My Most Rostered Outfielders for Early 2025

Drafting season is basically in the books. It’s now officially time to take victory laps on all your great picks. No, one half week of a 162 game season is absolutely not too soon. I drafted Wilyer Abreu as an afterthought 5th outfielder on a Main Event team and he has made Red Sox Nation forget they could have still had Mookie Betts patrolling right field. I am a genius! OK, I also drafted his teammate Ceddane Rafaela earlier despite the fact that I did not particularly target him. But hey, he’s a potential power/speed contributor with dual position eligibility coming off a great spring. What in the world was I thinking, he looks just as bad as he did most of last season.

OKm I kid, partially. Take any and all Victory Laps! This is supposed to be fun, enjoy it while you can. I actually still have two smaller drafts left in low dollar home leagues, but for all intents and purposes it is done. I tried to target certain players, but it doesn’t always work out in the draft or auction room as intended. Obviously, the big ticket guys are the hardest to actually get. I mean I would love to have Aaron Judge on every team but unless I got a really early pick or was willing to fork over a ton in an auction, he was obviously tough to get. Anyways, I broke down my player shares into dollars invested (the entry fee of the league divided by the total entry fee of all my leagues) and straight shares as a percent of all my teams. And lo and behold my top guy was actually Chris Paddack. That was really not my intent, I drafted him late a bit in Draft Champions and I added him in FAAB in a Main Event (he has the White Sox this week) so it’s a little misleading. He’s very droppable in FAAB leagues if/when this goes off the rails. 

So since I cover outfielders here and I laid out some of my targets in the last two weeks, I figured I would go over who I actually landed the most, sorted by dollars invested.

Miguel Vargas 48.6% money, 22.2% teams

Well, he’s (mostly) a leadoff hitter! Unfortunately, he leads off for the White Sox. Details, details. The one-time excellent Dodgers prospect was the key “get” for the Southsiders in the Michael Kopech deadline trade last season. He has dominated in the minors with a bit of power and speed to go with elite plate discipline. Vargas had a 151 wRC+, 8 homers and 8 steals in 191 PA’s in AAA for the Dodgers last season before the trade and White Sox callup. Unfortunately, he has struggled big time in MLB auditions over the last 3 seasons as only the plate skills have translated. Headed into 2025, Vargas has an ugly .175/.273/.312 career triple slash with just a 4.6% Barrel% and 86.2 EV.

So what’s to like? He has an exceptional 20.3% career O-Swing% and 8.6% SwStr%. To put that in perspective, the league as a whole was at 31.2% and 11.1% in 2024. Plus Vargas looked great in Spring Training, slashing .341/.423/.523 with 2 homers and a 13.5% BB% vs. a 9.6% BB%. And again, he will bat leadoff. Most importantly, he did not cost much. I got him in the 24th and 26th rounds in my Mains, an easy level to cut if this does not pan out.

Yordan Alvarez 44.86% money, 11.11% teams

I never set out to land on the same premium guy more than once in Mains, but I am not going to turn it down when it falls this way. I got him at 2:7 in one Main, then at 2:4 in the other. In the first one I drafted Kyle Tucker first and expected to take either Logan Gilbert or Zack Wheeler if they fell to me. Neither did and Yordan was an easy call that late. In the other, my choice was basically Yordan vs. Mookie Betts, and the latter was still in the throes of his mystery stomach bug so it was an easy call at the time. I did not rate Mookie much differently from Yordan or Fernando Tatis Jr. so it made all the sense in the world to me to just drop him to third of that trio. I probably would have taken Jazz Chisholm ahead of Mookie as well, but he was already gone.

The Astros slugger provides 4 categories of greatness year after year. He just provides no speed and misses some time every year on bum knees. In deep lea

Jo Adell 31.46% money, 22.2% teams

I covered him a couple weeks ago. Lots of power and speed upside and cross your fingers that the Avg. does not tank your team. He got dinged on Saturday and sat on Sunday, so hopefully, it is nothing serious. Though he’s not a major draft capital investment, I would rather hold through a potential short IL stint.

Cody Bellinger 31.15% money, 27.78% teams

I did not have a particular plan to draft Bellinger, though the move from Wrigley to the short porch in right in Yankee Stadium really serves him right. As per Statcast, Bellinger would have hit 15 home runs in 2024 if he played all his games on the North Side, vs. 24 in the Bronx. He already went yard in Saturday’s Yankee home run parade. All told though Cody comes in off a pretty meh 2024 season, hitting 18 bombs to go with just 9 steals after going 26-20 in 2023. His AVG also dipped from .307 to .266, though that represents more of his projections and career norms.

