2022 Fantasy Baseball Insertion Ranking - Atlanta Braves
Creating my 2022 fantasy baseball rankings one team at a time
Explanation & Other Team Links Here
Hitters To Rank
Ronald Acuna Jr.
Ozzie Albies
Austin Riley
Dansby Swanson
Travis d’Arnaud
Adam Duvall
Marcell Ozuna
Ronald Acuna Jr.
I think 2021 was going to be a historic season for Acuna, and it was a real shame that it was cut so short. Acuna was arguably the best hitter in the game for his first three seasons, racking up 81 homers in just 1,404 plate appearances (an elite 17.3 PA/HR). He was also stealing bases at a very high rate while scoring and driving in bunches and bunches of runs. What changed in 2021 was the contact rate. In his 360 plate appearances last year he posted career-bests in contact rate (75%) and strikeout rate (23.6%), while walking at a strong 13.6% clip (not a career-best because he walked at an 18.8% clip in the very short 2020 season). This added on a near .400 OBP to his eliteness in every other category (he was merely very good in OBP prior).
He would be a pretty easy #1 overall pick for 2022 if he were healthy, but that is not the case. We will certainly get many more updates on this once the lockout ends and teams report to spring training (crossing our fingers that this happens, I guess), but for now, we have to assume Acuna misses a few weeks. Missing the spring can lead to slow starts for players once their season does start, but that’s a lesser concern in my view.
One potential wrinkle here is that there’s the possibility that the season is delayed with this lockout stuff, which could make it so Acuna misses no time. That would mean you could get the #1 fantasy player in the game in the second round if your draft occurs before there’s clarity on when the season will start. Either way, this is a lot of words for a guy we know a lot about. If he appears to be ready for Opening Day, he’s my #1 player, but for now, we’ll bump him down to the bottom of the super-elite tier just because of the questions.
Ozzie Albies
Albies is continually underrated in fantasy despite going in the second or third round. He’s been just awesome for fantasy for the last four seasons, and he took that to the next level last season. He hit 30 homers and stole 20 bases while scoring 103 runs and driving in 106. The downside was a .259 batting average and a .310 OBP (just a 6.9% BB%). In 2019 he hit .295 with a .352 OBP, so there is clear upside in those categories as well. He has hits tons of fly-balls since 2019 (45% FB% in 2020, 48.5% last season), as we’ve said numerous times in this series - that lowers batting average. The boost in homers and the decline in batting average go hand-in-hand, but the good news is that it’s really unlikely for him to underachieve in both of these categories in 2022.
There just aren’t too many 20-20 players out there, which makes Albies quite valuable, especially at the 2B position. I don’t think he comes near the 106 RBI again, but he should still be solid there while being elite in runs. He will be helped if the Braves re-sign Freddie Freeman and get Acuna back earlier than we expect, but either way, there’s just not much downside with Albies.
Austin Riley
Riley looked like a boom-or-bust bat in 2019 when he hit 18 homers in 297 PAs (16.5 PA/HR) but struck out at a huge 36% clip which led to a bad .226 average and .279 OBP. Even with a better 2020 season (24% K%, .239 AVG, .301 OBP), he was quite cheap in 2021.
He continued the much-improved strikeout rate in 2021 with a clip of 25.4%, and kept the power numbers coming with a 33 bombs in 662 PAs (20.1 PA/HR). His 13.3% Brl% was one of the better marks in the league and his exit velocity profile is quite compelling as well as we expected. No reason to think he won’t continue on a 30+ HR pace, and it’s very encouraging to see him making that much contact to keep the batting average respectable. He should be an elite RBI source if Freeman and Acuna are there, so there’s not many ways to knock Riley besides to say he’s a zero in steals.
Dansby Swanson
He scored 78 runs, drove in 88, hit 27 homers, and stole nine bags in his 653 plate appearances. That makes for a fantasy starter. His batting average (.248) wasn’t good, and that’s been more the norm for him in his career. He walks at a league-average rate which keeps his OBP pretty mediocre, but being in that lineup with the better-than-average power keeps him competitive.
