Underdog MLB Best Ball: Undervalued Outfielders to Target (February 2026)

Drafting players that are going to return positive draft-day value is the name of the game in best ball, and it's even more important in MLB best ball, where positions blur together to give us a multitude of decisions on what player archetypes to construct our roster around.

Grabbing reliable players is great to balance out your team, but sometimes, you have to swing for the fences and find the players who, when we look back a year from now, we'll wonder why they were going so late in drafts.

Here are three of my Underdog MLB best ball undervalued outfielders that I'm targeting in drafts.

Heliot Ramos, San Francisco Giants

Current ADP: 94.2 (Late round 8)

Earliest I'm comfortable taking him: Early round 7

By almost any metric, Heliot Ramos regressed last year, and yet he still ended up as a top 35 OF on Underdog.

He's currently being drafted as the 45th outfielder off the board.

Yes, there were some concerns about the underlying numbers from last season, but he's going to play, and we're playing a game of volume. And all you have to do is look back to 2024 to see that there is upside potential to be had. Of course, posting a 116+ MPH max exit velocity in your regression year and a 91.8 MPH average exit velocity (87th percentile) shows that, too.

Give me the side of the coin where he regresses to the mean between both seasons and he becomes a screaming value.

Daulton Varsho, Toronto Blue Jays

Current ADP: 130.9 (Late round 11)

Earliest I'm comfortable taking him: Late round 10

Daulton Varsho showed glimpses of his bat finally coming alive last season despite battling injuries, posting a 122 OPS+ in just under 300 plate appearances with 20 home runs.

There's always been some streaky flashes of potential here; he's regularly in the double digits in both homers and stolen bases when healthy. He's also guaranteed to play, having won a gold glove in 2024.

At a shallow position, this is the type of small-sample-size bet to see if what happened was real feels justified, especially because the floor is a guy who's going to play 150+ games without question and can still find a hot streak.

Lars Nootbaar, St. Louis Cardinals

Current ADP: 229.9 (Early round 20)

Earliest I'm comfortable taking him: Late round 18

Speaking of guys who battle injuries, welcome to the Lars Nootbaar experience! He finally crossed the 500 AB threshold last season and, well, it didn't go as well as everyone hoped overall. The advanced metrics sagged way lower than they had in the past. Even worse, he's hurt right now, with the possibility of starting the season on the IL already being discussed.

But again, we're talking about chasing upside at a shallow position, and Nootbaar certainly has shown that type of upside we would want in the past - from 2022 to 2024, he posted:

• Three straight seasons with an xwOBA in the 83rd percentile or higher

• Three straight seasons with an xOBP above the 90th percentile

• Elite chase right numbers, including in 2024 when he was literally in the 100th percentile

He walks a lot, he has underlying metrics in his overall profile that show he can be a good hitter, and I'm willing to pay near-last-round price for that type of profile.

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