2022 Fantasy Baseball Insertion Ranking -- New York Mets
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Hitters to Rank
Starling Marte
Francisco Lindor
Pete Alonso
Eduardo Escobar
Mark Canha
Brandon Nimmo
Jeff McNeil
James McCann
Starling Marte
Marte’s big 2021 season (.308/.381/.456, 12 HR, 47 SB along with elite defense) earned him another big contract in the Big Apple. He will primarily be drafted for batting average and steals, but I think there are 20-25 homers here as well. His 8.4% barrel rate was right around league average and the velocity/swing speed numbers put him around average as well, showing that his much below average 44 PA/HR could improve quite a bit. The 19% K% is also very appealing and quite believable since he’s never had a K% above 20% in his career. He actually made significant gains in BB% last year to get up to 8.2% from his previous career-high of 5.9%. He benefited from a .369 BABIP, but you should expect a higher than normal BABIP from him given the foot speed and ever-low FB% (24% FB% last year, and he’s been under 30% all but once in his career).
I’d say a projection of 18 homers, 40 steals, and a .290 batting average is very realistic and he should pile up the runs or the RBI depending on where he hits in this suddenly elite Mets lineup.
The worry would be that the age is about to catch up to him (he’ll be 33 for the whole 2022 season). That could result in some lessened bat speed and therefore some extra strikeouts, but man it seems like he’s going to be at least “fine” in every single category you want to pick. As one of the few five-category guys out there, I’m not going to make a fuss out of his elevated ADP this year.
Francisco Lindor
The former first-round pick has really dropped off for fantasy purposes over the last couple of years. He has posted pedestrian homer rates since 2020 (33.3 PA/HR and then 26.2 last year), while posting the lowest batting averages of his career (.258 and then .230), while also being pretty mediocre in steals (6 and 10).
The contact rate was good (78%), and it was another sub 20% K% (19%). Max velo was fine without being great at 112.9. He actually looks a ton like Starling Marte, just with marginally more homers but way fewer steals.
He’s been quite over-priced the last two seasons. He’s fallen a bit to ADP 48 as I write this, but I’m not sure this is really a top fifty guy. He’s not going to sink your team or anything like that, and he’s still quite young (28), which keeps some upside there. The ceiling is pretty solid, you could see a 30 homer, 20 steal, .290 batting average season which would be a smash in the fourth or fifth round, but that’s a pretty unlikely outcome. Lindor is tough, but I’ll probably rank him pretty high just for the safety he brings.
Pete Alonso
2021 was Alonso’s worst home run of his three-year career, but still very good at 17.1 PA/HR. The trade-off there was a career-best strikeout rate at 19.9%, a very impressive number for someone with this much power. Max exit velo was elite, of course, at 118.4 (8th best in the league), and his 90th percentile exit velocity of 107.0 was 13th best in the league. I am really shocked at how low his strikeout rate was, and he maintained an above-average walk rate as well (9.4%). He achieved that on a career-best 76.7% contact rate (that beaten his rookie year by 3.5 points - a huge improvement).
The RBIs should be massive with Marte and Lindor ahead of him, and you can all but guarantee 35+ homers if he stays healthy. This is a pretty darn good bet for fantasy when you need some power numbers on your team but don’t want to go the route of the Joey Gallo type who will wreck your team’s batting average. The .260 mark he’s posted in his two of his three years seem like a good projection, and I think there’s even room for improvement as he’s never had a BABIP above .280.
Eduardo Escobar
Escobar somewhat quietly has had three very very strong fantasy seasons over the last four:
If you just ignore 2020, you have a guy that has been better than the league average in home rate while contributing at least decently in everything but steals. The batting average is unlikely to be anything but a league-average type number, and he won’t steal bags. He will also probably have to hit near the bottom of the Mets batting order, which hurts the counting stats a bit. He’ll also be 33 come Opening Day, so things are likely to start trending downwards. I’ll think he’ll continue to be a decent draft value just because he’s a solid hitter that doesn’t get people excited, but I won’t be going out of my way to get him on my teams.
Mark Canha
The appeal with Canha has always been that he’s very, very cheap in fantasy and walks a bunch (13.5% in 2019, 15.2% in 2020, 12.3% in 2021). With the Mets, I don’t see him hitting at the top of the order, and he might not even be an every-day player with how deep this team is. He doesn’t have a ton of power (36.8 PA/HR, 107.7 max velo, 7.1% Brl%), and the steals were only decent even when at the top of the lineup for the Athletics (he stole 12 last year, I’d take the under on that with the Mets).
So this is someone who can contribute a bit in OBP leagues but he’ll probably be a little over-priced (currently going around pick 250, so that seems fine, and it could be a very nice price if it would work out that he ends up playing every day for the Mets and hits in the top five spots of the order - but I don’t think either of those things will happen).
Brandon Nimmo
The steamer projections aren’t questioning Nimmo’s playing time, giving him a full season of PAs. He was only interesting in the past as a lead-off man who walked a ton. He likely won’t lead-off anymore, and you’re getting a guy with average power at best and low steals. If you’re in an OBP league he’s considerable given that he’s one of the highest walk rates in the league, but other than that I don’t think he’s going to be worth much. He does go outside of the top 300 though, so nobody is really spending anything on him. He’s a good late-round guy in super-deep OBP leagues.
Jeff McNeil
The Mets only have so many plate appearances to go around, and McNeil is losing out in a hurry here. Even if he would play a ton, his fantasy ceiling is capped big time. He doesn’t steal many bases and has very little power (4.3% Brl%, 109.5 max velo, 61 PA/HR). If some injuries happen and he has to play every day, his batting average would make him draftable for fantasy, but for right now he’s not looking like someone to care much about.
