We have just about made it to the trade deadline and the end of July. I looked at Outifields in Flux last week, but unwittingly only included AL teams. With plenty of moves almost certain in the next few days, I figured it made more sense to wait on the NL under we get more clarity (Luis Robert Jr. to the Mets, anyone?). Hopefully it’s not a dud now that I’ve teased it.
Anyways, it’s a long season, and it’s not always easy to keep track of the hot and cold bats we’re all rostering. So let’s look at some of the hottest and coldest Outfielders over the last month (through Saturday) sorted by wRC+. For the coldest ones, I’ll only look into them if they’re at least deep league Fantasy relevant. Apologies if there’s a Tyrone Taylor (-11 wRC+) owner out there.
League Winners
Kyle Stowers 263 wRC+
Mickey Moniak 205
George Springer 201
Cody Bellinger 188
Randy Arozerena 180
Jose Altuve 179
The Orioles trade of Stowers plus Connor Norby for Trever Rogers looks less awful now that Rogers is pitching well. But wow, who saw this coming from Stowers? He started hot, faded a bit in May, but then has gone nuclear again. In the past month, he’s hitting .375 with 12 homers, 18 runs and 27 RBI’s. His contact skills are pretty bad, but who really cares with this level of pop
He’s batting .298 on the year, which you’d think would come down given all that swing and miss. But his xBA is .284 and that’s still excellent. And he was basically free even in deep leagues. The FAAB add of the year looks like Nick Kurtz right now, but Kurtz cost a bundle when he came up. Stowers generally didn’t, so he’s really the overall best buy.
Moniak has now taken over the mantle of Rockies Fantasy Stud Outfielder. There is a law somewhere that exactly one Rockies outfielder will have big Fantasy value at all times. For most of 2023 it was Nolan Jones, followed by Brenton Doyle in 2024, and then Jordan Beck earlier this year. For the last 2 months, it’s been Moniak. Since May 25th, he’s hit .339 with 13 homers and an 18.7% Barrel% in 135 PA’s. He’s made significant strides in his plate skills, dropping his K% to 24.2% on the season vs. a 30.4% mark in his career. He still chases too much (8th percentile), but he’s making more and better contact than ever (79th percentile both LA Sweet Spot% and Barrel%). The one-time top overall draft pick is still just 27 somehow. This was a nice flyer by the Rockies. I’m so encouraged that I renamed a good Fantasy team “10,000 Moniaks” and I don’t even have him there (or anywhere, unfortunately).
The other 4 are established excellent players on heaters for the month. There’s nothing much actionable as they’re all rostered in every format back to draft season. Bellinger, I always find it kind of interesting that he flirts with superstardom on and off, but in different forms. He’s hit as high as .307 (in 2023), 47 homers (in Happy Fun Ball 2019), and stolen 20 bases (also 2023). This year’s version finds him as a plus guy in all 5 categories, but not really a standout in any. He has just a 10% K% over the last month, and 13.8% overall on the year, which would set a full-season career low. He has 19 homers but on just 25 barrels, so he’s really taking advantage of his home park. Nothing wrong with that! He’s also hitting .284 with 58 runs, 59 RBI’s, and 9 steals, batting near the top of an excellent lineup. Unfortunately, that lineup just got way less excellent with Aaron Judge on the shelf. We’ll see if that dings Bellinger going forward.
Sinkholes
Javier Baez 10 wRC+
Jac Caglianone 12
Dane Myers 13
Tommy Edman 37
Mookie Betts 41
Baez made the All-Star team, which is nice since he’s a fun player and all. But his inevitable regression was pretty easy to call since he didn’t really improve all that much during his two month or so revival. His Barrel%, EV, HardHit%, and K% are all right about where they were last season when he hit .184 with 6 homers in 289 PA’s. Baez is still hitting .271 on the year, but just .177 over the past month with 1 homer, 2 steals, and zero walks. He’s eligible all over the diamond and plays virtually every day, so he has some value in deep leagues.
“Jack Cags” was a huge FAAB buy after his June 3rd callup. But he’s a big bust as far as Fantasy stats go, and now he hits the IL with a hamstring strain. I guess I got lucky not having enough FAAB money to get him anywhere, but speaking of luck, he’s had absolutely none of it. He’s rocking a 77.1 MPH bat speed, which would rank 4th in MLB if he had enough PA’s to qualify. His EV90 (the top 10% of his EVs) is 110.2, which would rank him 7th, just behind a Shohei Ohtani guy whose name might ring a bell. And that’s just ahead of Kyle Schwarber. He does this with a league average 21.3% K%. Yet it produced just 5 homers in 161 PAs and a ghastly .147 BA. and .217 wOBA. One issue is that he hit too many of those lasers on the ground, as he has just a 5.4 LA. That will constrain the homers. He has 14 barrels, so he could have hit a couple more, though KC is rough for power. Still, roll it all together, and Statcast pegs him at a .334 xwOBA and .261 batting average. He’s maybe a cut now in some formats, though that really depends on how deep and whether there’s IL. I’d try to hold if I had him. As for next season, it’s easy to say “buy the discount”, but Crowd Wisdom is usually pretty smart, and he’ll get priced off his skills data.
Dane Myers had a shade of deep league fantasy appeal, or at least I thought he did. He’s a base stealer (15 on the year) with 91 EV that grades out at 69th percentile. Plus, he’s an excellent fielding CF, which keeps him on the field for the Marlins. It’s a similar profile to the Royals Maikel Garcia, and he really took off this season. Unfortunately, there are key differences too. Garcia was just 24 last year, whereas Myers is already 29. What you see is what you get here. And he’s a really bad hitter right now. He homered on Saturday, but his last extra base hit before that was a double on June 19th.
The Dodgers have had a rough month, and a lot of why is that they’re getting very little on offense from the three above (plus Freddie Freeman). With Edman, I really wonder whether he’s fully healthy. He’s missed time on and off all season, most recently with a broken pinkie toe. He hit a homer on June 1st, then “tweaked” his ankle/ Since then, he’s hit just .206 with 2 homers and 1 steal in 150 PA’s.
Similar deal with Mookie as he has just 2 homers and a steal back to June 9th, with a .179 average. His draft cost dipped a bit this year to high 2nd round in 15 teamers. But that was mostly thanks to a scary sounding stomach bug from Japan. But Mookie’s on pace for easily his worst season ever, and as he approaches age 33, you have to wonder if it’s just a one-off bad year or the start of a major downtrend. He’s amazingly turned himself into a plus fielding shortstop a decade+ into his career of mostly RF, which is crazy impressive. But he’s a .290 lifetime hitter batting a career low .238. He’s never hit less than .264 in a full season. He has a 5.5% Barrel%, his worst since 2017, and just 11 homers after clubbing 39 in 2023 and 19 in 116 games last year. He still K’s just 11% of the time, but his 88.3 EV would mark a career low. Runs are his only plus category this year and he’s now batting leadoff ahead of Shohei, so you can’t get a better context. But he’s clearly going to drop big time in 2026 drafts. He’s also going to lose OF eligibility.
