2022 Fantasy Baseball Insertion Ranking - Oakland Athletics
Creating my 2022 fantasy baseball rankings one team at a time
Explanation & Other Team Links Here
Hitters to Rank
Matt Olson
Matt Chapman
Ramon Laureano
Sean Murphy
Tony Kemp
Seth Brown
Matt Olson
One of the crazier things that happened in 2021 was that Matt Olson just stopped striking out.
He went from a mid-to-high twenties K% to a 17% mark, which is just insane. It’s even more insane when you see that the power numbers weren’t damaged in the process. He hit 39 bombs on a 12.7% Brl%. His 11.5% BB% was also great. His velo numbers were huge as well.
I would expect the K% to come above 20% again, but I don’t really know why I’m saying that. It just seems impossible what he did last year… but who knows. I don’t think we can expect a .290 batting average from him given his fly-ball propensity, but he certainly isn’t going to hurt your team’s batting average with a sub-20% K%. And the power will be elite. The only thing really keeping him out of the ‘elite’ club would be the lack of steals, but he’s a super-duper power bat to take in the top 30 picks.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Yordan Alvarez, Aaron Judge
Matt Chapman
It has been a pretty steep decline for Chapman over the last few years. He has done the opposite of Olson, all of the sudden becoming a 30%+ K% guy after making lots of contact early in his career.
In 2020 that was traded for a ton of homers, but last year that homer number came down to a more “good” than “great” 23 PA/HR - and he tanked your batting average.
It was a brutal beginning of the year for Chapman, but he started to hit some homers late in the year:
From August 1 on he slugged a solid enough .457 with 13 homers (15.2 PA/HR), so that’s where most of his production came from. But over that same period, he hit just .195 with a 34% K%. So at best he was still cratering you in average without adding any steals.
I don’t think he’ll hit .210 again, but that’s only because I don’t think anybody will hit .210 again. I mean… someone probably will… but I’m not going to be predicting that even for the worst hitters because it’s just hard to do. Chapman is empty power, but the contact ability he showed off before 2020 still gives some outside hope for improvement, I think.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Adam Duvall, Alex Kirilloff
Ramon Laureano
He has 28 games left in the suspension to serve, so that rules him out for April. He would still be interesting for fantasy purposes given the steals ability (steals are getting rarer and rarer every year, it seems).
He stole 12 bases in a shortened season last year, but eight of those came in the first two weeks of the season. It was weird.
He put on a pretty good power show over the course of the year with a 10.7% Brl%, but that came on a pedestrian 27 PA/HR. I think that’ll be about right moving forward, as he doesn’t really stick out like a great power hitter. A 20/20 season would be well within the range of outcomes if he were playing the full year, but you could still get a nice 15/15 from him in 2022 - and that might be worth taking a stab on.
He is quite tough to rank here given that we have to chop off 1/6th of the season right away, but I’ll do my best.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: LaMonte Wade Jr.
Sean Murphy
His power rate moved the wrong way in 2021, but still settled at a decent 26.4 PA/HR. And he struck out just 25% of the time, which makes me think he can do much better than the .216 batting average he gave us last year.
His BABIP was just .257. He underperformed pretty big time in terms of batting average on line drives and ground balls:
So I think we have a catcher who can hit .240-.260 with 20-25 bombs, which is useful at the catcher position.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Omar Narvaez, Max Stassi
Tony Kemp
Last year I had Ohtani on my main fantasy team and this dude hit a dinger off of him and that really cheesed me off, but I’ll rank him anyways cause people are talking about him.
He makes a ton of contact (87%) but has very limited power (1.0% Brl% - so I’m even more mad about that homer off Ohtani now). He also doesn’t steal bases, so I’m not sure why people are talking about this guy? The hell are you doing Mike Kurland?
Good walk rate though, so maybe if he leads off or something while they wait for Laureano he can score some runs and help in AVG/OBP.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: David Fletcher
Seth Brown
The opposite of Kemp, Brown has monstrous pop but will not help your batting average. He went for a 14% Brl% but a 29% K%. He had just a 7% BB% to go with it.
