2014 Fantasy Baseball Playoffs: OF Juan Lagares Doing It All

By Adam McGill @adammcgill83twitter.com on September 8, 2014

In the fantasy baseball playoffs, every outfielder counts. You may have to start three of them in most formats, but each one has to carry their weight if you want to move on to the next round. Of all the underrated outfielders, one guy that has carried his weight throughout the playoffs this year has been New York Mets OF Juan Lagares.

Lagares is 21-63 (.333 AVG) over his last 15 games alone and has quietly raised his average up to .282 on the year. He has also scored 10 runs over his hot-stretch. He is playing like a stud fantasy outfielder, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

Lagares obviously has speed, as he flies around the outfield making highlight reel catches game after game, but he has never been much of a SB threat. Since moving into the leadoff role, though, Lagares has been much more active on the base path. The speedy outfielder has eight stolen bases in the last nine games alone, including a three-steal effort on Sunday night.

Even better, Lagares is one of the best defensive players in baseball. He recently won Defensive Player of the Month for August and the outfielder is in contention for Defensive Player of the Year in 2014. He rarely commits an error and will be as safe as they come from the field, which says something with the number of outfielders committing egregious errors around the league these days.

Lagares will be an ideal OF3 to rely on in the finals this week. He is swinging one of the hottest bats in baseball and is an absolute must-start right now in all fantasy formats.

 

Adam McGill is the Senior Fantasy Sports Writer at Rant Sports. Follow him on Twitter @adammcgill83, like him on Facebook, or add him to you networks on Google here or here.