2022 Fantasy Baseball Insertion Ranking - San Diego Padres
Preparing my 2022 fantasy baseball ranks one team at a time!
Explanation & Other Team Links Here
Hitters to Rank
Fernando Tatis Jr.
Manny Machado
Jake Cronenworth
Trent Grisham
Wil Myers
Austin Nola
Fernando Tatis Jr.
Came up about 100 PA’s short of a full season, hit 42 homers and stole 25 bags. 28% K% and 67% contact rate don’t exactly back up his .282 batting average but he crushes the ball and is quite fast, which helps the BABIP. No legitimate holes to poke, I imagine he’ll be my #1 hitter at the end of the day.
Manny Machado
Not sure how he had disappointing fantasy seasons in the past. He’s never struck out above a 20% clip (he’s gone 14.6% and 15.9% the last two seasons) while his worst PA/HR of the last seven years was still well above league average at 22.9 (this was last year, actually). 13% Brl%, 16% K%, 79% contact, 119.6 max velo - all elite. Only negative is the lack of steals.. but c’mon. Dude is only 29 years old I’m laughing to myself. Top 25 hitter no problem.
Jake Cronenworth
Contact specialist (87% contact!), but limited power (7.2% Brl, 110.8 max velo). Above-average line-drive percentage (not sure if this sticks though that stuff is pretty random), but regardless he’s a huge plus in batting average and the counting stats (R, RBI) get there in that Padres lineup. These kinds of guys do seem to go over-drafted, you really shouldn’t expect many homers (steamer has him at 16) or steals (steamer has him at 6), but the multi-position stuff is very nice and you can feel very confident in the batting average.
Trent Grisham
Was probably just over-drafted after the short 2020 season where he went 10 homers 10 steals in 252 PA. It would be much better if we could be sure he’d be the lead-off man, but that’s not what we saw last year with Frazier & Cronenworth working at the top of the lineup. Bad barrel rate at 5.2%, bad max exit velo at 109.4, good but not great contact rate at 81%. *Only* 13 steals in basically a full season. He could get to 20 steals with non-zero power and score a bunch of runs if he sits on top of that lineup, giving him quite a bit of upside but he’ll really have to earn those PAs.
Wil Myers
Myers had his moments in 2021. Between July and August he hit .281, slugged .475, and hit six homers in 163 PAs with 23 runs and 24 RBI. For the year he was much less appealing (.25/.334/.434 with 17 homers and eight steals). He struck out a bunch (28%), and even benefited from a high BABIP (.333). The 70% contact rate was bad and the max exit velocity was worse (107.8). There’s not much here, especially since he’s 31 now.
Austin Nola
Injuries cost him much of the year (194 PAs), but he didn’t do much of interest in that time (two homers, .272/.340/.376). That slash line is pretty solid for a catcher, and he did show some decent power in 2019 (26.7 PA/HR) and 2020 (26.3 PA/HR). There’s definitely some interesting from me here if he’s their starting catcher. Steamer currently has him for 280 PAs. Victor Caratini and Luis Campusano are projected to be in the mix again, so you’re probably going to want to grab a catcher with a firmer grip on PAs, but Nola seems like he’ll be one of the better offensive options at the position when he’s on the field.
Pitchers to Rank
Joe Musgrove
Yu Darvish
Blake Snell
Mike Clevinger
Chris Paddack
Dinelson Lamet
Joe Musgrove
For the year it was a 3.18 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, 27.2% K%, 6.8% BB%, and 45% GB%. From July 1st on, it was 3.70 ERA, 1.28 WHIP, 24.7% K%, 7.6% BB%, 43% GB%. So he got worse in everything starting super hot. That probably leaves him as a guy that will look over-drafted this year. He does look like an above-average strikeout guy now, which he wasn’t with Pittsburgh. He went for a 33% K% in 2020 (39.2 innings) while also raising the GB% to 48%. Those numbers were inflated, certainly, and there are questions about his effectiveness over a full season. Pitch breakdown here:
Pretty rare to see a guy throwing the slider and the curveball more often than the fastball. All four of his most-used pitches had CSW% above 30%, which is quite impressive. The SwStr% on the breaking stuff is good (not elite, but good), but his fastball got hit around. It’s nice to see the presence of the cutter there as well to mix up the fastball usage, which seems to be a key to fantasy ace-hood. I think Musgrove is quite good, especially at age 29 with that great offense behind him. It will be interesting to see where his ADP settles since he was so elite in April-May and then just fine from there on, but the arsenal looks good enough for a confident top 30 SP ranking.
Yu Darvish
One of the biggest disappointments of the fantasy season last year. He went for a 4.22 ERA but a strong 1.09 WHIP. 29.3% K%, 6.3% BB% are great. The problem was the long ball, he gave up a 24 PA/HR, a 1.51 HR/9, an 8.8% Brl%, and a very low 38% GB%. He’s 35 now, which is getting very worrisome. The home run issues weren’t even new, which makes us less confident that he can improve on it:
The 29.2-6.5 K-BB is what really gets me confident in him, but the age and the home runs make him tough to put too much stock into.
Pitch arsenal:
Quite good SwStr% on the cutter, four-seamer, and splitter. Nice GB% on the sinker, splitter, and curveball. Maybe he should focus more on those offerings to keep the ball out of the air? Who knows, I’m no pitching expert! Fastball velocity was about where it always has been (besides 2020 when he threw a bit harder like a lot of pitchers did with so many fewer innings to cover). As long as he looks like the same guy in spring, I think you could get some really nice value on him as people run away from the old guy coming off a bad season. I’m actually going to put him in above Musgrove, although I think they’ll end up very close to each other, just because I believe so much in the K%-BB%.
Blake Snell
I wish I didn’t even have to rank this dude.
He was awful for the most of the year. On July 31st he had a 5.44 ERA and a 1.61 WHIP. That was mostly because he had a 13% walk rate and a 12% barrel rate. His fastball got bombed up to that point (13.5% Brl% on the fastball until July 31st), and he was throwing that pitch a ton (as you can see above it more than doubled up his slider).
From August on (his last start of the year was on September 12th though so this really wasn’t a big sample), he threw 62 innings with a 3.03 ERA, a 1.07 WHIP, a 32% K%, but still a bad 11.7% BB%. He did allow fewer homers there (41 PA/HR), but the barrel rate was still high (10.2%). It seems like hitters just sat on the fastball and were ready for it.
We could dive into the numbers more but I think the picture with Snell is clear. He has trouble staying healthy, and he has huge issues with command at times. He’s a super volatile pitcher that will never fall too deep into drafts because of his upside. He’s not the kind of guy I want to roll the dice on.
Mike Clevinger
He missed the 2021 season but should be ready to roll for the beginning of the 2022 season. In 2019 he went for a 33.9% K% and a 7.4% BB% which is elite (2.71 ERA, 1.06 WHIP). In 41.2 innings in 2020 the K% came down to 24.7% and the walks came up to 8.6%. He isn’t a ground-ball guy (career GB% is right around 40%), which I don’t love to see. It’s always insanely tough to rank a guy that you’ve only seen 41 innings from the last two seasons, so I don’t know, man!
I suppose Lamet would need ranked if he makes the rotation, but I wouldn’t think the Padres would be leaning that way given the state of his arm. Paddack is the likely 5th starter, but I don’t want to waste time on him right now given how bad he was and how uncertain his job is. We’ll come back to this if things change in spring.
Where they show up:
