2022 Fantasy Baseball Insertion Ranking - San Francisco Giants
Creating my 2022 fantasy baseball rankings one team at a time
Explanation & Other Team Links Here
Hitters to Rank
Brandon Crawford
Brandon Belt
Joey Bart
Mike Yastrzemski
LaMonte Wade Jr.
Evan Longoria
Player
Having your best season at the plate at age 34 is not something you see very often, but that’s what Crawford did in 2021.
Saying “best season” is an understatement, he absolutely murdered his previous bests in almost everything. He did it pretty darn convincingly too with the great K% (19.1%) and strong walk rate (10.2%) to go along with the really good underlying power numbers (11.5% Brl, 29% FB%). The one thing that didn’t really improve drastically in 2021 was the exit velocity stuff. He maxed out at just 112.4 with a 90th percentile mark of 101.8, both of those marks were league average territory.
It would be almost unbelievable that someone could add swing speed at age 34, but it’s much more believable that a change in approach could result in much better results.
It looks like we actually started seeing some changes in the short 2020 season, as his FB% jumped up and his PA/HR reached a career-best (by far, at least since his rookie year). That came along with more strikeouts in 2020, which made sense. However, in 2021 he maintained the higher FB% and improved home run rate while bringing the strikeouts back down below 20%.
Now this guy is 35, so we can’t really rank him just based on what he did in 2021, but he certainly looks like a solid bat the shortstop position. If he keeps hitting this many fly balls while keeping the K% under 20, it should be a very useful fantasy season once again.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Jorge Polanco, Ryan Mountcastle
Brandon Belt
We haven’t seen a ton of Belt on the field lately (179 PA in 2020, 381 in 2021), but what we have seen has shown us a different version of himself than what we knew in the past.
If you focus on the PA/HR column here you really see that he’s become an elite home run hitter over the last two seasons (although keep in mind the small sample size). The tradeoff in 2021 was the high 27% K%, but when he was making contact the ball was going into the air and it was hit hard (17% barrel rate!).
Belt is tough to get a finger on. His K% has been jumping up and down and the batting average has been hectic as well. It would seem that his approach in 2021 was to just try to get the ball over the fence, as evidenced by the ridiculous 50% FB% and 27% K%. I would imagine he doesn’t change much, since he was quite effective at the plate in his 381 PAs for the Giants.
I believe that he can be a good source of homers, but the batting average is very much questionable. Bonus points in OBP leagues with his consistently high walk rates.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Ryan Mountcastle, Josh Bell
Joey Bart
Young catcher stepping for Buster Posey. He went for a .294/.358/.472 line in AAA last year (10 homers in 279 PA). In the Majors in 2020 he went .233/.288/.320 in 111 PA with a 37% K%. The K% was high in the minors last year as well at 29%, with just an average home run rate.
I’m not sure there’s much real upside here, and he seems like a good bet for a very bad batting average considering the likely 28%+ K%, but he seems like he’ll get some decent playing time - at least.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Eric Haase, Carson Kelly
Mike Yastrzemski
It was a very disappointing 2021 season for Mike with a .224/.311/.457 line in his 532 PA. The 25 homers was more than useful, and the rate was pretty strong (21.3 PA/HR).His average wasn’t helped by the .254 BABIP, but he did hit a ton of fly balls (47%) which isn’t good for BABIP.
Encouragingly he kept his k% below 25% again (24.6%). His walk rate was middling (9.6%), and he stole just four bases. If he continues to hit the middle of the lineup (very likely with Posey gone), he should be a very solid source of homers and RBI, and the low K% should keep his batting average above .250 or so, making him quite a useful bat for a very, very cheap price tag in drafts this year.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Eduardo Escobar, Max Kepler
LaMonte Wade Jr.
He didn’t play a ton in 2021 but was a strong source of offense when he was on the field. In 381 PA he hit .253/.326/.482 with 18 homers (21.2 PA/HR) and six steals. He did that on a strong 23.6% K% and walked at an average rate (8.7%).
It was a platoon situation for Wade, with 338 PA against righties (.518 SLG, 18 HR) and just 42 against lefties (.189 SLG, 0 homers). That may leave him in a platoon again in 2022, which the Giants were very willing to do last year. This is the better half of the platoon, however, since 60-70% of the league’s pitchers are right-handed, but it does throw a wrench into the works here.
His barrel rate was good at 10.6%, and the contact rate is impressive in conjunction with that at 82%. The velocity numbers are uninspiring (111.6 max), but any time I see a double-digit Brl% with a sub-25% K% I get pretty excited, especially if the guy is adding some steals.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Kyle Lewis, Brendan Rodgers
Evan Longoria
He was awesome in a limited time in 2021, going for a .261/.351/.482 line with a 22.4 PA/HR (13 bombs in 291 PA). His strikeout rate came up to a career-worst, but at 23.4% it was still pretty solid, and his walk rate ballooned up to 12%. He just swung way less in 2021, which explains both of those changes (42.3% Swing%, previously he was a 46-49% guy).
