Where should I begin? Let’s start with the amazingly wide spread opinions about outfielders after the top six or seven! Honestly the projections you see from experts are so helter-skelter that it must be impossible for the average fantasy baseball fan to know which one to believe! So in an effort to explain my selections I will say now that I tend to value power more than the average prognosticator and I also tend to weight poor and injury riddled seasons from young players as a fluke rather than what we should expect. So let’s take a walk through the Barracuda Rankings and explain my thoughts as we go.

Phillies 31 year old outfielder Jayson Werth tends to not get much love around the fantasy world, but he should slug around .500 again this season and with the speed to steal you 20 bases I think he will produce well again hitting in a great Phillies line-up. Nelson Cruz is a player that you could project into the top five, but I have seen him as low as the mid 20’s in some rankings. I think you should trust him, in 128 games last season; he had 21 doubles, 1 3B, 33 HR, 20 SB, 75 R, and 76 RBI. His ratios were not out of line and I think he could easily sustain that type of production for longer stretch of games this year. Josh Hamilton and Carlos Quinton simply have too much up-side to ignore after the top tier of players are gone. Injuries obviously hampered both players greatly last season and a short track record has fantasy owners a bit gun shy, but for my money, I would take the gamble on draft day and hope to capitalize on a return to health and monster numbers. Players like Carlos Lee, Manny Ramirez, Bobby Abreu, Torri Hunter and Johnny Damon can all help your fantasy team, but unlike the previously listed players, age is the biggest factor I see in their potential breakdown. However, each of them would make fine additions to your fantasy team, but I would make a pointed effort to not add any more than one of these players to your fantasy team in an effort to avoid too much risk. Ben Zobrist played enough games in the OF to be eligible in most leagues this year. I feel this adds great value to him and he is a player you should target on draft day with infield and outfield eligibility. Finally you come to the point in my rankings where I take a hard look at the young and unproven talent that is sitting on the draft board and take my shot at striking fantasy gold with my third and fourth outfielders. I love Hunter Pence this season; He continues to show improvement in contact rate and lowered his K rate in 2009. He won’t be what we once thought he would become after his tremendous rookie campaign, but he is a valuable OF who you can get at great value this season. Jay Bruce is another youngster that I will be targeting this year. He was hurt by a terrible BABIP last season and with all that power, if you add in a return to normal in that area, you can count on a breakout season from Jay. Two players I think hold great value and should be considered must haves this season are Carlos Gonzalez in Colorado and Nolan Reimold in Baltimore. After the All-Star Break, Carlos Gonzalez hit .320/.384/.608/.992 with 12 HR and even swiped 11 bags. Obviously you can’t project him to do that over a full season and drop him into your top 15, but it wouldn’t shock me to see him land up that high if everything I see in him comes to point in 2010. Make sure you add him to your fantasy roster. On the other hand Nolan benefited from a real sweat BABIP last season and that has other web sites scared to carry his projections over to this year, however, I think his plate discipline is legit with just 20% of his swinging strikes coming outside the strike zone. At 26 years old I don’t think he is likely to suffer too much from an off season Achilles surgery that by all accounts is a non-issue. This is a player I would target late in you draft and I bet a lot of your fellow owners won’t even know who he is…but they will by the end of the season!