Mike Stanton times 5. That’s really all I want in my outfield this year. Is that so wrong of me to ask for? Sadly I know this is not a reality, not even in a fantasy world so I’ll have to make due with 4 Non Stantons…somehow. I’m not going to lie and say OF is deep in a league setting like this but OF is also where you see the most turnover and opportunities throughout the season. Coach wants Yonder Alonso’s bat in the lineup, so he throws him in left field. The Texas outfield is in the infirmary ward, time to go pick up D. Murphy for a couple of weeks. Just make sure its the Rangers D. Murphy and not the Mets D. Murphy.
My realistic perfect 5 outfield set would start with taking Mike ‘don’t call me Mike, call me Giancarlo‘ Stanton in the 2nd round because I’ve already got my 1B in the first. My next OF to grab would be B.J. Upton in the 5th or 6th to give me steals without giving up on having power. After that we fly on down to the 8th or 9th and snag Jayson Werth and then don’t do anything about our OF again until the 13th round taking Logan Morrison. Then I hold my nose and slide all the way down to the 17th and pick up Vernon Wells. I’ll be backfilling my gaps with my previous positional needs that I’ve mentioned while putting together my pitching staff. I am not going to concern myself with speed a huge amount except in the wee hours of the draft. I have adhered to and subscribed to SAGNOF since before I knew what it was. Thanks Grey for putting a hard to pronounce acronym on something I once couldn’t describe.
I’ll Avoid:
Alex Gordon – In looking at Alex Gordon’s line last year, I have a hard time finding a fault with it. Good Runs, RBIs, average, Steals, and HRs. But scratch and sniff that surface and I have cause for concern. He’s not a really good basestealer as he was only 17/25. For you non-math majors that’s a 68% rate, or as I like to call it, the score you got on your last Geometry exam; It wasn’t good then and it’s not good now. He hit 3rd and leadoff throughout the year. The runs don’t drop off at leadoff but the RBIs do. Everything went just right to get that line last year. If you get 18 HRs, 13 SBs, 65 RBIs and a .285 average, are you happy you drafted Gordon around the 5th or 6th? If you answer yes, you’re easily happified and I’m not talking to you anymore.
Ichiro Suzuki – This is not because of last year. To be fair, I’ve been anti-Ichiro for the last couple of years and have been proven wrong. It’s hard betting against someone with a .326 career average so cut me some slack. My main issue with Ichiro is his move in the lineup. The Mariners want to start the year with Chone Figgins (I always like to replace the ‘n’ in his first name with a ‘d’ while pronouncing the ‘CH’ combination correctly. It makes me feel better as a Mariners fan; you can use any of the various definitions on Urban Dictionary to find out how I feel about Figgins with that information). This means they want Ichiro to bat 3rd in the lineup. Last time I checked, infield singles when someone is already on first usually lead to a GIDP. Ichiro will be 38 this season, has very little power, a high ground ball percentage and is being switched to an RBI position which will decrease his stolen base opportunities. Have I negative Nelly’d this enough for you yet? Fine, he’s also a potty mouth.
I’ll Go For:
Ben Revere – So he’s not going to win you any HR contests, but you weren’t really looking for HR contestants in the 235 ADP range were you? Ben Revere is fast. So fast you didn’t even notice he is being tabbed as an OF starter for the Twins until you saw this post. In 117 games last year, he stole 34 bases. If you do what I tell everyone not to do which is extrapolate that over a season, you are finding 47.07692 steals in the late rounds. How you get that stuff on the right side of the decimal is beyond me, but math doesn’t lie. Now you understand why my perfect outfield draft doesn’t include going high on basestealers early in the draft *smugface*.
Nolan Reimold – I had about a bajillion of these late round OF flier thingies I wanted to write up but chose Nolan because I like what they’re doing philosophy-wise in Baltimore; filling their lineup with guys whose motto is ‘hit a HR or strikeout’. It’s like the Blue Jays philosophy minus pitch recognition. Nolan won’t win you a batting title but if they give him 500+ ABs, you are probably looking at .250 with 20 to 25 HRs. Think of him as a just in case for Vernon Wells or Logan Morrison. I wonder if any parent with a family name of Case has ever named their son Justin before? I also wonder how therapy went for him.
Situation to Monitor: Washington
There are a lot of things I don’t trust about the Nationals lineup this year (I almost went with a situation call in my 2B or SS section because I see Ian Desmond getting the boot, moving Espinosa to SS and having Lombardozzi gap-fill until they call Rendon up later this summer. Yep, I just cheated; deal with it. Now back to our OF blurb). Its not that I don’t like the players involved, I don’t like what management thinks of them. Washington has tried like mad to get B.J. Upton to be their centerfielder to no avail and might be giving Roger Bernadina a shot this Spring. They also sorta gave him a shot last spring by bouncing him up and down and in and out…hrm, that sounded a bit obscene. The point is, the Nationals don’t seem comfortable with Bernadina in a starting role. Plus they’ve got this little known kid down on the farm named Bryce Harper whom they’re quite smitten with. I like Bernadina’s skill set, the Nationals don’t and Harper is going to sell a poopton of tickets when he gets called up. The only way Morse gets moved is if Adam LaRoche is not healthy so Bryce won’t likely play in LF. Werth is getting paid too much to be sat so he’s going to stay in the outfield. That leaves Roger and the people who drafted him getting bounced up and down and in and out and not in a good way.
