2022 Fantasy Baseball Insertion Ranking - Cincinnati Reds
Preparing my 2022 fantasy baseball ranks one team at a time!
Explanation & Other Team Links Here
2021 Hitter Stats
Hitters To Rank
Jesse Winker
Jonathan India
Joey Votto
Tyler Stephenson
Eugenio Suarez
Mike Moustakas
Tyler Naquin
Jesse Winker
Just 28 years old. Elite combination of contact ability (82% contact%, 15.5% K%) and pop (11.2% barrel). Barreled the ball less often in the second half (8.2%), but walked more (12.3%) and maintained the contact (81%, 14% K%). Kept the ball off the ground again. He pretty much did this same stuff in a limited 2019 (15.6% K%, 24 PA/HR, .357 OBP), but struck out a lot more in 2020 (25%). I’ll choose to believe in the 2019+2021 here and say this is a very, very good hitter that profiles for a great AVG/OBP and league-average HR total at worst. Should be quite strong in R and fine in RBI as well.
Jonathan India
Elite plate patience (11% BB%), but that probably has something to do with his low swing rate (39%). His contact rate was good without being great (77%). I would expect more strikeouts and fewer walks to come if he starts swinging more, which is quite possible with a guy this young. Raw power isn’t huge (yet?), 110.6 max exit velocity, pretty average 9.6% Brl%. Even taking out the first two months when he struggled it was a 10% barrel rate and just a 26% fly ball rate. I don’t see him being a true 30+ homer threat unless he starts to swing a ton more, which again would take away some of the OBP and possibly batting average as the strikeouts increase. He will only be 25 on Opening Day, so it is hard to say we know what the guy is at this point, but it seems like he ran pretty hot in 2021. He scored 85 runs in 481 PA’s from June 1 on, behind just Soto (.485 OBP) and Freeman (.394 OBP), while India’s OBP sat at .356 - well below those two numbers.
Fine pick that should/could do a little bit of everything but I think he’ll probably be over-drafted.
Tyler Stephenson
Barnhart gone, STEAMER projecting 429 PA’s (had 280 in 2021). Very strong contact skills (83%) and walk rate (10%), but no pop (5.4% Brl%, 106.6 max velo). Performed about the same against righties & lefties, so no huge issues there. Lots of ground-balls (50%). Very limited upside, but should give you some batting average from the catcher position.
Joey Votto
Swung more than ever before last year (43.9%), but still took a ton of walks (14.4%). Strikeouts came up but were still manageable (23.8%). Great power numbers (14.6 PA/HR, 14.6% Brl%, max velo of 114.1). Just swung hard and upper-cut the ball (33% GB%) to get the ball out of the yard. Can a 38-year-old manage a sub-20 PA/HR? Probably not. Shouldn’t be a total disaster in OBP leagues regardless. Seems like a fine guy to grab late, but you’ll probably have someone chasing that big season much too early in the draft.
Eugenio Suarez
Went for a putrid .198/.272/.428 for the year, but still racked up 31 dingers even with that. 15% barrel rate, 29.8% K% show him clearly as an all-or-nothing type. That’s who he has been for years now but it was taken to another level last year.
He was quite valuable down the stretch last year:
Slugged .808 with eight bombs (10.8 PA/HR) in September-October, with a 25% K% and a 19.2% barrel rate. This is a pretty nitpicky sample, of course, if this good month was in June and not September it would be less interesting. However, if we take off his first month’s struggles, things get a little better to the tune of .213/.286/.455 with a 28% K% and a 17.4 PA/HR. All of this said, he was largely a platoon player after the first couple months of the season, with 65% of his plate appearances from June on being against lefties (the league is about 75% right-handed so that’s a really huge number). The platoon doesn’t really seem to make sense though
vs. RHP: .207 AVG, .454 SLG, 16.3% Brl%, 16.8 PA/HR, 28.0% K%
vs. LHP: .172 AVG, .351 SLG, 11.0% Brl%, 25.5 PA/HR, 34.6% K%
If it looks like there will be every-day playing time, he will be a solid source of power as he’ll be close to free if not completely free, but he’s a fringe guy in even shallow leagues right now.
Tyler Naquin
Didn’t do anything great in 2021 but was above average where you want him to be (10.4% Brl%, 114 max velo, 24 PA/HR, 23.4% K%). Average-at-best walk rate (2021 was his best number in 5 years and it was just at 7.7%).
Solid overall hitter but at age 30 there’s no reason for the Reds to force playing time on him, which is the main concern. If there’s a clear path to every-day playing time he’s draftable but I doubt that will be the case. The guy is certainly a better hitter than a lot of guys that will get drafted, but the opportunity probably won’t be there, and the ceiling is pretty low given the long career of fine but not great seasons from him.
