San Francisco Giants Top 10 Prospects for 2022 Fantasy Baseball
November 17, 2021 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects | 26 Commentsby: The Itch
My primary strategy for escaping the moneyball mindfuck that is being a baseball fan in the Manfred era is that I root mostly for individuals. I love to see it when players make it big. Get that money, if you can, while you can. I love to see it when front offices that have good processes experience enough success to fund more of that good process. Farhan Zaidi and company have good processes in place in San Francisco. One example is the Brandon Crawford contract. Guy earned it, was willing to stay, and the team accepted the risk of inking an aging player before any kind of deadline spurred action. The real examples, though--the best examples--are all the players succeeding up and down this system. If a free agent signs with the Giants, bump him up on your draft sheets. A similar rule applies to their prospects now as the organization seeks to join the top tier of baseball-development firms.
Look at those xBA's. That's crazy. Every single pitch should've produced better results, except his slider (more on that in a second). His velocity was down a hair in 2021, but it was really down in April, after a full year off, then it hovered up. Not quite reaching 2019 levels, but close enough. I'm not worried about velocity losses. Fenway is not a great park for BABIPs, so can dismiss some his bad luck across the board, but *that* much bad luck? Did he walk under a ladder on the way out to the mound every game? If he were traded after 2019, and he had a new home park in 2021, I might say these BABIPs might not regress, but this guy is clearly being unlucky and that will correct itself. Quick take away unrelated to the xBA numbers is he's starting to figure out his slider, which has been a long time in the germination pod. Since 2015, he's been throwing a slider and the values that it's produced are all negative, which makes me chuckle a little. He's still trying it, and it still is not great. Either way, last year was the best, uh, negative it's been at -0.14. To give you an idea of how to compare that, in 2019, it was -2.31. That's very bad. Don't think that means a lot, but if his slider becomes a positive pitch for him to go with his cutter, fastball and change, three pitches that were all extremely positive as recently as 2019, Ed-Rod's not going to be a sleeper that becomes a number two, but he'll be an ace.
I've been a fan of Ed-Rod for so long, I painted his face on a kitchen cabinet that I call my Ed-Rod cupboard and it's where I store my Top Gun-themed collectible Big Gulp cups. He's rewarded me with two seasons of 3.82 and 3.81 (who are you, Khris Davis with the number .247), then I was out last year, due to him missing 2020, but it's time to get back in. 2022 might be the year where we finally see him realize the immense upside. For 2022, I’ll give Eduardo Rodriguez projections of 14-7/3.77/1.24/217 in 191 IP with a chance for more. Anyway, here's what else I saw this offseason for 2022 fantasy baseball: 
