The MLB offseason continues its cold spell as the weather turns riding in the Northeast. However, we can still press on and take stock of what happened in 2024 and see what lessons we can learn for 2025. In order to do that, we’re going to go position by position to break down the overall landscape and help find the best pockets of value.
Similar to last year, when I wrote my State of the Union for each position, I’m going to look at the value produced in 2024 by regular starters at each position to see where the most value is coming from each position and identify areas of strength that we can target in our drafts and areas of weakness that we can try and avoid. Last year, much of my analysis was based on the impact of the new rule changes, so this year we’ll just look at the overall landscape and see how much carried over.
Table of Contents
- 2024 Player Rater Review
- 2024 Roto Category Review
- Key Takeaways
- Off-season storylines
- My top 15 rankings at the position for 2025
A few weeks ago, we started with first base and then covered second base, third base, shortstop, and catcher, so now we’ll wrap up by talking about the outfield. To get a quick sense of the position, I looked at how many shortstops earned $10 in value according to the Fangraphs Player Rater.
Fangraphs Player Rater $10+ Earned | |
2023 | 2024 |
32 | 30 |
Not a huge change here with only two fewer outfielders earning double-digit value in 2024. We have too many players here in the outfield to break down every player who entered the list or fell off the list, but we can highlight a few of the big names who failed to hit double-digit value in 2024, and you’ll see injury as a huge component of it. In 2024, none of Kyle Tucker, Ronald Acuna Jr., Michael Harris II, Adolis Garcia, Randy Arozarena, or Josh Lowe hit double digits despite doing it in 2023. In fact, Lowe posted a negative value in 2024. Of that group, only Arozarena and Garcia played a full season in 2024.
All of which is to say, I’m not making too much of the slight dip in fantasy production in 2024.
Category Breakdown
Now we’ll see what value the outfield position provided in each standard category in a Roto 5x5 league. I sorted by players who accumulated 300 plate appearances and looked to see if there was any meaningful change in the standard 5x5 offensive categories (batting average, home runs, runs, RBI, and steals). I did this for 2022 and 2023 last year, so we’ll compare those numbers and then dive into WHAT changed, WHY it may have happened, and HOW it should impact our 2025 draft plan.
Batting Average
Average over .260 | ||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
39 | 54 | 35 |
I bumped the batting average threshold up a little bit for outfielders because we have so many players to choose from, so I want to get a more accurate depiction of how many of these players will help your fantasy team instead of focusing on simply who won’t drag you down.
Oh, OK, so now we see some of that earlier production dip, but in a bit of a bigger way. It’s not a huge surprise, given that offensive production was down in 2024 after the new rules introduced before the 2023 season kicked off a major offensive outburst. However, seeing 20 fewer outfielders hit at least .260 catches my eye.
In 2024, only three outfielders with over 300 plate appearances hit over .300 and only two others hit over .290. In 2023, nine outfielders hit at least .290, and four of them hit over .300. That may not seem like a major discrepancy, but when we’re looking for elite value at a position, having four fewer players producing a high-end batting average is a significant drop at the position. It means fewer players are truly separating themselves from the pack at the position when it comes to batting average, which means, if we want an advantage here, we might have to ensure we get one of the guys who sat at the top of the leaderboard.
Some of that drop-off was also due to injury, as Ronald Acuna Jr., Mookie Betts, and Michael Harris all failed to meet either threshold in 2024 and also missed significant time with injuries. We also saw major stepbacks from Cody Bellinger, Masataka Yoshida, Josh Lowe, and Nolan Jones, who all hit .289 or better in 2023. All of which is to say that the top of the leaderboard for outfield batting average looked entirely different in 2024.
Aaron Judge, Yordan Alvarez, Jackson Merrill, Riley Greene, Steven Kwan, Mookie Betts, and Juan Soto topped the board in 2024 and all seem reasonable bets to do so again in 2025, so if we assume that we get bouncebacks and full seasons from Acuna Jr., Tucker, Harris, and Christian Yelich at a bare minimum, then the top of the category gets a bit deeper and we feel a bit more confident about the amount of solid batting average assets we can find here.