Mike Moustakas
He’s old (33), but will probably be much too cheap in 2022. He only pieced together 206 PA’s between injuries, but the numbers were really bad (.208 average, .372 SLG, 34.3 PA/HR). The BABIP was really low, which is somewhat expected but not to that extent (.239). He hit a ton of fly balls (46%), but the bat speed didn’t seem to be there (really bad 110 max velo). Possible explanations are age, or just lack of health. If it was the latter, he could be a really solid late/free source of HR and RBI, but the batting average is going to be awful and health is a real concern. Playing time is not guaranteed either, I wouldn’t think. But a decent flexible option in very late rounds for possible decent power. Looks like he’ll lose 1B eligibility, but maintains 3B and 2B.
Pitchers To Rank
Luis Castillo
Tyler Mahle
Sonny Gray
Luis Castillo
Story of two seasons for Castillo.
Overall: 3.98 ERA, 1.36 WHIP, 24% K%, 8.9% BB%, 58% GB%
April-May: 7.22 ERA, 1.78 WHIP, 19.4% K%, 8.5% BB%, 51% GB%
June-October: 2.73 ERA, 1.20 WHIP, 26.1% K%, 9.1% BB%, 61% GB%
You see that things wildly improved for Castillo after May ended. He increased his strikeouts and ground-balls drastically over that sample.
Here’s the pitch breakdown for the full season:
and here it is when we take out April & May
You can see significant improvements in SwStr% on all four pitches. The four-seamer was not a great pitch for him in 2021 by the CSW%, which may have made the elite changeup a little bit less effective. He gets a ton of ground-balls with the sinker (don’t worry about the 5.6% SwStr% from the sinker, that’s pretty common for that pitch type - it’s just not a pitch that gets whiffs), and then gets his strikeouts with the slider and the changeup.
Castillo just didn’t seem to have the touch early on in the year which put him behind in counts because he wasn’t getting the chases that he was used to. After he figured that out, he was pretty close to a fantasy ace over his last two-thirds of the season.
All of that said, Castillo is a tough guy to rank this year, so it will be interesting to see where he ends up here. Being that he’s my first pitcher being ranked, I don’t have to worry about that right now. I think there’s an enormous upside, but the floor is a lot lower than you’d like from a top pitcher. The good news is that his four-seamer is hot (97 mph average velo), and gets a lot of whiffs (12.0% SwStr%), so there’s a good chance he is much more effective with that pitch next year. Castillo just turned 29, so age isn’t a problem. The upside is an easy SP1, but you probably want to go somewhere a little safer with your first pick of a pitcher.
Tyler Mahle
It was a decent for Mahle, posting a 3.75 ERA with a 1.23 WHIP. Those numbers are just okay. His K-BB numbers were slightly better than “okay” with a 27.7% K% and an 8.4% BB%. Higher than average strikeouts but average walks. He limited the long ball pretty well, especially given his home ballpark, with a 32 PA/HR. The GB% was okay at 44%, but you’d really like to see a little bit higher than that. Here’s the pitch breakdown:
The SwStr% on the four-seamer is pretty strong, but the number on the slider is underwhelming (a good slider will have a SwStr% above 15%, while most four-seamers come in around 7-9%). The splitter was his ground-ball pitch and was pretty successful overall, but rarely used. He depends heavily on the fastball, which is probably holding him back from taking that next step.
He’s still very young, so if he comes out next year with a new cutter or curveball or something, things could get really interesting, but for now I think he’s going to continue to be a back-end fantasy starter at best, but I’m definitely willing to buy in on the talented arm for cheap.
Sonny Gray
Pretty bad year for Gray with a 4.19 ERA, 1.22 WHIP, 27% K%, and 8% BB%. This was after being really, really good for the Reds in 2019-2020.
It looks like the home run ball caught up to him in 2021 as you can see in that last column there. His K% and GB% also got much worse last year. Let’s check the pitch breakdown.
He tried a bunch of different stuff last year. That 9.2% SwStr% on the sinker is actually quite good for a sinker, but the 52% GB% isn’t all that special, and the 8.3% barrel rate is just bad. Seems like he didn’t locate that pitch very well for hitters to get it into the air so often (typically you’re seeing 60%+ GB% on good sinkers with barrel rates under 5%). The four-seam has never a special pitch for him, but it did okay all things considered last year. He made his living in recent years with the breaking stuff, the curve and the slider. Both pitches took a step back last year as well, but there’s still a lot of swing-and-miss in that slider and hitters very rarely barreled tem up.
Overall I’d say he’s a good bet to bounce back in 2022. The 27%-9% K-BB% is good, and the 47% GB% is also strong and could feasibly come back up over 50% next year, which is a really nice trio of stats if that happens. The home runs also seem to have been bloated last year with a 16.5% HR/FB rate, well above the league average. He’s always going to be a volatile guy depending so much on breaking stuff and pitching in Great American Ballpark, but I suspect I’ll be above the field on him when all things are said and done.