88, and stealing 20 bags. That made him only one of 10 players to put together a 20/20 season, joining certified studs like Trea Turner, Jose Ramirez, Shohei Ohtani, Fernando Tatis Jr, and Cedric Mullins. Now, heading into the 2022 season, there's some helium around Grossman as his ADP is now hovering just outside the top-150. That's what concerns me.
But, let's start with the good news. Grossman went from a patient hitter to an uber patient hitter. He's only had an O-Swing% over 20% once in his career and his overall swing rate was in the sixth percentile in 2018, fourth-percentile in 2019, and then up to the 30th-percentile in 2020. Last year, he had just a 38.4% swing rate, which was good for the second percentile in the league. The dude LOVES to keep the bat on his shoulder; however, that also seems to be working for him since he posted a 14.6% walk rate last year and has had double-digit walk rates in every year where he's played over 66% of the season. He also has a minuscule 7.4% SwStr% and makes contact at an 80.6% rate, so when he does swing, he's often able to get his bat on the ball. This solid plate approach seems to make him an ideal lead-off hitter, only this is where we run into issues.
While Grossman has become more patient of late, it seems to be because he's hunting pitches to drive more often. In addition to swinging at fewer pitches, he also raised his launch angle six degrees (to 21.1-degrees) and registered a career-high 46.2% fly-ball rate. He also jumped his Pull% up to 47.7% in 2020 and kept it relatively close in 2021 with a 44.1% rate. So, it's pretty clear from those numbers that Grossman is trying to lift the ball and drive it to the pull side, most likely to unlock the power that saw him hit 23 home runs last year and eight in 51 games in 2020 despite never having hit over 11 in any full season before that.
Clearly, the approach worked for Grossman in 2021, but I just don't think it's optimal for him going forward. He only had a 7.6% barrel rate and 87.8 mph average exit velocity last year, both below average. He also only hit the ball an average of 90.7 mph in the air, which was good for the 14th-percentile in all of baseball. So, we have a hitter with strong plate discipline who is opting to lift the ball and drive it to the pull side despite his below-average power and barrel rate. I just can't see that as an approach that maximizes his effectiveness. It's also why his batting average and xBA have dropped in essentially every year since 2018 and both his xBA and xSLG from last year suggest that he overperformed his batted ball quality.
Grossman will be 32-years-old this season, and I think we're going to see some regression in his home run totals. Statcast had his xHR from 2021 at 20 and I think we can realistically see him finish with something closer to 15-17. To top that off, Grossman had never had double-digit steals in a season before and ranked 168th in baseball last year in time from home to first, actually tied with Kris Bryant and Didi Gregorious. If you're more of a fan of Sprint Speed, he ranked 204th (tied with Mark Canha and Alec Bohm), and his 90-foot split times ranked 193rd (tied with Ian Happ and Xander Bogaerts). What that means is that I think you just got Grossman's career year. He's likely a 15/15 player who will hit .240. I simply can't justify taking that kind of production almost 50 picks before Ramon Laureano (who I think can get to 15/15 even with his suspension), 90 picks before Tommy Pham, or 150 picks before Rafael Ortega.
Adolis Garcia, Texas Rangers
NFBC ADP (OF, Overall): 38th, 162nd overall
Eric's OF rank: 49th OF, 192nd overall
You might be able to tell already that I have a thing about plate discipline. I'm simply a firm believer that a hitter with a poor approach at the plate will likely be snakebite by said approach. Raw talent and strength can only get you so far against the best pitchers in the world if you have a poor plan of attack. They will eventually expose it and take advantage of it, and that's exactly why I'm not buying in on Adolis Garcia.
For starters, he didn't actually have a great season, he had a great half of a season. Garcia hit .270/.312/.527 in 80 first-half games, punishing 22 home runs and racking up a .257 ISO while also stealing eight bases. His plus raw power was evident, crushing balls out of the park when he was fooled on pitches and then showcasing a power-speed pairing that makes fantasy managers drool. But he also had a 30.6% strikeout rate, 17.5% SwStr, and a .328 BABIP, which were slightly concerning when paired with the visual image of him being out on his front foot so often with breaking pitches.
In the second half of the season, pitchers took advantage of Garcia's aggressive approach. He still swung 54.7% of the time, which was in the 91st-percentile in all of baseball. However, his contact rate dropped from 67.2% to 65.9%, which was only in the 12th-percentile in baseball. He hit .211/.256/.370 with nine home runs and a 31.8% strikeout rate in 69 games. His x-stats suggest it actually could have been worse, with a .190 xBA and .337 xSLG, and his barrel rate dropped from a 15.6% mark in the first half to a 6.7% mark in the second half. Simply put, had he not also stolen eight bases in the second half, he would have been well below replacement level for fantasy managers.
For me, this is simply paying too much for potential stolen bases in a profile that has red flags all over it. Garci'a SwStr% last year was the 4th-worst in all of baseball among qualified hitters. His contact rate overall was the 8th worst, his contact in the zone was the 8th-worst, his O-Swing% was the 9th-worst, and his overall swing rate was the 12th-highest in the league. So we have a hitter who swings and misses at league-high rates, both in the zone and out of the zone, who also happens to swing at incredibly high rates. We also have already seen pitchers take advantage of that, leading to long cold streaks.
The only hitter with a truly similar profile to Garcia is Javier Baez, who is really an outlier who has proven to be successful despite crazy plate discipline metrics. Tyler O'Neill has similar swing-and-miss tendencies but is more patient than Garcia, swinging less overall and chasing fewer pitches out of the zone. Same for Brandon Lowe and even Miguel Sano. In fact, the player who most closely matches Garcia's aggressive profile might be Ryan Mountcastle, and you've already seen his name on this list.
Yes, Garcia has enticing power and speed, but he was also 28-years-old last season, and there was a reason that he had been at Triple-A in the St. Louis organization since 2017. His plate discipline has always been an issue, and he was never able to hit much higher than .250 during two full seasons in Triple-A in 2018 and 2019. Texas gave him a long leash last year, but after signing Marcus Semien, Corey Seager, and Kole Calhoun before the lockout even began, it's clear that Texas is making a run at the playoffs, and I don't envision them being as patient with Garcia if he starts the year the same way he ended 2021. I'd much rather get my stolen bases elsewhere and not have to roll the dice on Garcia's overly aggressive approach at the plate.
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