As baseball fans, we love our diving catches and home run robberies as much as we love the home runs that outfielders like Mike Trout and Aaron Judge knock out of the park.
It seems as if we’re talking about Trout, Judge, Bryce Harper and Boston’s duo of JD Martinez and Mookie Betts constantly this season. Honestly, at this point, we can build an entire All-Star team with just outfielders, making narrowing down this list an incredibly tough task. But someone has to do it, right?
So in order to narrow it down, we had to set some guidelines. For instance, all (aside for one big exception we made) outfielders on this list had to bat above the league average so far in 2018. According to FanGraphs, the league average slash for outfielders so far this season is .250/.324/.414. You’d be surprised how many outfielders are batting above .250 in mid-June. We won’t leave you guessing, there are 42.
Some of these guys have had fantastic starts to their 2018 season, earning them a spot on this list. Others – we’re looking at you Bryce Harper – may be having a down year, but that doesn’t mean their spot on this list should be taken away from them because they’re having a bad month, or in Harper’s case, several months (let’s just hope for his sake that it doesn’t hurt his $400 million man chances).
So without further ado, here are the top active outfielders in the MLB.
[post_page_title]Honorable mention: Juan Soto, RF, Washington Nationals[/post_page_title]
It’s still too soon to crown Soto a top outfielder in the MLB, seeing as he’s only recently made his debut in the majors. But Soto is giving us flashbacks to 2012, when two guys on this list took the league by storm, Mike Trout and Bryce Harper, each winning the Rookie of the Year award in their respective league. By mid-June, Soto had played in 25 games and had a slash line of .325/.411/.602 with six home runs and 14 RBI.
