Fantasy Baseball Today - Early 2026 Outfield Rankings Part 2! Jarren Duran Over Roman Anthony? (11/5 Fantasy Baseball podcast)
Episode Date: November 5, 2025How much do we trust Riley Greene's breakout? Jarren Duran ranked over Roman Anthony? Will Jackson Merrill bounce back after an injury-riddled season? Kyle Stowers and Jo Adell look like legit power b...ats. Subscribe to our YouTube channel: youtube.com/FantasyBaseballToday Download and Follow Fantasy Baseball Today on Spotify: https://sptfy.com/QiKv Get awesome Fantasy Baseball Today merch here: http://bit.ly/3y8dUqi Follow FBT on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fbtpod?_t=8WyMkPdKOJ1&_r=1 Follow our FBT team on Twitter: @FBTPod, @CPTowers @CBSScottWhite, @Roto_Frank Join our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/fantasybaseballtoday Sign up for the FBT Newsletter at https://www.cbssports.com/newsletters/fantasy-baseball-today/ For more fantasy baseball coverage from CBS Sports, visit https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/ To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript
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Let's jump back into Outfield Rankings Part 2 up next on Fantasy Baseball Today Express.
Welcome in to FBT Express on Wednesday, November 5th.
I am Frank Stamphle, joined by Scott White,
and let's jump back into Scott's way too early rankings,
outfield rankings, for next season.
And yesterday we left off with Brent Rooker at number 15 in your outfield rankings.
The next three you have, Randy Rosarina, Riley Green, and Sayas Hazuki,
16, 17, and 18.
The one that stands out here, Scott, is a name that we haven't seen ranked this highly before.
It's Riley Green.
How much do you trust the breakout?
We just saw this past season.
Well, it better be legit because if the increase from 24 home runs to 36 isn't legit,
that I'm not sure what else there is here to get excited about.
Riley Green's profile, like he's turned into a good fantasy player for sure,
but it's a much more one-dimensional player
than we thought he was going to be as a prospect,
not a base dealer at all,
average at best for batting average.
If he does,
if that home run production does drop off in any significant way,
then you got to feel like he's losing a good number of batting average points too
because he struck out 31% of the time this year, frightening rate.
And yet he had a good season.
So like I don't want to completely knock him,
and say, oh, you know, Riley Green is not worth having as your second outfield.
No, he is.
But I think you want to approach him with some hesitation and maybe give him less benefited the doubt than others like Randy or Rosarina or Cody Ballinger because, you know, it's so tied to a
his home run total and he doesn't have a long history of hitting that many.
1920 and 21.
You have Jared Duran, Roman Anthony and Jose Altuve.
So the two Red Sox here very clearly stand out.
Jaron had a down year.
Last season was being drafted as a second third round pick.
I think that's going to drop down a few rounds heading into 2026.
And Roman Anthony, top prospect.
He impressed.
He hit the ball extremely hard.
Also lots of ground balls.
So while I think the approach is there and I trust.
the quality of contact.
Will it translate to power and speed right away?
That's the question for Roman Anthony.
Yeah, I totally get the enthusiasm for Roman Anthony.
I think he had a strong rookie performance,
more so from a real life perspective,
because the on-base percentage was so high.
From a fantasy perspective,
there are still some things that need to be worked out here,
launch angle especially, but also contact rate.
There are strides Roman Anthony needs to make to fulfill,
his potential early ADP data just came out and I think it's giving him a little too much benefit
of the doubt early drafters on NFBC 12th is where they're they're taking Anthony and here I'm
ranking him 20th in the outfield or in the outfield so they're they're kind of presuming the
leap while I am guarding against the possibility he his home run total lags again by ranking
Anthony 20th, but also still counting for the upside. I'm trying to take more of a middle
stance on that because I think one day Anthony will be great. I'm just not sure. I think it's
probable, but I'm just not sure it's going to be in 2026. As for Duran,
2024 is probably going to go down as his career season. 2025 seems like an overcorrection,
though. The stolen base total kind of inexplicably dropped. The batting average dropped more
than it should have.
I think we see a modest bounce back from Duran in 2026,
but not enough to make him a second round caliber player again.
All right, let's take a quick break,
and we'll be back right after this.
Welcome back in FBT Express.
