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National League outfielders that could be ADP busts for 2018 fantasy baseball. Chris Doyle lists NL OF to avoid in fantasy drafts.
One of biggest mistakes fantasy owners can make is overpaying for career years. While some players experience legitimate breakouts, others are the product of a fortunate set of circumstances.
Of course, some players are just plain overvalued. As we inch closer to the start of the regular season, it's more important than ever to identify players to avoid on draft day.
Below are four National League outfielders who are about to bust based on ADP in 2018.
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National League Outfield Busts
Domingo Santana, Milwaukee Brewers
It’s easy to like a lot of what Domingo Santana did last season. Power? Check. Santana hit 30 home runs for the first time in his career and knocked in 85 runs. Speed? He showed that, too, swiping 15 bases. He also hit a respectable .278 with 88 runs scored, contributing in all five standard roto categories. But, there’s reason for skepticism heading into 2018.
Santana was awfully fortunate in the fly ball department, hitting just 27.7% of his batted balls in the air while pounding 44.9% into the ground. It took a lofty 31% HR/FB rate just to scrape 30 HR. Santana also managed to succeed on 79% of his steal attempts after hovering around 50% for his career prior to 2017. His only saving grace is his propensity to hit line drives (27.4%), but even that metric isn’t fully supported. Though he finished 59th in average exit velocity, that ranking plummeted to 143rd for fly balls and line drives. There’s still a good skill set here, but expecting a repeat would not be wise. Grab him if he slips, otherwise take a pass and invest in a safer option.
Steven Souza Jr., Arizona Diamondbacks
Despite joining Santana in the career year department, Steven Souza Jr. was offloaded by the Tampa Bay Rays to the Arizona Diamondbacks and initially this appeared to be a good thing. Alas, enter the humidor. Souza’s hard contact rate was decent (34.1%) but he’ll likely lose a few ticks playing half his games at Chase Field in 2018. Of course, he has to make contact first. Souza’s 66% contact rate was abysmal, and he hit 45% of his batted balls on the ground, just like Santana. Also similar to the aforementioned Brewers outfielder, Souza benefited from a career high HR/FB rate of 25.6%. The 16 SB were gravy, but his 80% success rate was also a career best. In short, a lot of things went right for Souza in 2017 and he’ll be hard-pressed to replicate that success.
Hunter Renfroe, San Diego Padres
Normally, a 26-homer rookie season would be an attention grabber, but normal is far from an appropriate descriptor in today’s power-charged game. We’ve reached a point where 26 home runs is not even special anymore - 117 players hit 20 or more in 2017. So, while Renfroe’s final line in 122 games (26 HR, 51 R, 58 RBI) wasn’t anything to shake a stick at for a first-year player, a deeper dive shows there’s not much potential for growth. First, the plate skills: Renfroe struck out in 29.2% of his at-bats while walking just 5.6% of the time. The real problem, however, was his performance versus right-handed pitching. The slugging outfielder managed a paltry .636 OPS against righties. To put that into perspective, that was worse than Ryan Goins and Martin Maldonado and good for 312th of 346 hitters with more than 150 plate appearances. Yikes.
The Padres had a crowded outfield situation even before Wil Myers was pushed to a corner spot after the signing of Eric Hosmer to play first base. With Manny Margot entrenched in centre, Renfroe is left to compete with a slew of other outfielders like Jose Pirela, Matt Szczur, Travis Jankowski and Franchy Cordero. It’s highly likely Renfroe could see the short side of the platoon starting mainly against lefties, which would severely limit his plate appearances. Keep him in mind for daily leagues to take advantage of the matchups (he hit .316/.392/.684 against southpaws) but look elsewhere if you’re in need of a full time outfielder.
Billy Hamilton, Cincinnati Reds
You know what you’re getting with Billy Hamilton: plenty of speed, but not much else. For someone with his running ability, you’d expect to see some high runs totals at the very least, but Hamilton’s 85 R in 2017 were a personal best and came on the heels of a career high 633 plate appearances. He doesn’t get on base nearly often enough (career .298 OBP) and he provides no value in HR, RBI or AVG. There’s no question his speed is valuable, but at what cost? At an ADP of 67, he’s going ahead of multi-category contributors like Lorenzo Cain and Andrew McCutchen. Sure, steals are becoming scarce, but that just means you need fewer of them to be competitive. Spread your steals around; pass up on the one-category Hamilton and grab someone else who isn’t a liability in the majority of hitting categories.
