Ranking Ian Happ's place among the National League Central left fielders

Left field is one of the best positions in the NL Central from top to bottom, including three very similar players and one young dynamo who, unfortunately, plays for the defending division champions.

As a reminder, we're going through every position across the NL Central and ranking the players at each, and then aggregating the total at the end to see which club is the favorite on paper heading into the season. The positions we've covered so far are below.

1. Catcher
2. First Base
3. Second Base
4. Shortstop
5. Third Base

Let's check out the players holding down left field in the division for 2025.

1. Jackson Chourio, Milwaukee Brewers

Churio is a pretty significant problem for the Cubs and the rest of the NL Central and will be for a long time thanks to the extension the Brewers handed out to him prior to him seeing a pitch in the MLB. At age 20, the Venezuelan did pretty much everything well and rung up a 117 OPS+. He graded out significantly better in right field than left, but Fangraphs is projecting him to start in left so I'll include him here.

Churio leads one of the best young outfields in the league, and projects to be a 30/30 guy down the line. He'll anchor a startlingly deep Brewers lineup in 2024- those prognosticating that the Cubs have a cakewalk division are going to be disappointed by the onslaught of power and speed a healthy Milwaukee club will offer.

2. Ian Happ, Cubs

With his proven track record, Happ is a close second to Chourio for the time being. He's squarely in the prime of his career and has really settled into his role- decent slugging, high BB and K rates, and strong work on the basepaths. Defensively, he's won three straight Gold Gloves but Statcast is up and down on his various metrics in left. Regardless, the former Cincinnati Bearcat is above average out there. Happ is officially the longest-tenured Cub (unless Rob Z counts), with Kyle Hendricks departing Chicago. He's slowly pieced together a pretty impressive resume as a Cub, and he will have Kyle Tucker hitting behind him, assumedly for his age 30 season- by far the best protection offered to him in recent years. I'll be the first to call it- Happ is going to have a career year in 2025 and break the 30-home-run mark for the first time.

3. Bryan Reynolds, Pirates

Reynolds and Happ are both entering their age 30 seasons and are pretty similar hitters. Reynolds looked like he was going to be a superstar in 2021, posting a .912 OPS and 5.9 WAR. He's regressed back to being a 2-4 WAR guy since then in some pretty hideous Pirates lineups. The Vandy product also is significantly less valuable than Churio and Happ in the field- he was in the bottom 1% of outfielders in range and has graded poorly since 2021 in most fielding categories. That being said, Reynolds continues to rank amongst the league leaders in xBA and xSLG as a result of quality contact and could easily push Happ and Chourio for the top spot if the stars align in 2025. There's again some smoke around a Reynolds trade, so he might be out of the division by Opening Day.

4. Lars Nootbar, Cardinals

Gosh, here we go again. Evaluating Nootbar is tough because he hasn't pieced together a full season yet, but he's another player in the Happ and Reynolds archetype- solid, not spectacular slugging, great on-base skills, and above-average value on the basepaths. Nootbar's a definite plus on defense compared to Reynolds. Nootbar is a very sneaky good player- he notably increased his bat speed after spending the 2021 winter with Driveline. It will be an interesting 2025 for him as he moves into the middle of a watered-down Cardinals lineup. Fangraphs projects him to be one of the better left fielders in the game- if he can stay healthy, he'll push and put up extremely similar numbers to Happ and Reynolds.

5. Spencer Steer, Reds

Steer kind of came out of nowhere in 2022 in the minors, rocketing up to top 100 prospect status after being buried in the Twins system prior. He got dealt at the trade deadline that year to the Reds and exploded to a .820 OPS in 2023 while playing a full season. The results took a huge step back (to the tune of 100 points of OPS) last year, and Steer was a below-average player. The BABIP decreased quite a bit to a more sustainable level and the ISO also went down. The Oregon Duck alumnus really struggles in the field as well- it's difficult to see him finding enough ways to add value to consistently be more than a league-average player.