High-Upside Hitters for Fantasy Baseball - Deeper Leagues Analysis

If you are drafting this early in the fantasy baseball season, you are probably playing in some pretty serious leagues. That means there is a good chance your draft is stretching past 300 picks. It is very tough to keep a large player pool sorted out in your head, and it's not hard to get completely lost after the first 300 players or so are gone.

In this post, I want to look past the 300th pick to search for some hitters that could be worth a starting spot on a fantasy team in 2022 based on some of the skills they showed off last year. Most of these names will have questionable playing time projections, as that just comes with the territory. But we are looking to locate some names that have the talent to contribute in fantasy, even if we have to cross our fingers that they find an everyday starting job.

We'll break this down a few different ways to highlight players that can help in different ways. We are very unlikely to find a 30-homer, 20-steal, .290 batting average guy down here, but it's reasonable to expect a bunch of category specialists to emerge from the depths of the draft.

Power Production

I have a large data set of all players that reached 100 PA's last year along with a bunch of their metrics. I filtered the data by:

• ADP outside of the top-300
• Strikeout rate below 30%
• Barrel Rate above 9%
• Max Exit Velo of 110 or above

This is a pretty easy criterion to meet, but the goal here is to find some hitters capable of hitting the long ball that aren't up there striking out a third of the time. Let's highlight some names.

Seth Brown, Oakland Athletics (ADP - 500)
Brown made waves in the minor leagues in 2019, pounding 37 homers in AAA. He did this in 500 plate appearances while slugging .634. Playing time has been hard to come by for him in the Majors, as he just topped out at 307 plate appearances in 2021. He hit 20 homers in that time for a really strong 15.4 PA/HR (league average in that stat is 30). This guy is going to hit bombs if given playing time, and at the current moment, he is projected to be in the opening day lineup as an outfielder or designated hitter. Brown does struggle in batting average with a career 28.9% strikeout rate, and he doesn't ease the pain much in OBP leagues with just a 7.6% career walk rate. That has turned into a really rough .227 batting average and a .289 OBP in his 395 big league plate appearances, but he is a nice guy to add in deep leagues if you're short on power numbers.

Evan Longoria, San Francisco Giants (ADP - 405)
Lots went right for the Giants in 2021, and Longoria was one of those things. He re-emerged as a very productive bat after several years of pretty mediocre production. He did miss quite a bit of the season, reaching just 287 plate appearances, but while he was on the field, he posted a really impressive 13.4% barrel rate to go along with a 23.7% strikeout rate. Only 15 hitters in the whole league were able to exceed a 13% Brl% while keeping the strikeouts under 24%. He is 36 now, and we probably shouldn't take half of a season last year more seriously than what we saw from him in the much bigger sample of 2017-2020, but it does seem like he can be a guy that beat his draft price cost by a ton if he picks up anywhere close to where he left off last year.

Rowdy Tellez, Milwaukee Brewers (ADP - 367)
They done forgot about rowdy, but no doubt - he's still around. For some reason, I doubt many readers will get the Luke Combs reference. Regardless, Tellez is penciled in as the Brewers' starting first baseman, and this guy can hit some tanks. He posted a max exit velocity of 114.8 last season to go with a strong 11.6% Brl%, and he cut his strikeout rate way down to just 20%. He ended the year with an average home run rate of just 29.2 PA/HR, which really doesn't make a ton of sense given the contact and raw power he has. The problem was he just could not get the ball in the air, finishing the year with a low 23% FB% (league average was 26%). His line-drive rate was a high mark of 26%, so if he just can just elevate the ball a few more degrees on average, I think this will turn into a 30+ homer guy if given the playing time. 

Garrett Cooper, Miami Marlins (ADP - 505)
He's currently listed as a bench bat for the Marlins, but I'm having trouble believing that. He was just awesome at the plate last year with a .284/.380/.465 slash line with nine homers in a shortened season (250 plate appearances). His strikeout rate wasn't great, but not awful either at 27%, and he took a ton of walks (12% BB%). That goes great with his strong barrel rate (10.8%). He is also a guy that posted an absurdly low fly-ball rate at 20%.

These batted ball metrics are pretty variable year-to-year, making it quite likely he hits more fly balls next year - which would add on positively to his home run rate. He will need an everyday starting role to really make a fantasy impact, but I think it's pretty likely he finds himself some playing time given how skilled he is and his ability to play both first base and outfield.