Home Runs
Home Runs at 20 or over | ||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
15 | 27 | 22 |
Another category and another slight dip in production; however, an uptick from what we saw in previous seasons. The cream of the crop remains Aaron Judge and Yordan Alvarez with Juan Soto and Anthony Santander joining them near the top of the leaderboards. Kyle Schwarber would have been near there again, but he didn’t play enough games in the outfield to qualify. When you factor in the injuries to Ronald Acuna Jr. and Kyle Tucker and the poor seasons from Adolis Garcia, Luis Robert Jr., and Julio Rodriguez you begin to see how the leaderboard looked different in 2024.
However, the big signal to me is how the overall power landscape changed in 2024. The top five outfielders each had at least 31 home runs in 2024 but after those five guys, the total drops to just 24 home runs. In 2023, nobody reached the 50 home runs Judge hit in 2024 but 10 players hit at least 30 home runs and 17 guys had 26 or more. We’re just not seeing that same level of top-end power now that MLB has seemingly course-corrected after the offensive explosion in 2023.
I think we’ll see more players approach 30 home runs in 2025 with Tucker and Acuna Jr healthy and some other guys enjoying a bit of a bounceback; however, I still think we might need to prioritize these elite power hitters early in drafts.
RBI
RBI at 70 or over | ||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
22 | 33 | 29 |
Another category where we’re seeing improvement from 2022 but still a step back from the boom year of 2023. Additionally, the same names are at the top of the leaderboard here: Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, Anthony Santander, Yordan Alvarez, Teoscar Hernandez, Jackson Merrill, along with Bryan Reynolds and Spencer Steer, who drove in 92 runs kind of quietly in Cincinnati.
Much like with home runs, we also see a dip in high-end production with RBIs amongst outfielders. Only seven outfielders had 90 RBI in 2024 with 13 posting at least 85. In 2023, there were eight outfielders with at least 100 RBI and 12 with at least 93 runs driven in. That’s a pretty meaningful dip in elite production at the position, and even if we expect some of it to bounce back with those aforementioned stars coming back healthy, we still need to prioritize the big bats in the middle of the order as we head into 2025 drafts.
Runs
Runs at 75 or over | ||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
20 | 30 | 24 |
We’re beginning to see a trend here: more production than in previous seasons but still down from the 2023 peak. We’re also seeing slightly less value here than we saw with the power metrics.
A few of the names from previous lists carry over here: Juan Soto, Aaron Judge, Anthony Santander, Yordan Alvarez, Teoscar Hernandez, Riley Greene, Nick Castellanos, and Jackson Merrill. All of those players are beginning to distance themselves from the rest of the pack in terms of multi-category upside. However, we’ve also got some new names at the top of the leaderboard like Corbin Carroll, Jarren Duran, Jurickson Profar, Ian Happ, and Brandon Nimmo.
With just one category to go, we’re seeing that the truly elite four and five-category upside at the outfield position may not be as deep as we’ve experienced in the past. Names like Julio Rodriguez, Randy Arozarena, Fernando Tatis Jr., or Cody Bellinger haven’t come up once. While they could certainly explode again in 2025, this shows us that the year-in and year-out consistency of some of these top hitters is not to be taken for granted. What we get from Judge, Yordan, Soto, Santander, plus Acuna Jr. and Tucker when healthy is not as common as we think. We believe we can get it from Julio Rodriguez, Corbin Carroll, Jackson Merrill, and Jackson Chourio, among others, but it doesn’t always pan out that way.
And, yes, I included Santander in there even though we know he’s coming off of a career year. He also has three years in a row with at least 90 RBI, 78 runs scored, and 28 home runs. The batting average will hover around .240 which keeps him as a fringe four-category hitter but a .240 average doesn’t have to hurt you if you have solid batting average hitters earlier in the draft. Unlike many of the other four-category outfielders, he doesn’t get drafted in the first few rounds in any format.
