As I mentioned in part one of this series, recency bias is highly influential in a player’s costs for fantasy baseball. While we’re inching closer to the start of the 2022 season, the end of the 2021 season is still fresh in our minds along with how certain players finished the season. After discussing infielders in part one, I’ll be diving into a trio of outfielders today with interesting late-season performances and how I’m valuing them in 2022.
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Analyzing & Valuing 2021 2nd Half Performances: Outfielders
After a tumultuous rookie season, Luis Robert was off to an encouraging start to the season that saw him slashing .316/.359/.463 on May 2nd before a torn hip flexor sidelined him for more than three months. As someone with many Robert shares last season, that injury was a real bummer given Robert’s impressive yet brief improvements that he was showing. But luckily, those improvements stuck and Robert excelled down the stretch. Actually, dominated is more accurate. In 193 plate appearances after returning on August 9th, Robert slashed .350/.389/.622 with 12 homers, 35 RBI, 31 runs, and two steals with a .272 ISO and .424 wOBA. Only Juan Soto, Bryce Harper, Paul Goldschmidt, Kyle Tucker, and Corey Seager recorded a higher wOBA in that span.
As impressive as those numbers are, another area of Robert’s profile was even appealing. Robert was among the worst in baseball in 2020 in many contact and swing metrics, but improved drastically nearly across the board in 2021. Robert was equally as aggressive at the plate in 2021, even swinging 3.9% more often, but his contact skills skyrocketed while his whiff, strikeout, and SwStr rates plummeted.
Those aren't minimal improvement folks. We already knew the lofty upside that Robert possessed due to his power/speed combination, but now we're seeing him blossom as a hitter before our very eyes. In addition to the approach and contact improvements, Robert recorded a 12.5% barrel rate, 45.1% hard-hit rate, and a 91.2 mph AVG EV. Steamer projections have Robert at .285/90/30/91/15 and ATC at .286/87/28/84/19. If those 2021 improvements stick in 2022, those stat lines are realistic with the potential for even more. Robert's price tag is considerably pricey with an ADP around pick 20, but he could finish as a top-10 player or even top-5 if he runs enough. It's understandable to prefer Mike Trout or Mookie Betts in this range, but I'm not opposed to paying up for Robert either.
Remember earlier in the season when Adolis Garcia was playing like an all-star and looking like the waiver wire gem of the season? Yeah, that didn't hold up in the second half of the season. Following a three-hit game on July 6th, Garcia's slash line sat at .276/.313/.535 on the season with a whopping 21 homers. Then, from July 7th on, Garcia's slash line plummeted to a paltry .208/.258/.370 with a 5.6% walk rate and 31.7% strikeout rate. He still added 10 homers and eight steals in that timeframe, but still likely found himself on many fantasy benches or outright cut down the stretch. And to add, seven of those eight steals came in September after he was already benched or cut in many leagues.
When you're navigating through the middle of your fantasy drafts and looking for an outfielder, Garcia's name might appeal to you when you see his 77/31/90/16 line from last season. Stay strong and move on. That's my motto with Garcia in 2022. That power/speed combo was great last season but this is an extremely risky profile to target. Not only did Garcia have the 7th highest strikeout rate among qualified hitters at 31.2%, but he also had the 3rd worst K-BB% at 26.1%, 4th worst SwStr%, and was in the bottom-8 for both Z-Contact% and contact%. His O-Contact% rank wasn't much better either as the 18th worst mark in the league.
Garcia appears locked into a starting role for Texas to begin 2022, but the leash isn't exactly long here. Texas has already shown the desire to improve their team and might not be done adding players once the lockout ends. And a player like Garcia with the swiss cheese profile mentioned above could easily find himself reverted to a bench role or demoted to Triple-A, especially if he begins 2022 as he ended 2021. It's best to let Garcia be someone else's headache in 2022.
Life can come at you fast if you're not paying attention. One day you can be basking in the glory of winning the National League MVP award. Then, two years later, you're finishing the 2nd half of the season as one of the worst hitters in baseball. That's the world that Cody Bellinger is currently residing in. Of the 99 outfielders with 150+ plate appearances in the 2nd half last season, Bellinger ranked dead last in wOBA, wRC+, and OBP, and 2nd to last in AVG and SLG. On top of that, Bellinger is only slashing a stomach-turning .195/.278/.364 in 593 plate appearances since the start of 2020. You can blame some of that on his shoulder injury and subsequent surgery following the 2020 World Series, but this is far from just being a "he was recovering from surgery" issue.
Outside of his dominant first half of 2019, Bellinger hasn't even been remotely close to returning actual value that matches his name value. Even when you add in the 2nd half of 2019, he's still only slashed .216/.308/.427 since July 1st, 2019. Last season also saw Bellinger record the worst walk rate, strikeout rate, barrel rate, AVG EV, and hard-hit rate of his entire career. His whiff and chase rates climbed well above league average as well.
Is Bellinger this bad? No, probably not. Is he going to return to being an early-round contributor? Also highly unlikely. He's only really been an "early-round contributor" for three months of his career. While his ADP isn't unreasonable just outside the top-100 right now, there are just so many other outfielders I'd rather target in that range and later in the draft. For example, let's have a little fun with Steamer projections. Steamer projects a .243/72/27/79/8 line for Bellinger this season and a .246/90/25/75/3 for Enrique Hernández who is going around 125 picks later. Bellinger simply isn't worth his draft-day price tag.
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