The angle of drafting Brown would be to hope he settles into 5th or 6th in the lineup. If he does that and plays all year, 30 homers are pretty much guaranteed and the RBIs could be large as well. If everything goes perfectly for Brown, he will be a Franmil Reyes type - which isn’t exactly a high ceiling.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Jesus Sanchez, Eugenio Suarez
Pitchers to Rank
Frankie Montas
Chris Bassitt
Sean Manaea
Lou Trivino
James Kaprielian
Frankie Montas
He pitched like a fantasy ace for most of the second half. For the year his 3.37 ERA and 1.18 WHIP were quite good but not elite, but when you take out the first two months (arbitrarily!) you see a 2.88 ERA and a 1.08 WHIP. In that time he had a 28% K% and a 7.6% BB%, so he was really, really good.
The key was increased splitter usage. In April and May he used the splitter just 17% of the time. After that, he used it 25% of the time. Since that worked out so well, I’d imagine he starts the year with that formula, so the upside is quite high here with Montas.
It’s always a good idea to be a bit less confident in a guy relying on a splitter, because the pitch is so tough to command and the feel for it can just be lost, but Montas backs all that up with a pretty solid sinker/four-seam combo too, so the floor is heightened by that.
I really like Montas this year, and I think he’s still a bit under-priced as things sit currently.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Logan Webb
Chris Bassitt
It was Bassitt’s best year with a 3.15 ERA, a 1.06 WHIP, and a much-imrpoved 25%-6% K-BB% ratio. Prior to last year he had posted some solid ERA’s, but you never really could believe much in it because of the low strikeout rate:
25% is right around league average, and the walk rate is two points better than the league average, so there’s really not much to complain about.
He does not get many ground-balls (42%), so that makes the 0.86 HR/9 number look a little bit flimsy, but the big ballpark helps out and his arsenal is really deep:
He is one of these guys with all three fastball variations, and that seems to a really solid recipe for success. He must tunnel these three pitches very well. They aren’t high in velocity, and I don’t think they move a ton either, which results in weak contact more often than whiffs - but whatever it is, i works.
His slider is the put-away pitch, but you can see he’s pretty hesitant to use it. He only threw 53 of them all season in zero strike counts. Even in 0-2 and 1-2 counts, he uses the four-seamer most often (181 of them, the second most used pitch there was the curveball at just 90 pitches). The 13% SwStr% on the pitch is elite, so it makes some sense that he would use it for strikeouts, but I can’t help but think he could get a few more strikeouts if he went to the slider more often while ahead.
Anyways, Bassitt is a really solid fantasy starter, and you can’t find a ton of those guys after the first ten rounds of your draft, so he’s very much in the game.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Ian Anderson
Sean Manaea
Such a limited arsenal:
He does have one of the highest SwStr% in the league on a sinker, but it’s still south of 11%. It also doesn’t even get many ground-balls. It looks a lot more like a cutter by the numbers here, but that’s basically all he throws.
Despite that, he went for a solid 25.7%-5.4% K-BB ratio last year and a sub-4 ERA. He gave up a good amount of homers, which makes sense, and I’d expect more of that. I just don’t really care to draft a guy who has been mediocre for so long and who throws one non-elite pitch this often.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Marco Gonzales
Lou Trivino
His numbers weren’t very good last year with a 22% K% and a 10.5% BB%. He is listed as the A’s closer right now, although he could easily lose this job if he struggles and hey - the Athletics might not be all that good this year.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Taylor Rogers
James Kaprielian
The numbers were mediocre at the end of the year with a 4.07 ERA and a 1.22 WHIP. The 24.5% K% and 8.2% BB% weren’t awful but not very inspiring. He also gave up a ton of fly balls (35% GB%, 32% FB%, 23% LD%). His “stuff”:
Only the four-seamer beats the league average SwStr% for the same pitch type, and it barely does so while getting barreled 10.6% of the time. This guy doesn’t seem to be a good pitcher, at least not for the purposes of fantasy baseball.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Marco Gonzales, Alex Cobb