2022 Fantasy Baseball Insertion Ranking - St. Louis Cardinals
Creating my 2022 fantasy baseball rankings one team at a time
Explanation & Other Team Links Here
Hitters to Rank
Tyler O’Neill
Nolan Arenado
Paul Goldschmidt
Tommy Edman
Dylan Carlson
Tyler O’Neill
His season was a bit up-and-down but the final line was very strong. He hit 34 homers (15.8 PA/HR) with a great 17.9% Brl%, and he added 15 steals there. He also came up a bit short of a full season with just 537 PA. Those facts make him one of the highest upside hitters in the league for fantasy purposes as he seems to have a Tatis-esque ceiling of 40 homers and 20 steals.
The SLG did spike after a really great May, but you can see that the mark stayed above .500 all year long and was creeping up toward .600 at the end of the year.
The thing that he doesn’t do well is make contact, as he struggled with a 31% K% and a middling 7% BB%. The contact rate backs up a high K% at 68%. Despite giving away almost a third of his at-bats to strikeouts, he still managed to hit .286. He hit a very high .418 on fly-balls (league average .281) and a high .357 on ground-balls as well (league average .241). His overall BABIP was .366. That would seem unsustainable, but his career mark (987 PA) is .338, and the power/speed guys typically benefit from high BABIPs, so I don’t think we need to drop the batting average projection down all that far.
We have here a player that should clear 30 bombs, adding double-digit steals, and will probably keep the average above .260. There is batting average downside with the high swing-and-miss rate, but it’s not at Gallo-level, which makes O’Neill a pretty interesting player to take a gamble on.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Cedric Mullins, Christian Yelich
Nolan Arenado
The first year away from Coors went about as predicted for Arenado. He lost tons of batting average, but not much homer or RBI production.
You can see the K% and PA/HR rates there stayed really great, but he lost tons of hits moving away from that thin air and massive outfield. So you’re drafting Arenado for 30+ homers, 100+ RBI, and a chance to hit .260-.275 (keep in mind that a .270 batting average is actually quite good in today’s league, you really just want to avoid the .230-.240 hitters).
I would like to point out that Arenado didn’t hit the ball particularly hard in 2021. His max velo was just 110.6 and his 90th percentile mark was 102.3. Those are middling numbers, and led to a bad 6.7% barrel rate. If all of that carries over, you could see Arenado falling shy of 30 homers, so there’s maybe a little more risk here than initially suspected.
He won’t steal many/any bases, which makes him a less exciting pick, but there’s no reason to intentionally avoid Arenado or anything like that.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Anthony Rendon, Jose Abreu
Paul Goldschmidt
Last season was Goldy’s best campaign in quite some time. He hit .294/.365/.514 with 31 homers and even stole twelve bags (his most since 2017). The swing rate and batted ball (GB%, etc) stuff stayed really steady with what we’ve seen.
Everything went pretty much how you’d have expected from Goldy last year besides the spike in steals. That spike has him back up in the top 50 overall, often going ahead of guys like Pete Alonso. I’m not sure it’s wise to expect a repeat of the 12 steals after he stole just 11 bags in 2018-2020 (1,603 PA) - but you’re paying the price for it as if it will happen again.
His exit velocity numbers were shy of elite, but still quite good (max 112.2, 90th percentile 105.1), and that led to a 13.6% Brl%. So he really is in this small and very elusive class of hitters with great marks in both K% and Brl%. That makes me believe in the 30+ HRs quite a bit, which means the RBI will also be there - so he should help your fantasy team even if the steals do go away.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Marcus Semien, Eloy Jimenez, Alex Bregman
Tommy Edman
I don’t know how you can have a 13.7% K%, a 46% GB%, and a 22% LD% and hit just .262. That’s pretty remarkable for Edman, and I’d once again expect a .280+ batting average. That gives him a bunch of runs at the top of that Cardinals lineup (he led off 124 times last year, so that left 29 games where he didn’t - so maybe we shouldn’t exactly assume it’s a safe bet).
He also stole 30 bags in that time, making him one of the key guys to go to for steals outside of the first few rounds.
The most interesting part of the profile is the strong 112.9 max velo, but we have to back off that a bit cause his 90th percentile mark was just 100, below the league average.
I think he can do better than the 11 homers (62.8 PA/HR), but getting to 20 seems very unlikely. But even getting to 15 puts him way, way higher in the ranks than the Nick Madrigal/David Fletcher types who can hit .290 and steal bases but only chip in a handful of dingers.
I like Edman quite a bit, especially on teams where you start without a ton of batting average or steals (but I wouldn’t recommend that as a draft strategy).
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Jose Altuve, Jorge Polanco
Dylan Carlson
He got his first full season under his belt and hit 18 homers with a .266/.343/.437 line with just two steals. That’s a pretty ‘meh’ player, but he did score 79 runs and drove in 65, so there’s nothing really empty here besides steals, I guess.
