Tag Archives: Giancarlo Stanton

The Top 150 Dynasty League Outfielders, Part 1 (#1-50)

by The Dynasty Guru

There are two very distinct sides to the crop of outfielders out there today. The most obvious side that we see is the star side, which is as deep as ever – led by as strong of a top-10 at the position as we have seen this century. And not only are they a strong group, they’re a young group as well, including four players 23 years old or younger. And nearly all of these players are of the five-tool variety, except for potentially off-the-charts power guys like Giancarlo Stanton and Josh Hamilton.

The dark side of the outfield position these days is the underbelly, which really shows itself once make your way beyond the top-40 or so. Essentially, the middle class of outfielders has nearly eroded – dropping the position quickly from your solid #3 OFs to your seemingly never-ending string of fliers. And the results of this are twofold on how you have to evaluate the position. First of all, high floor players are of greater value than at many other positions, and Nick Markakis is a great example of this. We’re not exactly waiting with bated breath for him to be a star anymore, but at least we know we’ll get some level of production from him. Because of this, he makes the top-50. Second of all, while it doesn’t show up in a positional list, the bulk of fliers out there for your final OF spot or two causes the entire group of players to get devalued on an overall standpoint. So unless there’s a particular guy you really like, you can wait and wait and wait – there will be outfielders starting the 2013 on waivers that will outperform most of the 4/5 OF types being drafted. So be patient and be prepared to scour the waiver wire.

And now your top 50 dynasty league outfielders, with commentary:

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Transaction Analysis: Jays/Marlins Supertrade

by The Dynasty Guru

“That’s not a knife, THIS is a knife.”

There are going to be a lot of transactions written up here at The Dynasty Guru, but few are likely to be bigger trades than the one which went down last night between the Marlins and Blue Jays. Now, I know everyone is up in arms about the deal for reasons much larger than the talent exchanged between the two teams, but for fantasy purposes, we’re not interested in that. However, I will add one brief thought to the echo chamber on the non-baseball related aspect to this deal: I hope that this trade finally spells the end of publicly financed stadiums for sports teams.

And with that said, let’s move on to the baseball aspect of this deal. Here is the full trade:

Blue Jays receive Jose Reyes, Josh Johnson, Mark Buehrle, Emilio Bonifacio and John Buck

Marlins receive Yunel Escobar, Henderson Alvarez, Adeiny Hecchevaria, Jeff Mathis, Jake Marisnick, Justin Nicolino and Anthony Descalfini

Value up

Justin Nicolino

The biggest winner of this trade, as far as future fantasy value, is clearly Nicolino. He is a left-hander with average stuff that plays up due to advanced command and pitchability for someone his age. However, don’t think we’re talking about Tommy Milone here — Nicolino can dial his fastball up into the low 90′s. The biggest issue with Nicolino is that he may arrive in the big leagues without a feature pitch, something which will garner swings and misses from batters at the highest level on stuff alone. Fortunately, life is a lot easier for pitchers like that in the NL East than in the AL East — not to mention the difference in future home parks on top of that. Expect Nicolino to make a big jump in my dynasty prospect rankings solely based on the scenery change.

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The Dynasty Guru’s Crystal Ball: 2017′s 5×5 Category Leaders

by The Dynasty Guru

This is a fun exercise I’ve wanted to do for a while now. Right now, Opening Day 2017 is four and a half years away, but there’s absolutely no reason I can’t start speculating about who will lead the standard 5×5 rotisserie categories that season. Who knows if the 5×5 format we use now will still be the most commonplace scoring system that far into the future anyway? Maybe a standard ESPN league will be using OBP and QS instead of AVG and W. For the purposes of this post, we’re going to assume that the categories are remaining the same.

Now, this isn’t an all-prospect list – although there are some prospects on here. And if you think I’m understating the impact of prospects in this exercise, here’s a fun fact for you. If we did this exercise after the 2007 season, looking at the 2012 category leaders, guess how many of the categories would be led by players who had not played a game in the majors at the time? The answer is 5 out of 10. And if you expand out to the top-3 in each category (including ties), you get 13 out of 33, which is 39%. Of those 13 top-3 category finishes, 7 were from players that debuted in 2008, 2 were from players that debuted in 2009, 2 were from players that debuted in 2010 and 2 were from Mike Trout, who was a junior in high school when the 2007 season ended. In fact, Trout and Buster Posey were the only two players who finished in the top-3 of any 5×5 fantasy category in 2012 to be drafted AFTER the 2007 season.

Anyway, that’s enough of an introduction – let’s go to the Future Dynasty Guru for the breakdown of what happened in 2017:

Batting Average: Miguel Cabrera (.341)

It feels like Miguel Cabrera’s been around forever, but he only turned 33 on Opening Day 2017. While his power has started to wind down (this was his first season with under 30 HR in over a decade), Cabrera continues to maintain a high batting average. The two main reasons for this are: 1) he’s still a fantastic hitter to all fields and 2) by the laws of physics, it’s been impossible for him to get any slower than he was back in 2012. Runners up: Oscar Taveras (.334), Starlin Castro (.328)

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