In both of my fantasy baseball leagues (my SportingNews.com / Fantasy Baseball Mafia League and my Yahoo league with friends and family) I spent late-round draft choices on Nate McLouth, an outfielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
McLouth was largely unknown to me until I started my fantasy baseball research this year, but look at his career stats and you can see reason for interest. Add the very productive Spring numbers he's putting up (14 for 39, hitting .359, 10 runs, 6 doubles, 2 HR, 3 SB) and you have to think that a breakout year is coming.
His career stats, courtesy of the very helpful website
www.thebaseballcube.com :
Nate Mclouth's career minor and major league stats
As you can see, he was a .292 hitter in the minor leagues, which is a world apart from his .249 major league average. The difference could be pinned on the fact that he's been a part-time player for most of his career and that, given a full major league season, he could end up in the .280 range. His .367 OBP in the minors and the .351 last year (only batting .258) shows he has plate discipline and his average will probably improve.
He's shown speed on every level, swiping 22 bases last year and being caught just once, and this was in just 368 plate appearances. 600 plate appearances could put him in the 35-40 steal range, which would be very valuable because he has power too.
In 768 major league plate appearances (which translates to a little more than a full season), he has 25 home runs. He's only got 66 RBI, but you can attribute that to the lack of opportunity by only batting lead-off (or 9th) in Pittsburgh's order in all of his games.
Now, most experts agree that Eric Byrnes' 2007 total of 50 stolen bases is the absolute ceiling for him. He's 32 years old, and even his best seasons in the past have had him in the 20-25 steals range. Like McLouth, Byrnes often showed the potential to be a solid power-speed, 20-20 guy who could hit .280 or .290 and play solid defense in any outfield spot.
McLouth certainly seems to be very similar, but he's going very late or undrafted in many of the mock drafts I've taken part in on www.mockdraftcentral.com . The biggest reasons for this probably are that he's a guy who has never logged a 500 at-bat season, and he came into spring training competing for the starting centerfielder job with Nyjer Morgan. Morgan is having an okay spring, but McLouth really locked the job up, by all accounts.
I actually prefer McLouth over Justin Upton in non-keeper leagues, which might seem silly, but you might remember that Justin's brother BJ fizzled in his early major league shots before becoming a top 30 fantasy player, and I worry that this season might be similar to the 140 at-bats he had for the big club last year, where he hit only .221 with 2 homers and 2 steals. At the age of 20, you have to wonder if he's ready to be a big league outfielder.
I like McLouth for a .270-.280 average this year, with 20 or so homers, and possibly 30-35 steals, depending on how much they let him run. That might sound strange, but he managed to have a 13 HR, 22 SB season last year in only 329 at-bats, so if you project that to 550 at-bats, you get 22 HR and 37 SBs. And you could get this guy in the last three rounds of the draft. Pretty outstanding value, ain't it?
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