I’m so effin’ stuffed from stuffing and turkey and turkey stuffing and–Why didn’t the Indians just pounce on the Pilgrims when they were in a food coma? Any hoo! Happy Thanksgiving, now let’s get down to bidness, as Hip Grey says. In my Harrison Bader fantasy outlook post, I went over a lot of what I think of the Cards’ outfield. Same pretty much holds true for Tyler O’Neill. Find Bader’s name and replace with O’Neill. And, I guess, replace Harrison with Tyler, otherwise you’re gonna be reading about Harrison O’Neill who does not exist. If there’s a Harrison O’Neill reading this, sorry, you’re Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense. All I’ll say specifically about Tyler O’Neill regarding playing time is, if he’s the rookie outfielder call-up for the Cards, it likely hurts Bader and vice versa. Okay, with that out of the way, Tyler O’Neill is a sexy ball of meat. There’s a GIF below that I admired for about twenty-five minutes. He looks a little like Jeff Bagwell, right? He has much worse swing tendencies than Bagwell, but I’ll get to that in paragraph numero dos. Right now, let’s admire that GIF. Short, compact, monster power. Makes me want to buy groceries from Tom Thumb. Wait, what? Well, I guess if subliminal advertising is gonna work on me from that clip, it’s not Cox. By the way, Landrum backwards means nothing, so not sure what that outfield fence is getting at.
So, what can we expect from Tyler O’Neill for 2018 fantasy baseball?
Dude’s beastmode with hashtags all over the place. He is exactly the kind of guy that is much more interesting for fantasy than real baseball. Last year, he had 31 HRs and 14 SBs in Triple-A. My eyes legit just rolled up and I fainted. My God, man, can I own this guy everywhere on the quickfast? Of course, there’s a big drawback, as lightly mentioned in the opening paragraph — he swings and misses. A lot. Last year, his strikeout rate was near 27% across two teams’ minor league systems (he was traded midseason to the Cards from the M’s). Oh, and on that parenthetical, I like O’Neill even more because the M’s traded him away. Dipoto is Di-loco. Okay, back to the K-rate. Just saying 27% doesn’t tell you the full story. It was 5% higher in High-A. That’s right, boys and five girls, he’s getting better. As we know from all of baseball, a 27+% strikeout rate is not a deal breaker, and O’Neill could get his down to a 24-27% range in the majors, while hitting 35 homers. Oh, and he’s only 22 years old! The Cards’ outfield shituation is my only hesitation about saying O’Neill is going to be the NL Rookie of the Year in 2018. Playing time for 2018 will be a concern. However, if he sees 450+ ABs, he gets 27 homers and a .240 average with a handful of steals too. Yeah, I’m a fan. In redrafts, he won’t be draftable this year in March (outside of NL-Only leagues), but if an injury happens, I’ll be going all-in on him. For 2018, I’ll give Tyler O’Neill the projections of 21/10/32/.238/3 in only 207 ABs, but there’s a chance for much more. With the right breaks, he could be 2018’s Cody Bellinger.