We are taking a look at Scott's early outfield rankings for next season.
And 22, 23, and 24, you have Michael Harris,
Jackson Merrill, and O'Neill Cruz.
What a group.
Michael Harris, extremely streaky.
He usually does get there by the end of the season.
Merrill and Cruz, they had down years in 2025.
Jackson Merrill dealt with injuries.
Cruz hit 200 over a full season.
So obviously that dragged down his fantasy production quite a bit.
Scott from this group, I think Jackson Merrill could wind up being perhaps the most interesting
and maybe one of the most polarizing players for next season as well.
Yeah, early indications are I'm going to be the low.
guy on Jackson Merrill by only ranking him 23rd in the outfield that early NFBC ADP has him 14th,
which is similar to where he was drafted last year, coming off a much, much, much better season.
So the stolen base production in 2025 completely went away.
He stole one base.
And it took a massive September to get his home run total, even half,
respectable with 16.
The batting average fell like 30 points.
The strikeout rate was up.
Basically, he got worse across the board as a sophomore and significantly worse in
some areas, stolen bases, namely.
And I think, yes, he had some injuries, but I'm not willing to say, I have no reason to
presume that's all it was for Jackson Merrill, sort of like I was saying.
with Riley Green in the home runs.
There's just not enough of a track record here for me to think, oh, yeah,
2025 doesn't count.
2024, that's the year we should draft them based on.
So I'm just being a little more guarded in my approach to Merrill for 2026.
25, 26, and 27.
You have Kyle Stowers, Tyler Soderstrom, and Brandon Nimmo.
Stowers.
He looks like a legit power bat.
We got this breakout campaign from Stowers, but it was cut short due to injury.
So I guess the hope for next season is that he kind of builds on that and maybe turns himself into a 30 home run bat in 2026.
Yeah, I don't have too much negative to say about Kyle Stowers.
He's older than you think he is.
It was he was a minor league standout who didn't have a lot of prospect type.
And you just kind of presumed he'd be this quadruplea player, but he delivered on that production.
He delivered that same sort of production in the majors here in his age 20.
27 season, got a chance to shine and did the underlying numbers back it up.
The exit velocity readings were great.
Strikeout Ray was a little high, but not so much that I think it's a major red flag for Kyle Stowers.
I think he's really solid.
I think he could be as good as Brent Rooker, but early ADP, he's available 70 picks later.
So I'm probably going to have quite a bit of Kyle Stowers in 2026.
And the last group we'll talk about here, 28, 29, and 30.
You have Andy Pahez, Joe Adele, and Lawrence Butler.
Adele feels pretty similar to Kyle Stowers, just from the right-hand side.
There's a lot of power here.
The underlying metrics like Joe Adele quite a bit as well.
Lawrence Butler's got downseason, lots of hype entering last year.
He still managed to go 2020.
Turns out he was playing through a knee injury.
He's already had surgery on that.
So I can see some people talking themselves into maybe a little bit of a bounce
for Lawrence Butler next year.
Yeah, we're seeing a common thread here, me ranking certain players lower than consensus.
Jackson Merrill, Lawrence Butler.
And that common thread is, oh, he was injured for much of this season, so it just doesn't
count.
And I, again, kind of stressing the same point here, I think that's a fair assumption when a guy
has an established track record,
a multi-year track record of being a certain player,
injury-plag year falls way off.
Yes, you can assume that was all an injury.
But when it's a track record of one good year,
I don't know that we can just say it was all the injury.
There was plenty of skepticism for Lawrence Butler
coming into 2025.
It was, you know, kind of low in quantity.
There weren't a lot of people.
There weren't a lot of detractors for Lawrence Butler,
but the detractors that existed made good points.
And he fell way short of expectations.
Maybe it was the knee injury,
but maybe it was just the fact that 2025 was a fluke
in terms of how much contact he made
and the angle the ball took off the bat,
really maximizing his outcomes in a way
that we shouldn't expect to see again.
So I don't know.
I'm more particularly since by the end of the year,
the athletics were sitting,
Lawrence Butler against left-handed pitchers very consistently.
He was a pure platoon bat.
Now he's got to overcome that stigma.
I'm inclined to play it more conservatively with him,
just like I am with Jackson Meryl.
All right.
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