James McCann
If you have to draft a catcher, you might as well draft one with some level of pop (41 PA/HR from McCann last year wasn’t good but he had a nice 26 PA/HR in 2019). He’s also projected to be the Mets’ main catcher. He probably won’t end up in the top 10 or anything, but you could do worse at catcher. There should at least be plenty of RBI opportunities for him in this strong lineup.
Pitchers to Rank
Max Scherzer
Jacob deGrom
Edwin Diaz
Carlos Carrasco
Tylor Megill
Taijuan Walker
Max Scherzer
179.1 spectacular innings for Scherzer has him near the top of the ADP board once again for 2022. A 34% K%, a 5.2% BB%, a 2.46 ERA, and a 0.86 WHIP. He was one of the top pitchers in the game. He’s 37 now, but I really think what he did last year means a lot more than the age.
Of course, you would rather have someone who did what he did last year and is also in their twenties, but not many pitchers are even capable of the dominance Scherzer is, and he could very easily pay off as a top-three pitcher again in 2022.
The four-seamer was great with a 31.7% CSW% and a 13.4% SwStr%, and the slider was just outrageously good with a 26.3% SwStr% on 548 pitches (only seven pitchers had higher numbers than this on their slider and four of them were relievers).
The only thing Scherzer hasn’t been elite at during his career is the long ball, because he gives up a ton of fly-balls. After he got away from DC last year his PA/HR was great at 53. That is probably not going to be repeated, but it is true that Washington is a pretty good ballpark for homers, and Citi Field is a little bit friendlier in that regard. There will be a lot of the Marlins and Nationals on the schedule, two offenses that don’t have much pop in the lineups. I think it’s going to be another very good year for Scherzer. I’m putting him in just behind Gerrit Cole here.
Jacob deGrom
No pitcher has been even close to as good as deGrom for quite some time now, and it was a real shame that we couldn’t get more innings from his last year just to see how far he could pus hit. In his 92 innings, he put up a 1.08 ERA, a 0.55 WHIP, a 45% K%, and a 3.4% BB%. These numbers don’t even make any sense.
I don’t know if this makes any sense, but is it possible that they have deGrom dial it down on the velocity? Can you really throw 2,000 fastballs at an average of 99 miles per hour and stay on the field? I don’t freaking know, but it wouldn’t be shocking to see him knock that down a few MPH which would likely knock down the performance at least slightly. Doesn’t really change much given how far ahead of the field he has been.
The injuries are the only real concern, and it’s a pretty big concern considering how much trouble he had with the throwing arm last year. We’ll have a clearer picture in spring, but he did not require surgery and there is no reason to rank him anywhere but #1 in terms of per-inning statistical projection. So he will be my #1 for right now, and I can only think of one possibility for a pitcher to rank above him when all is said and done.
Edwin Diaz
I hate ranking closers, but Diaz should be near the top of the list. The Mets profile to win a bunch of games in 2022 and Diaz has locked in the job. His 1.05 WHIP, 34.6% K%, 8.9% BB%, and 0.43 HR/9 were great last year. That’s really all you need to see, he should be near the top of the list in projected saves, so he’ll be my #1 closer for now.
Carlos Carrasco
He managed just 53.2 innings and was quite bad with a 6.04 ERA and a 1.43 WHIP with a bad 21% K% and a putrid 2.01 HR/9.
How much of this can we forgive? We probably should be willing to forgive quite a bit since he had so many injury issues. He really did not get a ramp-up period as he missed almost all of the spring and then went through multiple injuries. The stuff:
Pretty strong SwStr% rates all around. He will be 35 when the season begins, and now it’s been since the 2018 season since we’ve seen him throw more than 80 innings. That makes Carrasco quite a risky pick, and I think we’ll be better off searching elsewhere for starting pitching, even at his cheaper price tag. That said, I won’t be surprised if he has a very useful fantasy season given how crafty of a guy he is.
Tylor Megill
A 26% K% and a 7% BB% is pretty darn solid, especially for a rookie. He gave up a ton of homers (20 PA/HR, 10% Brl%), which made for a bad ERA (4.52). We are only looking at 89.2 innings here, which makes it tough. Let’s see what we can derive from his arsenal:
Looks like a pretty average fastball at 94.6 mph with a 9.3% SwStr% and a low GB%. The changeup and slider had good but not elite SwStr%, but he did keep those results out of the air mostly. It looks like he was pretty unlucky with the homer problem, and I’d expect that to improve - you just don’t see 12% Brl% on a changeup that has an 18% SwStr% - that doesn’t make much sense.
Looking at the minor league numbers, he went for 59 strikeouts and just 12 walks in 40.1 innings last year between AA and AAA. That’s a great ratio, and exactly what you want to see from minor league numbers.
I think the upside is probably pretty low on Megill, but I can’t imagine he gets drafted as high as he should be considering the strong K-BB ratio and decent-looking arsenal of pitches.
Taijuan Walker
He threw 166 innings which was pretty shocking. His 22% K% was uninspiring and he gave up a decent amount of homers (25 PA/HR, 10% Brl%).
He doesn’t get a good amount of whiffs on any pitcher when you compare them with the league averages for that pitch type. He does get a lot of ground-balls with everything but the fastball, but overall I’m not seeing much here to like given his history. I thought we’d see better strikeout numbers from him if he ever got healthy, and not seeing that was really disappointing. Even if he does manage to stay healthy again in 2022, he’s not going to be a great fantasy pitcher so I’ll leave him alone.