Bellinger is just a wildly inconsistent player. He went from 161 wRC+ and NL MVP in 2019 to 47 and 83 wRC+ in his last two seasons in LA amid shoulder problems before getting non-tendered after the 2022 season. I love the upside potential in pinstripes but will admit it could break either way.

Jackson Chourio 29.28% money, 16.67% teams

Also covered a couple weeks ago. I got him 12th in my 2nd Main, I would have pivoted to Vlad Jr. if Chourio went.

Juan Soto 28.66% money 27.78% teams

This is really a function of 1) I’m a Mets fan 2) I like drafting in the middle so I often set my KDS to preference there and Soto usually goes mid 1st round in 15 teamers and 3) Of course he is fantastic. I liked all of Soto, Kyle Tucker, and Corbin Carroll in that range (I mean who wouldn’t?). If I ever had the choice of all 3, I leaned to Soto. He has by far the least speed of the trio, but also clearly the most pop. The player pool generally featured plenty of speed all throughout the draft whereas there are precious few elite Power/Avg guys. That led me to Yordan above as well. There are really no wrong answers here, but let me just leave you with Soto’s 2024 Statcast page.

Max Kepler 28.66% money, 27.78% teams

I did not particularly target Kepler, I just tended to pick him at his cheap cost. He went as the 86th OF in Main Events, near platoon bats like MJ Melendez, Jake Fraley, and Jesse Winker. Kepler does not stand out much as he projects to mid-teens homers with a .240 Avg and little to no steals potential. But he will also likely play every day in a very good Phillies lineup, and perhaps right in the middle as he hit 6th and 5th so far. It also looks like he will start against most lefties, though he did sit on Sunday vs. one.

Kepler does carry platoon splits in his career as he’s just a .221 hitter vs. southpaws with an ugly 79 wRC+, as opposed to .243 and 111 vs. righties. But that was not the case in 2024 as he batted .273 vs lefties with a 104 wRC+ vs. .247 and 92. It’s perhaps more about how Kepler compares to Brandon Marsh though as the Phillies don’t really have the “line change” roster like Kepler’s Twins did last year. Johan Rojas is the only right OF on the bench. Edmundo Sosa could play OF also but he will more likely platoon with 2B Bryson Stott on occasion. Or they might need him to sub in for a dinged up Trea Turner as he did on Sunday.  Marsh actually has worse splits than Kepler vs. lefties as he’s a pretty unplayable .217 hitter with a 61 wRC+, hence Kepler should get full run as a strong side platoon and most of it vs. southpaws when healthy. 

Unfortunately, Kepler does not have a good health history. He has only played as many as 130 games once since 2019. I will ride him and his really boring accumulation stats while he remains upright, but he remains an easy cut in deeper FAAB formats if he goes on the IL.

Tommy Edman 28.35% money 27.78% teams

Christian Yelich 25.55% money 16.67% teams

Hey, two guys I mentioned that I would target and I actually got! Yelich has not done much but Edman has already blasted 3 homers in 5 games. Victory Lap Time!

Sal Frelick 27.41% money 16.67% teams

As I go over these, I realize my “guys” are mostly either very early picks that (hopefully) carry my offense or late expendable darts that will either pan out or be distant memories by summer. Count Frelick in the latter category of course. He has a nice hit tool with a career 93% Z-Contact% and just 5% SwStr%. He just has literally no pop with a 1.2% Barrel% and 20.5% HardHit%. Optimistically, Frelick improves on his .257 career Avg., and runs a bit more. He had 18 steals in 2024 which is fine but with 94th percentile sprint speed and a team that runs a lot and has few power bats behind him perhaps he can swipe 10 more bags in 2025. Plus there’s good news on the platoon front so far as he has started against 2 lefties already, though that could change when Blake Perkins returns from injury.

Teoscar Hernandez 26.17% money, 16.67% teams

Teoscar was the 18th OF off the board and I just liked him better than the outfielders right around him in Mains, James Wood, Lawrence Butler, and Brendan Doyle. He does not have the speed any of them do, though he did get 12 bags in 2024. He generally bats right behind Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, and Freddie Freeman, which should give him an insane quantity of RBI chances. And he can take advantage of them as he had a 14.9% Barrel% with 33 homers and 99 RBI’s in 2024. Give me this profile in that lineup every day.