2022 Fantasy Baseball Insertion Ranking - Chicago Cubs
Creating my 2022 fantasy baseball rankings one team at a time
Explanation & Other Team Links Here
Hitters to Rank
Willson Contreras
Ian Happ
Frank Schwindel
Patrick Wisdom
Nick Madrigal
Willson Contreras
He continued to be one of the best sources for catcher power (23 PA/HR, 11.1% Brl%, 115.4 max velo), but the strikeouts came up to a career-high at 28.6%. That drove the batting average down to a very damaging .237, but the 11% walk rate kept the OBP afloat (.340).
He would seem to be the Cubs’ best hitter at this point, so unless they make several free-agent splashes he should be hitting in a prominent lineup spot and playing as much as his body will allow him. That certainly puts him as a top catcher, and the question just becomes how early you’re willing to pull the trigger on that position.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: J.T. Realmuto, Yasmani Grandal
Ian Happ
He nearly played a full season last year, setting a career-best in PA at 535. His strikeout rate was huge (29%), but so was his walk rate (11.6%), which resulted in a .226/.323/.434 slash line. That isn’t a very good line, but he did pile up 25 homers and nine steals. The 21.4 PA/HR, 11.2% Brl% suggest that he is indeed an above-average home run hitter, but the exit velocity numbers give some pause to that as they are all around league-average (112 max, 102.8 90th percentile, 82.6 average).
The upside is 25 homers and 15 steals, with decent counting stats if he can stay near the top of the lineup for a full season. He’s cheap, but that’s for good reason. He will likely not help your team in batting average, but with some luck and that walk rate being maintained he could be ‘fine’ in OBP. I suppose this is a better fantasy player than he will be given credit for, but you’re not going to have huge regrets if you miss on him.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Avisail Garcia, Adam Duvall
Frank Schwindel
He was somewhat forced into MLB playing time with all the trades the Cubs made, but he certainly earned himself another shot in 2022. He hit .326/.371/.591 in 259 PA’s with 14 homers and two steals.
That is an incredible line that nobody should expect a repeat of. However, the 15.8% K% and 78% contact rate does support a high batting average. He doesn’t seem to be a guy that you can count on for a high BABIP, but he did benefit from a .348 mark next year.
Certainly, this batting average is going to come down, and probably the whole way down to below .300, but still, it will help your fantasy team. The other important part here is that he showed the ability to hit some home runs, so the batting average isn’t empty. He was lucky in this regard as well as his 18.4 PA/HR is in no way backed up by the 8.0% Brl%, 27% FB%, and 112.5 max velo. He’s not a power hitter, so I would expect this to fall down to 28-32 PA/HR - a league-average mark.
So what we appear to have is a better-than-average batting average with decent power production. It is possible that he will be awful in 2022 and not stay in the lineup, because that’s just how little we have seen out of this guy at the Major League level (and yo he’s turning 30 this summer). I think the proper move, considering everything, would be not to concern yourself with Schwindel here especially since he doesn’t profile to be a good steals source.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Jeimer Candelario, Joey Wendle
Patrick Wisdom
28 bombs in 375 PA for a great 13.4 PA/HR. He was an elite source of power no matter how you look at it (16.2% Brl%, 114.2 max velo, 36% FB%).
But this comes with almost nothing else. He stole 4 bases, which would extrapolate to seven or so, and he struck out at a ridiculous 41% clip. You simply cannot strike out that much and stay fantasy-relevant, so as long as that number doesn’t drastically change I see no reason to put Wisdom anywhere but the waiver wire on your team, unless you’re on some insanely deep league where the 30+ HR upside is enough to grant a starting spot.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Keston Hiura
Nick Madrigal
Basically, take everything about Patrick Wisdom and reverse it. He made just 215 PAs last year after an early-season injury, but he has shown to be the best contact hitter in the game in his 324 career PAs. His contact rate in 2020 was 92.4%, and then last year it was 91.8%.
He has no power and doesn’t even seem to try, he just kinda goes up there and tries to get a ball through or over the infield for a single. He can steal some bags, which is really the only reason he’s considerable for fantasy at this point. It will be interesting to see how the Cubs intend to use him, if he is a lead-off hitter he probably should be on a roster in deep leagues since he’ll hit .310 with 80+ runs and maybe 20 steals, but he is an absolute and utter HR and RBI crater. If he hits at the bottom of the order that murders his value as you’d have to reduce the R and SB projections significantly.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Luis Arraez, Adam Frazier
Pitchers to Rank
Marcus Stroman
Kyle Hendricks
Adbert Alzolay
Marcus Stroman
Stroman put up a career-best WHIP in 2021 at 1.15, which has him floating up draft boards a bit. He did that on another weak strikeout rate (21.6%), but maintained the low walk rate (6%) and high GB% (51%) that has kept him successful.
I don’ think he goes for that good of a WHIP again, although pitching in the NL Central is a pretty nice spot to be (although less so for Cubs pitchers since the Cubs offense is a huge reason why the NL Central is so bad offensively…).
His four-seamer posted an elite 16.7% SwStr%, but that is probably mostly to do with how rarely he threw it. He’s still a guy that is just there to throw strikes and get ground-balls, which can result in good ERA’s but it’s not good for WHIP most of the time, and he’ll hurt your team’s strikeout figures while not profiling to win many games on this bad team.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Aaron Civale, John Means
Kyle Hendricks
The Cubs are not going to strike anybody out in 2022 with these two guys as their top pitchers. Hendricks was wildly over-drafted in 2021 after taking advantage of the short 2020 season. He went for a caree-worst 4.77 ERA and 1.35 WHIP while the K% came down to a gross 16.7%. The walks were still great (5.6%), but he could not keep the ball in the yard (1.54 HR/9).
A pitcher that is striking out just 17% of the batters they face simply can’t afford a bad home run rate. Probably the HR/9 improves in 2022 and he settles somewhere between 2020 and 2021, but it’s still not going to be a great fantasy pitcher.
Heavy sinker usage, mediocre whiff rates on everything. You’re playing with fire here, although maybe you can give him a slight bump in quality start leagues or something.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Cal Quantrill, Kyle Gibson
Adbert Alzolay
Alzolay was looking pretty great for a while in 2021, but struggled after dealing with some injuries. From April through June he went for a pretty encouraging 26% K% and 7.5% BB%, and for the year those numbers finished at 24.7% and 6.6%. That’s a decent ratio. He’s just 26 so he is someone we could potentially see big improvements from in the near future.
His slider was great but probably over-used. The four-seamer got thwomped to the tune of a 13.3% barrel rate despite the solid velocity and the really good 10% SwStr%. His ERA ended up being bad at 4.58 and that’s because of the home run problems, where he gave up 1.79 HR/9.
You don’t see many pitchers going above 1.50 HR/9 no matter how bad they are, so that should improve and the ERA will follow. I think Alzolay could be one of those guys to really bust out in 2022 just given the deep arsenal and encouraging strikeout and walk ability. He does fit the “breakout” mold, but I’m not going to put a bunch of chips on that bet.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Jameson Taillon, Jesus Luzardo
Rowan Wick
The Cubs don’t figure to win many games, but Wick is the listed closer right now. He went for a nice 29% K% but a scary 14% BB% last year. He was saved by a low homer rate (0.39 HR/9). His career walk rate is bad but not THAT bad (10.5%). Anybody with a high walk rate is quite volatile in the closer job, so Wick should be near the bottom of the list.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Dylan Floro, Daniel Bard
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