This is one of the hardest positions to plan out due to the pure number of players available to draft. Many leagues use the positions of left field, center field and right field while others just use outfielders. Due to the amount of multi-positional outfielders, I am doing the tiers as one big group. Outfielders can be 20-25 percent of your roster if you have four or five outfielders on your roster. That means you will be taking outfielders throughout the draft and unless you ignore your pitching staff and every other position, you will not have starters all from the top tiers. This means having a strategy to take outfielders throughout the draft and using tiers to determine the best time to make that pick.
Tiers
When looking at each position, I will divide the players into tiers. In theory, each tier should be filled with similar players. The ultimate goal would be to get the last player in each tier as that would mean you waited the perfect amount of time to draft that position and didn’t have to reach in the draft. Of course even within a tier we can have our favorites and preferences which are hard to ignore. Sometimes I have to force myself to take a player I don’t like or usually want on my team when they are the last player in a tier and they are clearly the best pick.
When doing your own tiers you should always ask yourself if you would be good with the next player, if not, that player goes into the next tier. Keep in mind that when deciding between players from different positions, if you set your tiers up correctly, you should not have any Super-Stars left to draft before going on to the All-Star tier, no more All-Star tier players before moving on to the Solid players, etc., etc. Within each tier names are listed in alphabetical order with their 2016 projected point totals from the CCO leagues on ESPN.
Previous Tiers
MVP
Bryce Harper (626), Mike Trout (653)
Easily will go with the top picks of any draft and if you are drafting after the fourth pick and these guys are there, just say thank you for the gift.
Super-Star
Jose Bautista (609), Chris Davis (589), Andrew McCutchen (598), Giancarlo Stanton (601)
All are easy picks at the top of the draft and pretty much comes down to which pick you are at personal preference.
All-Star
Mookie Betts (539), Charlie Blackmon (496), Yoenis Cespedes (520), Nelson Cruz (530), Carlos Gonzalez (509), Curtis Granderson (497), Jayson Heyward (497), Adam Jones (499), J.D. Martinez (546), A.J. Pollock (521), George Springer (510), Justin Upton (523)
This is where the choices get interesting as there are a lot of players that can provide your team with good seasons, yet a little more risk in this group. There is also a good mix of young and old, power and on base guys.
Solid
Ryan Braun (465), Jay Bruce (490), Lorenzo Cain (466), Kole Calhoun (486), Shin-Soo Choo (490), Corey Dickerson (463), Adam Eaton (483), Brett Gardner (466), Carlos Gomez (491), Randal Grichuk (462), Matt Kemp (484), Starling Marte (485), Hunter Pence (493), David Peralta (470), Gregory Polanco (475), Kyle Schwarber (462), Christian Yelich (461), Yasiel Puig (461), Ben Zobrist (466)
I would have no problem having an outfield filled with one guy from the better tiers and then the other two from this one. Also getting to the point where we may see some guys are more platoon guys and not play every single game.
OK
Aaron Altherr (421), Michael Brantley (418), Billy Burns (409), Marlon Byrd (413), Melky Cabrera (435), Michael Conforto (428), Delino Deshields (434), Jacoby Ellsbury (427), Dexter Fowler (431), Alex Gordon (437), Matt Holliday (416), Ender Inciarte (403), Kevin Kiermaier (422), Hyun Soo Kim (425), Nick Markakis (406), Brad Miller (412), Wil Myers (421), Gerardo Parra (421), Joc Pederson (447), Kevin Pillar (415), Josh Reddick (421), Domingo Santana (403), Steven Souza Jr. (426), Mark Trumbo (408)
Hopefully you don’t have more than one starter from this group and if possible your fourth outfielder would come from this group.
If You Wait
Carlos Beltran (362), Byron Buxton (358), Khris Davis (398), Eduardo Escobar (383), Avisail Garcia (384), Billy Hamilton (368), Josh Harrison (392), Austin Jackson (376), Brandon Moss (399), Marcell Ozuna (385), Stephen Piscotty (398), Hanley Ramirez (400), Ben Revere (395), Denard Span (390), Danny Valencia (388), Jayson Werth (396)
Still some decent players available but most likely should just be bench players as this point.
Summary
In a perfect world you will spread out your outfield picks throughout the draft and get one from each of the main tiers. If you can do that you are likely to have a very good starting outfield and the depth. One of the important things to remember is most teams only have one maybe two of their starting outfielders that play every day. That leads to needing to have good complimentary bench players. Sometimes you have to dig deep, way past these tiers to find some good right-handed outfield bats that play only against left-handed starting pitchers. On days they play, they usually have a very good points per game average as they hit lefties very well. One of the best ways is to see if you can add the right-handed hitting outfielder that plays for the same team as a left-handed hitting outfielder that gets platooned.
Next up is Relief Pitchers!
CCO Leagues
CCO fantasy baseball leagues are on ESPN and we will fill up to 20 teams in each league. This year we will have two different styles of leagues.
- Weekly H2H with daily lineups, rules on pitching.
- Weekly H2H with daily lineups, rules on pitching, auction draft and keepers.
If you are interested in playing in one of these leagues, please send your email information to Neil at this link and he will forward it to me. Also include which league you are interested in playing. We have three leagues right now. The style we used the last two years is option one and we have two different leagues that are full but I will take more names for a waiting list or even to create another league. Option 2 is the auction/keeper league and it is almost full.