As the 2024 season is beginning to come in to line of sight (what’s a superb owl?), now’s as good time as any to take a look back to see how we did when ranking guys before the 2023 season. Outfielders will start us out, and we will run around the diamond for the other positions, don’t worry. There was quite an explosion of stolen bases and some mighty swings of the bats to get some higher than expected home run totals, but let’s give it a rundown to see exactly where we succeeded and failed.
As a reminder, the top 25 outfielders I had coming in to 2023 were as follows with their ending rank per Fangraphs auction calculator (OF only, standard 5×5):
| Rank | Name | 2023 Finish | +/- |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Juan Soto | 6 | -5 |
| 2 | Aaron Judge | 18 | -16 |
| 3 | Julio Rodriguez | 3 | — |
| 4 | Ronald Acuna Jr. | 1 | +3 |
| 5 | Kyle Tucker | 5 | — |
| 6 | Mookie Betts | 2 | +4 |
| 7 | Mike Trout | 76 | -72 |
| 8 | Yordan Alvarez | 14 | -6 |
| 9 | Kyle Schwarber | 13 | -4 |
| 10 | Bryan Reynolds | 20 | -10 |
| 11 | Corbin Carroll | 4 | +7 |
| 12 | George Springer | 23 | -11 |
| 13 | Michael Harris II | 28 | -15 |
| 14 | Randy Arozarena | 17 | -3 |
| 15 | Brandon Nimmo | 27 | -12 |
| 16 | Luis Robert Jr. | 9 | +7 |
| 17 | Cedric Mullins | 49 | -32 |
| 18 | Byron Buxton | 236 (DH) | tons |
| 19 | Jeff McNeil | 51 | -32 |
| 20 | Masataka Yoshida | 34 | -14 |
| 21 | Tyler O’Neill | 150 | -129 |
| 22 | Taylor Ward | 77 | -55 |
| 23 | Steven Kwan | 41 | -18 |
| 24 | Teoscar Hernandez | 22 | +2 |
| 25 | Adolis Garcia | 8 | +17 |
At a glance, I don’t feel too bad about how it turned out. There were some big misses and some right on the nose. Buxton only played 85 games, none of which were in the outfield, and O’Neill only played in 72 games after missing some time with back and knee issues. Between the two of them and Trout, it’s quite clear that I need to be more cautious when it comes to injury-prone players. Taylor Ward was the only other huge miss by 55 spots, though he did only play in 97 games as well after getting hit in the face by a pitch.
On average, players ended about 25 spots lower than I ranked them. Without the major injuries, it comes up to about 17 spots lower than pre-season. A median of 10 spots lower has me feeling good, with the caveat of small sample size, of course.
Without taking into consideration any injury, Jeff McNeil and Cedric Mullins tied for my worst ranks, finishing 32 spots below my estimate. Hindsight being 20/20, I was quite bullish on McNeil. He finished with 10 homers and stolen bases while slashing .270/.333/.378. Poor exit velocity and a consistently low walk rate should have been an eye-opener. The batting average I thought would be there tanked over 56 points from 2022 with the rest of his slash line following a similar trajectory. A 65 point drop in BABIP from .353 to .288 has a non-zero effect on things, but again, the poor barrel percentage, hard hit rate, etc. are easy things to point to explaining that precipitous drop. Projection systems for 2024 show a similar counting stat line to 2023 with a slight improvement on the average up to around .285.
Mullins was a victim of the crowded Orioles system and a couple groin strains that limited him to 116 games. In that limited action, the 28-year-old posted solid counting stats with 51 runs, 15 homers, 74 RBI, and 19 stolen bases while slashing .233/.305/.416 good for a .721 OPS, identical to 2022. While the 30 homers from 2021 is likely an outlier, the stolen bases should continue to be there. He both walked and struck out more this year and pulled the ball at the second-highest clip of his career at 44.5% of the time. His fly ball percentage is up 5 percent from 2022 as well, lending to the idea that a lot of hitters are taking to these days, hit it high and pull it to sell out for power.
The best predictions for the year were Julio Rodriguez and Kyle Tucker, finishing at 3 and 5, respectively. The top end guys can be some of the easier gets due to their consistency and being top guys for a reason. I consider Kyle Schwarber, Randy Arozarena, and Teoscar Hernandez to be better hits, all coming within 4 spots of my initial rankings. The lower down the list you go, the more valuable it can be to be correct. The actual evaluation of that premise would be better suited when comparing to other projections, that’s a little outside the scope of this piece at the time.
Corbin Carroll, Luis Robert Jr., and Adolis Garcia all did at least 7 spots better than my rankings, and I don’t think a single one of them comes as a surprise. The talent has always been there for Carroll and Robert, one’s just a rookie and the other had to battle injuries to get here.
Adolis is going to be on the wrong side of 30 soon, but by golly does he smoke the ball. A barrel percentage and avg exit velocity in the mid 90 percentiles with excellent defense will keep you in the lineup. Projections for him in 2024 have him hitting just over 30 homers with 13 or so stolen bases. After going 27/25 in 2022, I think I will agree with the projections for 2024 and slot him around the number 10-12 outfielder in my next ranking.
All in all, we had some new names crop up in 2023 like Lane Thomas and Spencer Steer staking their claims while the young stars continue their dominance. Several bats in Cincinnati came out hot and will look to continue their breakouts. Michael Harris II was a tale of two halves in 2023, and I’m excited to see what he puts together in 2024. Ranking guys is hard, but I’ll be damned if I don’t try it all again this year.
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