Top Outfielders: Late Risers And Fallers

Draft season is just about done. But it’s not too late to knock off a couple more before the curtain lifts on the 2025 MLB season, stateside edition. Every year I grapple with my love of drafting with my desire to not have too many FAAB teams. I meant to stop at 6, but I have a Main Event tonight, so it will be 7. Turns out I did one more Online Auction (OLAC) than I planned. Yes, I really was originally a math major in college. But I digress.

I wanted to go over a few outfielders who have seen big rises late in draft season, commonly known as “Helium Guys”. And of course, if we have guys lifting, we must have players falling as well. So I will dive into a couple of them as well. Pitching and speed rise late in draft season, and that’s kind of what we see here.

For reference, I will use Average Draft Position (ADP) from NFBC Rotowire Online drafts from February 14th to March 8th as the baseline, and compare it to NFBC Main Event ADP from March 8th (when it started) through March 22nd to see who moved and by how much. 

Yes, these are two different formats. The OC’s are 12 teamers while the Mains are 15’s. For that reason, I will only look at ADP movers in the top 150 or so since OC’s get more spec picks than Mains the further you go down the board. 

Oh, and smaller moves matter more the higher you go up the chain. 

 

Helium Guys

Jackson Chourio 

OC ADP 16.2, Main ADP 12.83

I covered him last week. I’ll just say that in hindsight I might take him at Pick 9 if I had a second chance, though that remains his minimum.

Wyatt Langford

OC ADP 36.51, Main ADP 29.59

Also covered. I likely would not draft him this high, though I get he has first round upside.

Lawrence Butler 

OC ADP 59.84, Main ADP 54.10

There’s an awful lot to like here. Butler made the A’s roster out of camp in 2024 then struggled early and got sent down in mid-May with an ugly .179/.281/.274 line. He figured something out and then some, and from his return on June 18th until the end of the season, he slashed .291/.330/.565 with all sorts of Fantasy goodness. Namely 20 homers, 15 steals, 55 runs, and 50 RBI’s in roughly half a season. It all looked great under the hood as well with an 11.8% Barrel% and 90.9 EV with a very playable  21.8% K%. It doesn’t hurt that he’s hit well this spring, .364/.370/.636 with 2 homers in 46 PA’s

Now he gets to move from Oakland and its endless foul territory and the relatively cold summer air to scorching hot Sacramento. We don’t know exactly how the new park will play, but it will be more hitter friendly than whatever they last called the Oakland Colosseum. Just be careful not to get too overboard there. Sutter Health Park played like an extreme pitchers park in the PCL, which is misleading since the comps are a bunch of high altitude launching pads. But while Sac-Town temps average about 20 degrees hotter than Oakland in summer, it’s only 2 degrees warmer at night, with lower humidity. And most summer games will take place in the evening. So expect more of a neutral park environment than a hitters paradise. Again though, that’s better for batters than Oakland.

If Butler can hit like he did in those 330 PA’s from June on, none of that will matter at all. Butler already carried a high cost. Now it’s mid 4th round, just ahead of Teoscar Hernandez, an established masher in the middle of a monster lineup. And it’s 2 full rounds before solid OF bats like Cody Bellinger and Seiya Suzuki. I love the upside here and you can still profit. Jarren Duran has a somewhat similar profile and he goes as a mid 2nd rounder now. It’s just a very steep price.

Christian Yelich

OC ADP 108.8, Main ADP 97.1

No one questions Yelich’s talent, it’s all about the health. He hit .315 in 2024, with 11 homers and 21 steals in just 73 games. The concern is the “just 73 games” part. Yelich cut his season short with a disc issue in his back that ultimately required major surgery.

There was some doubt that he would recover in time to start the season, but it now looks like all systems are a go. He started playing ST games a little late, but he made up for lost time and has hit .310/.355/.655 with 3 homers and 9 RBI’s in 31 PA’s.

Small sample size spring numbers excluded, Yelich has aged almost in reverse. The power has declined but the speed has not in any major way. He had 80th percentile sprint speed in 2024, pretty similar to where he ranked most of his career. Yelich was in the 87th percentile in 2019 e.g. when he stole a career high 30 bases. 

