3 Veteran Outfielders Worth Targeting in Fantasy Baseball

Matt Holliday, New York Yankees

Even though a broken thumb kept Matt Holliday on the DL for 50 calendar days, he still managed to hit 20 home runs for the 10th time in his 13-year pro career. Now at age 37, Holliday will head to the Bronx and is slated to take over as the New York Yankees' primary designated hitter. When needed, he can still hold down a corner outfield spot and even played a limited number of games at first base, as he did last year.

Holliday got a hold of some homers, but there were a few concerning things happening the plate last season. First, his walk rate plummeted to 8.2%, easily the lowest of his seven full seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals.

Also, line drives vanished from his batted-ball profile. This is very significant because line drives -- at least generally speaking -- are converted into hits more often than ground balls or fly balls. Last year's line-drive rate of 14.1% was a career-low for Holliday, a full 5 percentage points below his career average.

Statcast reveals some encouraging things for Holliday, however. Among batters with at least 100 batted balls that were registered by the tracking system, Holliday's average exit velocity trailed only Nelson Cruz and Giancarlo Stanton for the MLB lead. This is a tad deceptive, though, because of the career-high 50% groundball rate. Hitting the ball hard is great, except when it's going into the ground.

Despite all the aforementioned hiccups, Holliday still managed to post an ISO of .215, his best output in that column since 2011. The Steamer projection system likes Holliday to hit better than .270 while exceeding 20 home runs, 70 runs and 70 RBI's. That's all very useful for a fantasy outfielder currently ranked outside of the top 60 in NFBC drafts and in danger of falling outside the top 70 by FantasyPros rankers.