Top 100 Outfielders For 2022 Fantasy Baseball: Preseason Tiers Edition

Intro

Greetings Razzers, it’s another hot season here at Razzball, and have I got a treat for you. This year’s preseason edition of outfield rankings done by yours truly will now feature outfield TIERS. Everybody loves tiers. However, these aren’t just your everyday run-of-the-mill tiers, No sir (/ma’am). These are Coolwhip’s latest labor of love and lament to navigate the wild field of outfielders. My mission, to help you sort through the mess and guide your ship to port. Outfielders are the most prominent position on the offensive side of the ball and I thought I would take a stab at putting together a pairings tool built into the rankings board similar to what Grey has with the starting pitchers (sorta). During the season I’ll be updating a ROS board based on production and my tea leaves but for today, a bit of a draft guide. Let’s talk about it.

CWT – What the hell is that?

These are patent-pending Coolwhip Tiers (CWT). And what CWT does for you is it allows you see where I have the wide breadth of the outfield landscape valued among their peers. These tell you whether I view said outfielder as an OF1 to OF5. And each tier corresponds to a particular Coolwhip $ value. The tiers though are important for guiding you on when you should look at taking an OF for each slot. Most standard leagues these days have 5 OF slots and it’s important to fill those spots in an intentional manner while you juggle the rest of the roster. If you overcommit it can lead you to be thin in other areas that are harder to replace in the season. Since every MLB team has 3 starting outfielders there are more players for those spots (duh) and thus they are easier to replace. You can then make sure to leave a spot or 2 clear for weaker/riskier players that can be cycled. Utilize at least 1-2 players from tiers 4 and 5. could be two 4s, two 5s, whichever.

CW$ – What’s with the money?

That’s Coolwhip Dollars, my dude! Does it mean you can buy something? Not really. The “$” is really a stand-in for value. The CW$ is me assigning a single simplified numerical value to the contribution of the player, paired with risk, injury, etc. And the idea behind these values is that your goal (minimum) should be to collect a 5-person outfield around the $15 total. If you can get close to that, fine. This obviously doesn’t take into account the rest of your roster (that’s what Rudy’s War Room is for). The dollars though aren’t the main focus, it’s more a tool to help you with spreading resources through the tiers. So think more 15 points on the tiers (CWT) vs the dollar amounts. You could follow the traditional route and take one from each tier and that will get you to 15 (OF1, OF2, OF3, OF4, OF5) or shake it up.

My goal for this is to provide you with a roadmap for building out your outfield during the draft without overinvesting in roster positions in FAAB/waiver leagues that are usually ideal for churning out weak links for hot bats and breakouts (MI/CI/UT, OF4, OF5). I’ve talked about this some before, but let’s revisit it now. You usually want 2-3 of these spots to remain flexible and not grow too attached to them so that you can adapt to variance and the hot/cold of less valuable players. Without this adaptability, you are handicapping your potential to remain competitive. So the idea is don’t invest too heavily in OF in the CWT 1-3 range and take some risks with some 4s and 5s so it is easier to let them go should they fail. Be like water, my friend. Without further ado the list…

The List

Once again, the individual ranks (and to a degree the dollars) don’t really matter, what’s important are the tiers :) Any outfielder not listed, consider them tier 5.

If you want more Coolwhip to top off your baseball experience, fantasy or otherwise, you can follow me on Twitter: @CoolwhipRB.