As to the power, Yelich peaked in the 2019 “Happy Fun Ball” season with 44 homers and a 15.9% Barrel% and has not topped 19 homers in a season since. If you draft Yelich, you need to factor in that he will miss games. He’s 33 years old and coming off major surgery after all. But even in 120-130 games and 500-550 PA’s he could put up a 20-30 season with a plus Avg. near the top of a good lineup. I would buy here and make sure I got an extra OF later in the draft.

Pete Crow-Armstrong

OC ADP 138.82, Main ADP 111,34

No one denies the real baseball value here as the Cubs center fielder is a terrific defender at a premiere position. And the speedster will get his steals. The question is whether he can hit successfully on the major league level. A quick glance at his Statcast page for 2024 suggests not so much.

But that does not tell the whole story. Check out PCA’s stats through the end of June vs. July 1st on.

He went from essentially a Jacob Young-level OF that actively hurt you in 4 categories to an interesting speed asset with a hint of power. And then came Spring Training 2025. He has a .519/.500/1.000 line (not a misprint) with 3 homers and 2 steals, though 0-7 in his two regular season games in Japan.. Yeah that ST line will get draft attention. He has gone as high as Pick 85 in a Main and $21 in an OLAC (one I was in actually). $21 incidentally is Brenton Doyle/James Wood level. Seiya Suzuki went for $21 and Michael Harris for $22 in my auction.

I get the love for a potential profile like PCA’s, just count me way out at this price. There’s major AVG and OBP risk. His glove will keep him on the field and his speed will help of course, but you’re getting the profile of a Bryson Stott or Andres Gimenez sort of hitter and they go 70 picks later.

 

Legends of the Fallers

Mookie Betts

OC ADP 12.38, Main ADP 17.62

Mookie got some sort of stomach bug in Japan and did not play. He apparently lost 15 pounds, which is a lot for one of the smaller guys in MLB. And then it apparently got worse since the team returned stateside. Originally I would have gladly taken the discount but it now sounds like he’s going to miss more time,

Fernando Tatis Jr.

OC ADP 11.02

3 picks might not seem like a lot, but the value curve is steep up top and it’s the equivalent of a round or two different in value not much down the board. Even earlier in draft season, Tatis was going alongside and often ahead of any of Carroll, Tucker, and Soto, now he has fallen clearly behind all of them as well as Chourio and JRod.

What gives?

It likely has more to do with others getting pushed up than anything new on Tatis Jr. Someone has to fall! But look under the hood a bit and you can see a player that feels like a top 3 overall 5-category stud but really has not produced at that level since 2021. He went .282 with 42 homers, 25 steals, 99 runs and 97 RBI’s that season, then missed all of 2022 and the first month of 2023 with shoulder surgery and a PED suspension. He was still very good in 2024, but not spectacular and he missed a ton of time with injuries. Tatis finished with a .276 Avg and 21 homers in 102 games and 438 PA’s. Oh, and he does not run nearly as much; just 11 steals on 14 attempts. His sprint speed has dropped from 96th percentile in 2021 to 77th last season. Perhaps that comes back a bit now that’s healthier, but he wasn’t running that much before the injury either, just 11 attempts through June 21st. I pick 12th in my Main tonight and almost certainly will not take Tatis there, though I may go for him when it snakes around to me in the 2nd round. 

Anthony Santander

OC ADP 85.62

“Tony Taters” popped 44 homers for the Orioles in 2024, though his 55 barrels suggest he maybe got a little fortuitous. In MLB as a whole, homers are about 56% of barrels, which suggest he hit at more like a low 30’s homer level. Yes, there are variables such as ballpark and pull rates. He’s a switch hitter, so the righty version of him would have benefitted from the Orioles moving in “:Wall-timore” in left field, except he now takes his talents north of the border to Toronto to hit in the middle of a pretty good Blue Jays lineup in a better homer park. As per Statcast, he would have hit 3 more homers in each of the last two seasons if he played all his games in Toronto as opposed to Baltimore.

I’m not sure I can totally explain the dip. Perhaps it’s just the sort of profile that drops late in draft season? He’s a pure power bat who will likely not impact your batting average much (he’s a career .246 hitter) with no speed. He’s going in about the 7th or 8th round in a 15-teamer. I can see drafting him there if you feel like you went light on power early but otherwise, I don’t find him particularly compelling.