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March 1, 2013

Pre-Season Positional Rankings

Top 50 Fantasy Outfielders, Part Two: 26-50

by Mike Gianella, Josh Shepardson and Paul Singman

The Baseball Prospectus fantasy team has been rolling out its positional rankings over the past couple of weeks, and will conclude the process next week. Each team member assigned to cover a position will create an initial top 15 (more for outfielders and starting pitchers) on his own. He will then send that list to the rest of the team for discussion, at which point we will debate the rankings, both in terms of each player’s specific placement and the merits on which he was included in the top 15. This back-and-forth debate will yield the final list, which will be presented by the original author with notes on the pertinent players. We encourage you to bring your opinions into the fray using the comment section below.

Today, we continue the rankings with the second half of our outfielders list, featuring the players ranked 26-50. We released our top 25 outfielders on Wednesday, and you can view that article here.

Without further ado, here’s the list...

26. Carl Crawford, LAD
27. Nelson Cruz, TEX
28. Josh Reddick, OAK
29. Ben Zobrist, TBR
30. Angel Pagan, SFG
31. Norichika Aoki, MIL
32. Shane Victorino, BOS
33. Josh Willingham, MIN
34. Mark Trumbo, LAA
35. Hunter Pence, SFG
36. Torii Hunter, DET
37. Brett Gardner, NYY
38. Cameron Maybin, SDP
39. Melky Cabrera, TOR
40. Curtis Granderson, NYY
41. Carlos Gomez, MIL
42. Jayson Werth, WSH
43. Alfonso Soriano, CHC
44. Ben Revere, PHI
45. Nick Markakis, BAL
46. Andre Ethier, LAD
47. Alejandro De Aza, CHW
48. Ichiro Suzuki, NYY
49. Nick Swisher, CLE
50. Chris Davis, BAL

Notes:

26. Crawford was healthy enough to play in just 31 games last season, and that followed up a disappointing debut with the Red Sox in 2011. He's on the wrong side of 30, and he hasn't helped fantasy teams in standard formats since 2010. Prior to stumbling the last two years, though, Crawford was one of the best outfielders in fantasy baseball. He had hit .300 or better five times in his career and stolen fewer than 45 bases in just one of his first eight full seasons in the bigs. The speed seems to still be intact. Crawford stole five bases in five chances last season, and even in his forgettable 2011 campaign, he went 18-for-24 in that department. Unlike many speedsters, he wasn't a slap .300 hitter. Crawford has never reached 20 homers in a season, but he's reached double digits in all but two of his full seasons. He'll look to right the ship as a table-setter for the Dodgers this year.