What's the best way to go about making bust picks in Fantasy? It's harder than ever in 2022 because the amount of data available and the number of smart people doing analysis means there are very few obvious bad values in drafts. Fantasy players and analysts are so much sharper now than they were even five years ago that it's hard to look at consensus rankings or average draft position and point to players who aren't worth their cost. Generally speaking, we get things right.
So, I think the best way to look at it is with an eye towards risk and reward. Sometimes, two players will be ranked right next to each other with entirely different risk/reward profiles. Take Zack Wheeler (SP7 in NFC ADP right now) and Jacob deGrom (SP8). Wheeler is one of the most dependable starting pitchers around these days, but he doesn't have the strikeout skills to put together one of those truly transcendent seasons. DeGrom is, well, the best pitcher in baseball and arguably one of the best we've ever seen at this point. But he missed much of last season with elbow woes, so he's one of the bigger risk/reward plays in the first few rounds in 2022 drafts.
If you were to assign a probability of how each player's season would go, Wheeler would have a very high percentage of his outcomes cluster in the SP30 to SP10 range, with relatively skinny tails on each side. We can be reasonably certain that he's going to be good, or at least as certain as we can be with any pitcher.
Draft Prep: Sleepers | Breakouts
DeGrom's distribution would look very different. You'd have a decent percent of his outcomes distributed below SP100 and above SP10, with reasonably high percentages everywhere in between. DeGrom's best-case scenario is a lot better than Wheeler's but he probably has a much higher chance of being bad, too.
Which is to say, deGrom has the better chance to bust. That doesn't mean he isn't worth drafting at cost – I'd take him above Wheeler, personally – but it does mean there's more risk involved in drafting him.
So, that's how I go about defining the term, at least when we're this far away from the start of the season. As Draft Prep season really kicks into high gear, I'll come up with a list of players I'm actively avoiding in drafts. For now, here are the players who seem to hold the most risk at their current price in NFC ADP:
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Busts 1.0
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It's fair to wonder if we might be seeing the start of Realmuto's decline phase. He had his lowest average since 2015 and his lowest slugging percentage since 2016, and he's going to be 31 before opening day, so that's about the time you'd expect a catcher to start to decline. Especially one with the kind of workload Realmuto has shouldered over the years. His underlying numbers support the idea that he took a step back in 2021 – .253 expected batting average and .416 expected slugging percentage, the second-worst mark of his career in each regard. While that doesn't mean he'll just take another step back in 2022, it's not a great sign. Realmuto is still a must-start catcher for sure, but I'm not sure he's worth reaching for anymore.
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Abreu is aging remarkably well, and his underlying numbers still hold up in a lot of ways – he still ranked in the 89th percentile in both averaging exit velocity and hard-hit rate in his age-34 season. However, you can't outrun Father Time forever, and 2021 was a clear step back from his MVP-winning 2020 short season. The lineup he plays in and his approach all but ensures Abreu will drive in a lot of runs, but that's really the only place he consistently stands out at this point, and entering his age-35 season, there's always a chance the bottom falls out.
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I love Jazz. He's one of the most entertaining players in baseball, and I'm always going to root for him. And there's no doubting the upside of a guy who can turn on a letters-high, 100 mph fastball from Jacob deGrom and drive it into the upper deck. But Chisholm is, at this point, a bet on talent more than actual production, and that comes with a premium on speed, too. It's not hard to squint and see a Javier Baez-like outcome for him, but that goes both ways – his plate discipline could crater and we could see the bad version of Baez, too. And the thing is, we already saw that from Chisholm last season – from June 1 on, he hit .232/.285/.398. He should hit high enough in the order to get a bunch of opportunities, but Chisholm could be a big drag on batting average, with steals the only category in which he might be a plus contributor. A top-80 pick as the No. 7 2B is a pretty steep price to pay for that much risk.
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You know the deal by now: Mondesi is pretty much an all-or-nothing steals source with massive injury issues. The upside is clear, as he showed by stealing 67 bases in 161 games between 2019 and 2020, however the shortened 2020 is also the only campaign where he hasn't missed significant time practically in his whole career. In fact, counting the majors and minors, Mondesi has never played more than 125 games in a season, and that was back when he was a 17-year-old in 2013. I tend to be injury agnostic, but Mondesi's track record is impossible to ignore. He's discounted, and I don't necessarily hate the idea of drafting him in the sixth round or so, but he's unquestionably the biggest risk in the top 70.