Rougned Odor, Baltimore Orioles (ADP - 483)
He wouldn't be showing up here if not for the move to Baltimore, where he gets a huge boost in projected playing time and a slight boost in home run rate in that ballpark. As a lefty, he won't be impacted by the moved-back fences. He went for a solid 9% barrel rate last year and lowered his strikeout rate to a decent number of 28%. He could end up doing quite a bit of damage in Camden Yards.

Other notables: LaMonte Wade Jr., Tyler Naquin, Connor Joe, Gavin Sheets

Batting Average Production

I don't want to be recommending many Luis Arraez types, guys who will hit for a good batting average but do nothing else - because that's not a good fantasy player no matter how high their average is. For that reason, I kept some of the power number restrictions on here. Here's how I filtered:

• ADP outside of the top-300
• Strikeout rate below 22%
• Barrel + Solid contact rate above 22%

That third one probably isn't familiar, so I'll explain it quickly. These are the two best types of batted ball based on launch velocity and angle. "Barrels" are hit at least 97 miles per hour at a dynamic angle range (the angle range widens as the exit velocity goes up). "Solid contact" works in the same way, but is just a small step below barrels. All (over the fence) homers come from these two batted ball types. The league average last year was 22%, so I dropped that five points since we aren't looking for a ton of homers here, just enough not to crater a team while the player contributes in batting average (and hopefully OBP and runs scored).

Are these criteria arbitrary? You betcha! But hey, it's my party and I'll do what I want.

Tommy La Stella, San Francisco Giants (ADP 525)
He went for just 242 plate appearances last year due to an early-season injury and slashed a poor line of .250/.308/.405. Underneath the hood, however, things looked a bit better. He posted an elite 89% contact rate (meaning he made contact on 89% of his swings), which turned into a 10.8% strikeout rate. Those are two of the best marks in the league. He barreled the ball at a rate of 6.2% and added on a 12.3% solid contact rate for a sum of 18.5%. He does not hit the ball particularly hard (max exit velocity of 108), but he had a nice launch angle distribution which got him to a respectable 34.5 PA/HR.

The key here is if he will start every day and where he will hit in the order. Right now, he is projected to be the Giants' lead-off hitter, which would result in a good amount of runs scored, some steals, and a really nice batting average. If he can do that while keeping a sub-40 PA/HR, this is a useful fantasy hitter that you can get for free in most drafts.

Pavin Smith, Arizona Diamondbacks (ADP 368)
He was a first-round draft pick way back in 2017, but we didn't hear his name much until last season. He made 544 plate appearances and had a decent year slashing .267/.328/.404 with 11 homers in 545 plate appearances. His contact rate was really strong (84%), and he struck out at just a 19.5% clip. The barrel rate was just 5.1%, which isn't great but there are plenty of hitters going this late that are much worse than that. I think he stands to do much better than that .267 batting average, and he was a guy that led off quite a bit for the Diamondbacks last year. He is an extremely boring pick, but at the age of 26, there's room for growth, and again, there will be many players much less safe than this going before him in your drafts.

Yandy Diaz, Tampa Bay Rays (ADP 384)
It seems that we have been here with Yandy for a few years in a row now. When he was moved to the Rays, fantasy analysts were pretty excited about his power upside. That has not materialized much in the bigs, but he has turned into a really solid source of batting average, on-base percentage, and even some RBI. Last year, he went for a strong 82% contact rate, a 16% strikeout rate, and a decent enough 7% barrel rate. The Rays have plenty of young guys gunning for plate appearances, so Diaz's playing time is far from guaranteed, but it does help that Joey Wendle has departed. For right now, he is the Rays' starting third baseman, and that makes him a useable fantasy player - especially so in OBP leagues (career 12% walk rate).

Randal Grichuk, Toronto Blue Jays (ADP - 366)
Wait, what? Grichuk is a contact hitter!? That's right. Over the last two seasons, he has greatly improved his strikeout rates (21.2% in 2020, 20.9% last season in 545 PA's). His 79% contact rate in 2021 backs up the low strikeout rate. He lost some power production last year, hitting just 22 homers in 545 PA's, but that was still good for a better-than-average 24.5 PA/HR. He should be a near everyday player for the Blue Jays again next year, which should bring him tons of RBI opportunity (he drove in 81 last year) even if he's hitting sixth or seventh again.

Other notables: Connor Joe, Jed Lowrie, Nick Solak, Carlos Santana, Josh Naylor

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