It’s time for Part 3 of my OF rankings, as we go through players I have in slots 61 through 100. As I mentioned in the first part of this trilogy, I went Objective this year. I aggregated 4 projection systems for the stats, then converted them to auction values and ranked them accordingly. I baseline it off a standard 5×5, 15 team league with 23 man starting lineups, basically the NFBC Main Event format. As part of the process, I weighed the categories, and I likely underweight steals a shade vs. other auction calculators. I do use these as guidelines (but not gospel!) for my own auctions and drafts.
For today’s guys, they all have negative auction values, but you still need to roster some or all of them, especially in deeper formats. I just refer to where I have them ranked (1st number) vs. their Average Draft Position (ADP) over the last 14 drafts. All critiques welcome! Again, the rankings are purely numbers, my opinions are a little different too and I will point that out on some of these!
Brandon Marsh 62 vs. ADP 79
Jac Caglianone 64 vs, ADP 51
OK I am going to start by wildly disagreeing with my rankings here on both these players.
Marsh at age 28 is pretty much a finished product. He’s a useful real life player as he’s a good fielding outfielder who can handle CF, with some speed and a .332 career OBP. But for Fantasy purposes, he’s a pretty blah power-speed combo who peaked at 16 homers and 19 steals, both in 2024. Marsh also will only short-side platoon as he’s a career .213 hitter vs. lefties with a 61 wRC+. He’s fine at pick 332 overall where he goes; you only get part-timers or weak full-timers there. But I wouldn’t bump him just because of the projections
Jac Cags is kind of the opposite. The 6th overall pick in the 2024 draft made it up to The Show after just 433 pretty excellent minor league PA’s, including a .337/.408/.617 combined line in AA and AAA. And then it all went south in KC, as he slashed just .157/ .237/.295 with 7 homers in 232 PA’s. But alas, he had the worst batted ball luck in MLB, literally. He had a .172 BABIP despite hitting it on the ground 50% of the time and an overall EV of 89.4. Also, those 7 homers came on 19 barrels, so he probably should have hit a few more. His xBA was .239, not great, but a lot better than his .157 Avg.
Jac’s 74.77% Contact% is very good for a power bat, the question is how much power can he actually tap into? He needs to wildly raise his 4.1 LA, and he likely will as he had a 14.1 LA in the minors, and when he does, he can take advantage of his home park this year as KC has moved in the fences. The composite projection has him at just 19 homers and a .243 Avg., but he’s a real candidate to blow those numbers away.
Jeff McNeil 66 vs. ADP 76
It’s a pure deep league floor play on The Squirrel here. McNeil moves to the Sutter Home launching pad and will play most every day in the middle of an excellent A’s lineup. He’s probably hit .260 with 15 or so homers and some decent counting stats. Oh, and he has 2B eligibility. Stay away in shallow leagues where you need upside, but in 15 teamers you need a few boring, consistent bats like this.
Jake Meyers 74 vs. ADP 103
I wanted to hate on this pick, but dare I say, could there be some value here? Again, this is just a deep league play, but Meyers should play every day when healthy, as he graded as an 89th percentile glove in CF, and he hit .292 with 16 steals in 381 PA’s in 2025. No, he’s not likely to hit for that kind of average again, but his .269 xBA is still good. If nothing else, he has a similar boring low double-double profile as Marsh, but with full-time run and at an ADP 110 picks later.
Jose Caballero 84 vs. ADP 52
I get the appeal here. Caballero will start at SS for the Yankees, at least for the first month or so until Anthony Volpe is ready. He’s eligible at 2B, SS, 3B, and OF in all formats and led MLB with 49 steals last year. The problem is that’s virtually all he does as he’s a .228 career hitter with 18 homers in 1133 PA’s. He will fit team builds where you’ve gone with power early and need some speed. I tend to do that and should look to Caballero more (I have not drafted him yet). He will likely still find his way onto the field even after Volpe returns as he’s a plus defender all over. But he’s not cheap, he goes in the 15th round of 15 teamers
Evan Carter 88 vs. ADP 67
Chase DeLauter 90 vs. ADP 73
We have two very similar guys here; top prospects who just can’t stay on the field. Carter came up in late 2023 and hit .300 in the postseason for the Rangers in their WS run. But he’s managed just 457 PA’s total in the bigs in 2+ seasons. He did steal 14 bases in 220 PA’s last year, so that’s super encouraging. But will he stay healthy? He’s had major back problems. And also, he might be just a platoon bat. He’s only had 68 PA’s vs. lefties in his career, but he’s hit just .071 with a -13 wRC+.
DeLauter made his long-awaited MLB debut in the 2025 postseason, getting 1 hit in 7 AB’s. The 2022 1st round pick has had just an endless series of injuries; last year, it was a sports hernia and a broken hamate bone. He made just 164 PA’s in the minors in 2024, and 177 last year. He did produce as he had a wRC+ of 132 in 2024 and 128 last year. He has decent power and is penciled in to start in CF for Cleveland, though he may platoon.
I’m good with both picks at price; you want to gamble on upside this late in drafts. If either guy can spike some health, you can really profit. Just don’t draft too many health question marks.
Denzel Clarke 98 vs. ADP 97
OK, I show the actual value here, but Clarke is a super interesting deep league sleeper. His elite glove in CF will keep him in the A’s lineup as long as he remains healthy, and if he can somehow get the K’s under controls he could provide a nice power-speed combo. Clarke had 13 homers and 35 steals in 478 minor league PA’s in 2024, while hitting .269. Unfortunately, that came with a 29.9% K%. He got called up to Sacramento in late May and flashed his incredible glove in 47 games and 159 PA’s before going down with an injury. But it came with a disastrous 38.5$ K% vs. just a 3.8% BB%. Can he get that down to something manageable? No way to know, but Brenton Doyle is an interesting comp, and he went from 35% K% and 5.1% BB% in his rookie year with a .203 AVG to 25.4%, 7.6%, and .260 in Year 2. A big difference is Doyle had 431 PA’s in 2023, so even if Clarke follows his trajectory, it may take him another half season to get there. Again, it’s just a late round deep league flyer play.