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Baez, Chisholm, and Mondesi all represent similar types of players – high-variance players who should provide varying levels of power and speed, but likely at a cost to your batting average even in a relatively optimistic scenario. The downside includes batting averages near Mendoza line levels that could sink you single-handedly. We saw something like that from Baez in 2020, when his .203 average was combined with a 150-game pace of just 20 homers and eight steals. 2021 was a nice bounce-back, but he's moving to a worse lineup and home park in Detroit, and when you've got the kind of high-variance skill set Baez has, any additional risk factors loom large. As with Chisholm and Mondesi, there's certainly a price where I'm willing to buy him, but this is all about the risk inherent in their profiles.
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O'Neill has always had a very promising skill set for Fantasy thanks to his power-speed combination, but … well, you're sensing a theme here, I think. Yep, he's another free swinger who has, in the past, been held back by his poor discipline. The plate discipline was still pretty bad in 2021, but the quality of his contact was so exceptional that it didn't really matter. He was in the 84th percentile in expected batting average despite a 31% strikeout rate, which is really hard to do. If O'Neill keeps crushing the ball the way he did last season he can overcome the plate discipline issues, but it's a pretty narrow path to walk. Aaron Judge and Kris Bryant are the only other players over the past decade to hit better than .275 with a strikeout rate over 30%, so it's asking a lot to expect that to continue. If the quality of contact slips even a little bit, O'Neill could crash.
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Edman being a top-85 pick is a good example of the kind of premium you're going to have to spend on speed, and I'm just not sure he's worth it. Sure, he stole 30 bases in 2021, but he was pretty much just a two-category contributor thanks to his .262 average and 11 homers. If he steals 30 bases again, you can probably live with that, but let's not forget he only stole 17 in 147 games between 2019 and 2020. If he does that again, there may not be that much difference between him and Isiah Kiner-Falefa.
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Last season, I pointed to Alcantara as a pitcher with the potential to make the leap to stardom, and that's mostly what he did. He's gotten a bit better each season, and is one of the most reliable innings eaters in the game, and in an era where 200-inning pitchers basically don't exist, that has a lot of value. He's about as safe as a pitcher can be, in other words. But he's still on one of the worst teams in baseball, and I'm not sure any of the rumored free agents the Marlins have been linked to figure to change that too much – the outfield defense especially could be a problem if they signed Michael Conforto or Nick Castellanos. But the truth is, the issue with Alcantara is his price – he's SP12 right now. Given how much uncertainty there always is at starting pitcher, getting something like a sure thing isn't a bad idea, but there's too much that can go wrong with even supposedly "safe" pitchers to make that the primary selling point. I'd rather take a chance on ostensibly riskier pitchers like Robbie Ray or Kevin Gausman at a cheaper price point.
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You look at the overall numbers for Gausman, and he looks like a heck of a pick at SP25. But that's very heavily weighted to the first two months in 2021 that look like a significant outlier for his career. From June 1 on, Gausman had a 3.73 ERA and 4.16 FIP while averaging 5.75 innings per start with a slightly-above-average strikeout rate. That looks like a slightly above-average pitcher . That's not a bad pitcher, but it's not one worth paying up for. He's a 29-year-old who has never been able to put together more than a month or two of truly difference-making production, I'm not sure why that should be different this time around.
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Every year, there are young pitchers who fly up draft boards on the strength of a lot of hype and projection, and Manoah is definitely one of those for 2022. Manoah has iffy command and gives up a lot of fly balls, but he overcame those issues in 2021 with a strong (though not elite) strikeout rate and excellent results on balls in play. He was really hard to square up, ranking among the best pitchers in the game at limiting hard contact, and if he can sustain that, he'll be able to overcome whatever other limitations exist. However, quality of contact is a skill that pitchers generally have a lot less control over than things like walks and strikeouts, and it's also something that takes a lot longer to stabilize than other skills. I would bet Manoah will be better than average when it comes to limiting quality of contact, but I'm not at all certain of it, and if he doesn't have that to fall back on, things could get tough for him.
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Gallegos can serve as a stand-in for any number of good relievers with no real sense of job security, though with an ADP inside of the first 10 rounds, he's the best example. If Gallegos is the Cardinals closer in 2022, he's a top-10 option, and potentially top-five guy. The problem is, he's arguably been the Cardinals' best reliever since 2019, and the final month of 2021 was really the only time they've just given him the role. I don't think it's because they don't trust him, but that they prefer to have him in a more flexible role. If Alex Reyes or Jordan Hicks prove healthy and effective, you have to think there's a decent chance they'll turn to one of them, based on the track record. Gallegos can have value in Roto leagues even if he isn't closing, but it isn't top-115 value.
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