It’s true that he did most of his damage all at once last year, smashing 12 homers while hitting .304 and slugging .551 in July and August.
Production is production no matter what month it comes in, and this guy has a proven enough track record to believe that he won’t be a drop-candidate in fantasy next year, but it remains true that there’s only so much this guy can do for your team. He won’t steal a ton of bags, won’t help much in homers, and probably won’t score a ton of runs hitting near the bottom third of the Braves’ batting order. He’s solid but boring, and he will be ranked as such.
Travis d’Arnaud
This is why you just shouldn’t trust catchers. d’Arnaud was drafted as a top-five catcher last year and was really disappointing. That was mainly due to injury (229 PA), but he wasn’t that good when on the field either. He slashed .220/.284/.388 with a 32.7 PA/HR and no steals. The 23% K% was solid and being in the Braves lineup will always help the counting stats, but this guy will be 33 this year and most of the excitement around him last year was due to the 2020 season, a massive smokescreen.
To be more positive, he has always hit homers at a good rate and the Braves lineup should continue to buoy him into fantasy relevance. I just hate talking about catchers so let’s be done.
Adam Duvall
He went .228/.381/.491 last year, a beautifully Duvallian line. All this guy has done for his whole career is smash homers at a high rate while doing nothing else useful. Last year the high HR count (38) led to an elite RBI count (113) as well, so I guess I wasn’t being totally fair there.
Let’s look at his splits between the two teams he played with last year
Miami: 339 PA, .229/.274/.478, 22 HR, 68 RBI, 5 SB
Atlanta: 216 PA, .226/.273/.513, 16 HR, 45 RBI, 0 SB
So he was better with Atlanta but that mirage of him stealing bases went away. He should have an everyday job with the Braves as long as he keeps hitting homers, but at the age of 33 on this good of a team, it’s far from guaranteed that he keeps it. He’s a good late-round power source once again.
Marcell Ozuna
It’s possible that he won’t be on the Braves for much longer as his off-the-field issues haven’t quite settled yet. That said, the Braves do have quite a bit of money committed to him so it seems like a good chance he’ll be back. The projections have him playing the full season (595 PA), which makes him pretty interesting given how cheap he will be. This guy was a top-30 pick last year and now he’s going around 250.
The other issue was that he wasn’t very good in his 208 plate appearances last year. He hit just .213/.288/.356 with seven homers (29.7 PA/HR) and no steals. The strikeouts were good at 22%, the walks declined by were still okay at 9.1%. A .244 BABIP didn’t help, but a low BABIP was expected with him given the 41% FB% and the slower foot speed.
I think the best bet here is that Ozuna will come back to the Braves (where Jorge Soler signs will impact this, so keep an eye on that), start every day, and absolutely destroy a price tag of 250 ADP. But it’s in the range of outcomes that he isn’t in the Majors at all next year as well, so good luck with this one!
Pitchers To Rank
Max Fried
Charlie Morton
Ian Anderson
Will Smith
Huascar Ynoa
Max Fried
Unsurprisingly, he did not replicate his successes from 2020 (when he went for a 2.25 ERA and won 11 games in just 56 innings). That said, it was still a pretty solid year for Fried with a 3.04 ERA and a 1.09 WHIP. Once again it came with a mediocre strikeout rate (24%) but a big ground-ball rate (52%) and a low homer rate (.81 HR/9).
It was just par for the course for Fried.
He didn’t get many swings and misses on any of his pitches. His best swing-and-miss pitch was also his hardest hit (the slider). I don’t see Fried seeing any need to change anything since he’s been so successful at preventing runs and winning his team ballgames. We can feel pretty confident about Fried being who Fried has been. He’ll post an ERA under 3.50 and win games with that juggernaut offense behind him (although again we need to keep an eye on the Freeman & Acuna news).
