Fantasy Baseball 2014: Outfield Projections #1-45

Ryan Braun
Ryan Braun
Christopher Hanewinckel USA TODAY Sports

So far we’ve covered first base, second base, third base, shortstop, and catcher. Today we turn to the outfield.

When we talk about underrated outfielders, we are usually focused on those with a late ADP. This year, one of the most underrated outfielders is among the league’s best. After a suspension cut his season short, the fantasy baseball world has soured on Ryan Braun. On FantasyPros, Braun is ranked as the sixth top outfielder, behind Bryce Harper. Some analysts have him ranked as low as 14th on their outfield rankings.

It’s easy to criticize analysts’ rankings but it’s far more advantageous to take advantage of a market that’s down on a perennial MVP candidate. Depending on your league, Braun is likely to fall far lower than his value (you’ll see below that his value is very high). That means you can snag an MVP candidate as late as the second round (maybe even later?).

Let’s take a look at what Braun has done leading up to his shortened 2013 season.

In six full seasons, Braun has his 32 or more home runs in five of them. He even managed 34 in 113 games in his rookie season, winning Rookie of the Year honors. The only time he failed to reach 32 home runs was in 2010 when he hit 25.

In each of those six seasons, Braun has posted 97 or more RBI. In his last two full seasons, he’s posted at least 110 RBI.

In each of those six seasons, Braun has scored 91 or more runs. Over his last two full seasons, Braun scored a combined 217 runs.
In each of those six seasons, Braun has stolen at least 14 bases and stole at least 30 in each of his last two full seasons.

In five of those six seasons, Braun has batted .304 or higher and has a career .312 average.
As you can see, there are few players more consistently elite than Braun. Steroid suspension or not, there is no reason to expect Braun not to produce the numbers he has always produced. If given the choice between Braun and someone like Andrew McCutchen, Carlos Gonzalez, or Adam Jones, I’m going with Braun and I recommend you do as well. As you can see in the projections, even numbers slightly below his usual output still make him the second-best option available.

With all that said, let’s take a look at what we can expect from Braun and the top 45 fantasy baseball outfielders in 2014.

Stay tuned for the second part of our fantasy baseball outfield projections and be sure to check out our projections for first base, second base, third base, shortstop, and catcher.

Player BA HR RBI R SB
Mike Trout 315 26 90 110 35
Ryan Braun 298 32 104 102 20
Andrew McCutchen 307 23 88 95 23
Carlos Gonzalez 301 26 85 85 20
Adam Jones 283 29 88 95 14
Jacoby Ellsbury 290 10 57 93 40
Carlos Gomez 265 21 65 75 37
Bryce Harper 270 22 67 80 14
Jay Bruce 256 30 99 88 7
Jose Bautista 260 32 86 88 5
Giancarlo Stanton 260 34 87 76 3
Yasiel Puig 285 26 75 82 18
Justin Upton 270 25 75 90 12
Shin-Soo Choo 280 19 62 93 20
Matt Holliday 294 22 92 89 4
Hunter Pence 279 23 96 86 14
Allen Craig 310 16 90 80 1
Wil Myers 280 24 85 79 9
Yoenis Cespedes 260 25 82 75 11
Alex Rios 277 18 82 80 6
Starling Marte 279 12 48 84 38
Carlos Beltran 276 23 84 79 3
Mark Trumbo 242 30 95 78 5
Matt Kemp 280 22 72 75 12
Alex Gordon 272 17 75 90 11
Jason Heyward 257 18 70 82 9
Ben Zobrist 270 15 72 82 10
Billy Hamilton 249 4 35 70 60
Jayson Werth 285 25 78 78 10
Josh Hamilton 267 25 90 78 5
Domonic Brown 268 25 78 67 6
Shane Victorino 275 14 60 80 20
Michael Cuddyer 275 20 75 69 2
Alfonso Soriano 252 26 88 72 10
Curtis Granderson 240 26 72 76 13
Martin Prado 282 13 75 70 4
Desmond Jennings 250 14 55 85 24
Leonys Martin 265 9 50 70 30
Austin Jackson 272 13 55 98 12
Coco Crisp 260 14 54 78 25
Nelson Cruz 260 26 80 65 7
Norichika Aoki 285 9 46 80 20
Brett Gardner 270 7 48 80 27
Michael Bourn 266 7 50 82 30
Carl Crawford 279 8 45 69 18

 

author avatar
Igor Derysh
Igor Derysh is Editor-at-Large at XN Sports and has been featured in The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Herald, Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sun-Sentinel, and FantasyPros. He has previously covered sports for COED Magazine, Fantasy Alarm, and Manwall.com. !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');