Stolen Bases
Steals at 20 or over | ||
2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
9 | 30 | 21 |
Similar to what I did with batting average, I raised the threshold for stolen bases among outfielders since so many qualified at the lower threshold. Getting 15 steals is fine but it’s net neutral when it comes to fantasy value, so by raising it to 20, I’m hoping to find how many outfielders are making meaningful contributions in the stolen base category.
OK, so it’s not just the power numbers that saw a meaningful decline from 2023; we’re also seeing the top-end speed numbers come down. That’s a bit of a surprise to me since it felt like stolen bases were still going up across the league. Obviously, this is a huge increase from what we saw in 2022 and we shouldn’t lose sight of that, but it’s not quite the “category-winning” value we saw in 2023.
In 2023, there were two outfielders who stole at least 67 bases and seven who stole at least 30. In 2024, no outfielder stole more than 40 bases, but we did also get seven who stole 30. Therefore, the outlier production didn’t carry over after Ronald Acuna Jr got hurt and Esteury Ruiz was demoted, but the vast majority of the production near the high end of the leaderboard looks similar.
There were also some similar names at the top of the leaderboard in 2024: Jazz Chisholm Jr., Corbin Carroll, Jarren Duran, Brenton Doyle, Jake McCarthy, Julio Rodriguez, and Josh Lowe all stole at least 22 bases in each season. We also had that familiar name Spencer Steer pop up here with 25 steals, Cedric Mullins returned after a brutal 2023 by posting 32 steals, and Jazz Chisolm led qualified outfielders with 40 steals after being hurt for much of 2023.
Key Takeaways
As one might expect, injuries to Ronald Acuna Jr., Kyle Tucker, Christian Yelich, and Michael Harris took a little bit of the firepower away from the top of the outfield position in 2024. We also had players with questionable approaches in the batter’s box like Adolis Garcia and Randy Arozarena suffer through poor seasons. What resulted was a much thinner “elite” range of outfielders, and even if you believe many of those guys can rebound in 2025 (plus Julio Rodriguez), the truth is that we can’t feel 100% certain of it. Yes, young studs like Jackson Chourio, James Wood, and Wyatt Langford may also step up to fill the void, but selecting one of them as your top outfielder is a major roll of the dice.
With Ronald Acuna Jr. not likely to start the year in the Braves’ lineup, you will have to draft an outfielder early if you really want to guarantee five category upside or even four-and-a-half categories with somebody like Aaron Judge or Juan Soto.
Offseason Storylines
- How healthy will Ronald Acuna Jr. be at the start of the season?
- Where will Anthony Santander sign?
- Is Aaron Judge impacted at all by Juan Soto not being in the lineup?
- Does a full season in the outfield have any impact on Oneil Cruz’s health or offensive production?
- Where will the Yankees end up playing Cody Bellinger?
- Do the Cubs keep or trade Seiya Suzuki?
- Where will Jurickson Profar sign and just how flukey was 2024?
Top 20 Fantasy Outfielders for 2025
- Aaron Judge - New York Yankees
- Kyle Tucker - Chicago Cubs
- Mookie Betts - Los Angeles Dodgers
- Juan Soto - New York Mets
- Fernando Tatis Jr. - San Diego Padres
- Yordan Alvarez - Houston Astros
- Julio Rodriguez - Seattle Mariners
- Corbin Carroll - Arizona Diamondbacks
- Ronald Acuna Jr. - Atlanta Braves
- Jarren Duran - Boston Red Sox
- Jackson Merrill - San Diego Padres
- Jazz Chisholm Jr. - New York Yankees
- Jackson Chourio - Milwaukee Brewers
- Teoscar Hernandez - Los Angeles Dodgers
- Wyatt Langford - Texas Rangers
- Oneil Cruz - Pittsburgh Pirates
- James Wood - Washington Nationals
- Michael Harris II - Atlanta Braves
- Anthony Santander - Free Agent
- Seiya Suzuki - Chicago Cubs