He hit 2nd in the lineup most often and made 95 starts in the #1 or #2 hole. The Cardinals haven’t made any moves in free agency, and they probably won’t do anything big, but I think it’d be a little foolish to lock in Carlson for 150 games in the top two of that lineup.
What you’re really buying with Carlson is youth and upside. He’s just 23 years old and previously was a highly-touted prospect. He stole 20 bases in 2019 in the minors, and he has a high sprint speed - making a surge in steals pretty possible. The exit velocity doesn’t show much upside with a max of 109 last year and a 90th percentile mark at 99.2, both of those numbers are quite bad - but again at age 23 anything is possible here.
The point also must be made that he dropped his K% down from 29% in 2020 to a much stronger 25% last year.
I think a season with 90 runs, 20 homers, 75 RBI, 15 SB, and a .280 batting average is actually within the range of outcomes here, but so is 70, 10, 50, 5, and .260.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Yoan Moncada, Dansby Swanson
Harrison Bader
Pretty decent 25.1 PA/HR and 9 steals in 401 PA last year. He also greatly improved in K% bringing that number the whole way down to 21% (he was previously in the high-twenties). He did that by swinging a bit more.
He went for a 7% Brl% and a max velo of 111.5, so that’s fine enough to keep up a league-average or so homer rate.
That means a 20/20 season is the upside here, but he likely spend the year at the bottom of the batting order (hit 8th most of last year, and above 6th just six times). Some injury to Edman or Carlson could put him at the top of the lineup, which would be a huge boon - but for now you’re pretty much just drafting him to hope he starts every day and gets you some steals.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Jean Segura, Tyler Naquin
Yadier Molina
Power is really receding (43 PA/HR) last year, but he’s still not striking out (16.7%). But he’s so slow and powerless that his batting average isn’t good anymore (has been under .270 every year since 2017 now). But he probably won’t hit .240 to really hurt you like other catchers.
This is pretty much just a second catcher for your team to get someone to get some PAs in there.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: James McCann
Pitchers to Rank
Adam Wainwright
Jack Flaherty
Steven Matz
Giovanny Gallegos
Alex Reyes
Adam Wainwright
A 3.05 ERa and a 1.06 WHIP with 17 wins for Wainwright. That made him one of the more valuable fantasy pitchers in the league given that he was free.
He did it all with a 21% K%, but a 6% BB%. He kept the barrel of the ball (6.2% Brl%, 39 PA/HR).
He threw more curveballs than anybody except Rich Hill and Charlie Morton, and it worked out just swimmingly for the old guy with that elite 34.8% CSW% and 4.9% Brl%. He even landed it in the strike zone 49% of the time, a high mark for a curveball - but he kind of had to do that since it was his featured pitch.
I wouldn’t be buying Wainwright just cause it’s never my style to bet on pitchers that don’t get strikeouts, and that’s especially true with you’re talking about a guy at age 40.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Marcus Stroman, German Marquez
Jack Flaherty
He once again struggled with injuries and threw just 78.1 innings last season. hie K% came down to 26% in that time, and his walk rate was 8%, so he is a pretty middle-of-the-road pitcher by those marks.
The good news is that we saw him go for a 30% K% and a 7% BB% in 2019, and it’s not completely irrational to write 2020 and 2021 off due to injuries. There could be a real bounce-back here, I suppose.
The reason to doubt is that his arsenal really isn’t all that impressive.
Again, maybe it’s not super fair to look at these numbers just limiting it to 2021, but we don’t have much of a choice now since 2019 was so long ago. The fastball isn’t very good, and the slider got hit around despite the 19.8% SwStr%. He was quite reliant on those two offerings, as they made up 80% of pitches.
He’s still young (26), and we saw really dominant stuff from him in the past, but there are reasons to doubt him on both the health and performance sides, so I’d probably rather have someone else take him.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Jordan Montgomery, Tarik Skubal
Steven Matz
He been a JAG (just a guy) for years now, but he does get the benefit of moving from the AL East to the NL Central, which is the best possible move.
His K% was low at 22% last year but came with a strong 6.6% BB% and a 46% GB%. That gives him the chance to put up an ERA that doesn’t hurt your team, but the WHIP is going to hurt you. He also has given up high HR/9 marks for most of his career (1.62, 1.46, 1.52, 4.11, and 1.08), so even though it improved last season there’s reason to worry it was a mirage.
He’s going near the bottom of the list, but I figured he should be ranked since he’ll get to see so much of the Cubs & Pirates this year.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Casey Mize, Jon Gray
Giovanny Gallegos
The Cardinals are a good team to get a closer from, as they have a good shot at 90 wins. Gallegos is the listed closer, but this is also a team that splits things up, and they have no shortage of very strong bullpen arms (see: Alex Reyes). Gallegos is good, and he’ll get his saves, but the uncertainty of the role keeps him down in the ranks.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Corey Knebel
Alex Reyes
If I draft Gallegos I’d be trying to grab Reyes as well and hope one of them settles into the role.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Rowan Wick, Andrew Kittredge