Being more selective can be a legitimate reason for improvement, and Longoria still showed off good bat speed (113.2 max velo). The guy is 36 now, so there are real questions about this, but you can certainly do a lot worse for how late this guy has gone in drafts. He’s probably not going to do anything great (I don’t think he has much of a shot at 30 homers or a .280 batting average), but a 25-28 homer season with a .265 average and 80+ RBI is pretty realistic.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Mike Moustakas, Anthony Santander
Darin Ruf / Wilmer Flores
The Giants figure to be very platoon heavy again in 2022 given all these splits specialists they have. Here’s the summary for these two names plus LaMonte Wade.
vs. lefties
vs. righties
Ruf smacked the hell out of lefties and Wade did the same against righties, and Flores was a bit in between. I wouldn’t really want to draft any of these guys in normal/shallow leagues except for Wade if we know he’ll play against lefties too.
Pitchers to Rank
Logan Webb
Camilo Doval
Anthony DeSclafani
Alex Wood
Alex Cobb
Jake McGee
Logan Webb
148.1 innings and a 3.03 ERA with a 1.11 WHIP. That was after a 3.86 ERA and 1.29 WHIP in his first 49 innings (April and May). From June 1 on it was a 2.63 ERA and 1.02 WHIP with an elite 27%:5% K-BB ratio.
He is pretty sinker-heavy, which puts a limit on his strikeout rate. In fact, the 26.5% K% he put up is pretty surprising for a sinkerballer, but you can see that he did throw tons of other pitches. 323 of his 823 sinkers (39%) came in 0-0 counts.
When we look at his distribution excluding zero-strike counts:
He really goes to the slider and changeup a ton in these situations, which make the strikeout rate more believable. It’s even more believable when you see the elite 21% SwStr% on the slider (only Kershaw, Scherzer, Brubaker, Ray, Snell, and Cease had better SwStr% than this on sliders). That pitch was outstanding in 2021. A good sinker and elite slider are a really good base to an arsenal, and he also has the changeup and four-seamer in the bag too. Neither of those pitches are particularly great (the four-seamer wasn’t good at all), but it gives him the ability to mix up the movement a ton.
Webb will be a trendy pick in 2022 after the breakout in 2021 and what we saw down the stretch and in the playoffs, and I think that’s fine. I wouldn’t worry about Webb really falling off a cliff since the sinker/slider are really good with the great walk rate.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Julio Urias, Joe Musgrove, Luis Garcia
Camilo Doval
Last year: 27 IP, 9 ER, 37 K, 7 BB (not counting IBB)
That’s really good. His arsenal was a 99 mph four-seamer and a slider that went for an 18.6% SwStr% and a 37.9% CSW%. Small sample, but quite convincing. He *should* get the first crack at the closer job and as long he doesn’t majorly falter, he should rack up some saves on this team that knows how to pitch, hit dingers, and keep games close.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Jordan Romano, Will Smith
Anthony DeSclafani
He threw 167.2 innings with a strong 3.17 ERA and a 1.09 WHIP. The 22.5% K% was still bad, but helped by a 6.2% BB%. He got somewhat lucky in the home run category with just a 36 PA/HR despite an average 8.2 Brl% and a 26% FB%. The big park helps, but I’d expect some more homers to follow next year.
He really doesn’t have a single great pitch, but the arsenal is deep enough to get hitters off-balance, and there’s nothing truly awful in here:
He is one of these guys throwing a ton of sliders, which is abnormal. He does throw it in the zone more than most guys (49% zone rate), and the numbers are good as you can see with the 31% CSW% and 16% SwStr%). Any time you see a guy throwing this many sliders, you know their fastball must not be all that great. The four-seamer actually looked okay with a 9.8% SwStr% and 29.9% CSW%.
DeSclafani is just a bit of a boring pick since he’s been around for so long without ever having a great fantasy season, but he’s a strong guy to pick up late in the draft to get you some safe innings.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Marcus Stroman,
Alex Wood
He got to just 138.2 innings with a 26% K%, a 6.7% BB%, a 3.83 ERA, and a 1.18 WHIP. He got a ton of ground-balls (51%), which is nice, and that helped him go for a great 0.91 HR/9.
All of this seems pretty good, but then the bad side comes in. He hasn’t thrown more than 152 innings since 2015, and he’ll be 31 this year. He also throws a sinker almost half the time, which makes the 26% K% pretty hard to believe.
He will have some good starts when on the mound, but the ceiling is very low and the low innings expectations make him someone better left for streaming in standard leagues.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Hyun-Jin Ryu, Casey Mize
Alex Cobb
He managed just 93.1 innings and put up a 3.76 ERA with a 1.26 WHIP o a 25% K% and a 8.4% BB%. His calling card was keeping the ball in the yard with a 0.48 HR/9.
His arsenal is unique with sinker+splitter covering more than 80% of his pitches.
There aren’t going to be many strikeouts but probably not many walks or homers given up either. If you could guarantee 180 innings he’d possibly be worth drafting, but for now I don’t think there’s much to talk about.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Taijuan Walker
Jake McGee
A good handcuff for Doval.
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