We can’t be so confident about him posting another good WHIP given all the balls that are put into play (WHIP is quite variable with low-strikeout, high-groundball pitchers). In 2019 his WHIP was 1.33, followed by two seasons of 1.09. I think he comes above 1.20 again if the strikeout rate stays the same.
Overall there isn’t much upside with Fried, but he’s a nice guy to draft if you draft a volatile pitcher before him.
Charlie Morton
Another strong season for Morton, years after we thought he was done for. He is now 38, so we have to really wonder how long this can continue.
He racked up 185.2 innings with a 3.34 ERA, a 1.04 WHIP, a 28% K%, and a 7.7% BB%. The ground-balls kept coming (47.8%), and he kept the ball in the yard because of it (0.78 HR/9). Here’s the arsenal:
Really went hard on the curveballs last year throwing it most often. The 17.7% SwStr% is quite good, and the 51% GB% with the 2.5% Brl% is very good to see as well given how often he was throwing it. The four-seamer could still get up there on the radar gun and posted a batter-than-average 9.9% SwStr%. Maybe the command of it wasn’t that good, or he was using it a waste pitch to get chases quite a bit, because that CSW% wasn’t very great.
He threw those two pitches more than two-thirds of the time, so there’s not a ton of reason to look into the rest of his stuff, but it’s good to know that he has three other pitches if they’re needed for some reason.
I’d be pretty careful drafting Morton as a 38-year-old. Any decline in arm strength or precision I think could really hurt him since he’s so reliant on these two pitches, and the fastball isn’t all that great. He’ll probably still be awful cheap, but I imagine I mostly steer clear.
Ian Anderson
He did not pitch a full season with an innings count of 128.1. The ERA (3.58) and WHIP (1.23) were pretty pedestrian as far as what you’re looking for in a fantasy pitcher. The K% came down to 23% after his 30% rate in 2020, and he kept a not-great walk rate of 10%. The 49% GB% was nice, but the 1.12 HR/9 was average.
All-in-all the numbers weren’t overly encouraging. His changeup is very good (17% SwStr%, 58% GB%), but the heavy four-seam usage and limited arsenal don’t really set up that pitch all that well. He’s very young (23!), so there’s plenty of room to improve majorly, so you have to give him a bump for that - but overall he hurt fantasy teams last year and doesn’t appear to be a guy that can get enough strikeouts right now.
Will Smith
31% K% but a 10% BB%. Gives up tons of fly-balls (just a 31% GB%), still a 3.44 ERA, and a 1.13 WHIP in 68 innings. He should have the job locked in, and the Braves will win a bunch of games - so that’s the most important thing.
Huascar Ynoa
He was awesome at the beginning of the season, posting this line:
29% K%, 6% BB%, 32% CSW%, 3.02 ERA, 1.05 WHIP
In his first 45 innings. Then there was an injury and he was out until August. After that the numbers were:
26% K%, 7% BB%, 30% CSW%, 5.05 ERA, 1.17 WHIP
Those numbers are all strong beside the ERA, and the 1.36 HR/9 in that second sample didn’t help. He threw just 91 innings overall with a 4.05 ERA and a 1.11 WHIP, A 27% K%, and a 7% BB%. I mean I’ll take those numbers for sure at his price. Let’s look at his collection of pitches:
We have another guy throwing a breaking ball most often, which is very strange and doesn’t seem sustainable. I don’t think this guy can go rip off 1,500 sliders next year which is about the pace he was on (the league leader in sliders thrown last year with Patrick Corbin with 1,050 if you’re wondering). That will probably make him put that 4-seamer to the test, and it wasn’t that good last year despite the high velocity.
SwStr% on four-seamers are rarely super high, but 6.2% is bad and his 24.5% CSW% is also quite bad.
And that’s pretty much it for his arsenal as the changeup and sinker made up 89% of his arsenal. That’s a pretty big red flag for me, so I’ll be ranking Ynoa pretty far down - especially considering that we can’t really project him for 150+ IP.