Ray’s Ramblings: 2022 NL East Review

As we wrap up the 2022 fantasy baseball season, we’re gonna check in with all six divisions. We will choose a HIT and MISS on the hitting side, and pitching side, for all the teams in each division. So, this list isn’t simply populated by guys who tore a knee or blew out an elbow, we will remove players who had a catastrophic injury (like Adalberto Mondesi or Chris Sale) from consideration.

NL EAST

NL EAST	HIT	MISS		NL EAST	HIT	MISS
Atlanta	Michael Harris	Ronald Acuna		Atlanta	Spencer Strider	Ian Anderson
NY Mets	Jeff McNeil	Dominic Smith		NY Mets	Chris Bassitt	Jacob deGrom
Philadelphia	J.T. Realmuto	Nick Castellanos		Philadelphia	Aaron Nola	Kyle Gibson
Miami	Job Berti	Avisail Garcia		Miami	Sandy Alcantara	Trevor Rogers
Washington	Joey Meneses	Nelson Cruz		Washington	Carl Edwards Jr.	Josiah Gray

HIT

Michael Harris plays elite defense. He’s a wonder on the basepaths who stole 20 bases. With that bat… he went .297/.339/.514. Add it all up and he was a fantasy star going .297-19-64-75-20 in just 441 PAs. Just tremendous.

Jeff McNeil was a failure last season hitting .251. He rebounded hard this season to hit .326… the best mark in baseball. He’s hit .310 in four of five seasons by the way.

J.T. Realmuto – for more, listen to this podcast.

Job Berti went from the waiver-wire in every single league to 41 steals to lead baseball. #Winning

Joey Meneses was a 30-year-old rookie with zero big league games on his resume. His 162 games pace would have been just about 40-90-90. He also hit .324 with a .930 OPS and .395 wOBA. What a run over 56 games.

Spencer Strider, or his teammate Michael Harris, will win the NL ROY. Strider went 11-5 with 11 relief outings and 20 starts. He posted a 2.67 ERA and 0.99 WHIP, which are special numbers, but the best number was his INSANE 38.3 K-rate leading to a 13.81 K/9 rate. Wow.

Chris Bassitt won a career best 15 games with a 3.42 ERA, 1.14 WHIP and more than 181 innings pitched. He’s not a star, but he’s right on that next tier, and he’s damn good.

Aaron Nola only went 11-13, but that wasn’t his fault. He threw 205 innings with 235 punchouts and only 29 walks… in 32 starts… leading to a 0.96 WHIP. He’s damn good.

Sandy Alcantara is flat out one of the best pitchers in baseball – period. He threw 228.2 innings with 14 victories, a 2.28 ERA and 0.98 WHIP. He’s been stupendous the last two years.

Carl Edwards Jr. – look there was no one on this team to highlight, so let’s pick a guy who was solid. He made 57 appearances with two saves, 13 holds, a 2.76 ERA and 1.23 WHIP.

MISS

Ronald Acuna was never quite right this season. He stole 29 bases, his most since 2019, but he hit only 15 homers with 50 RBI over 119 games. A guy who had a .980 OPS each of the last two seasons posted a mark of .764 this season. He wasn’t good with the bat.

Dominic Smith – part of a Mets team that was strong this season – was kinda chosen on default. Smith barely played, and when he did, he went .194/.276/.284. Just miserable.

Nick Castellanos was one of the worst performers in baseball, based on expectations, amongst healthy players. Somehow, he went .263-13-62, a year after hitting .309-34-100. He was awful, from start to finish.

Avisail Garcia had a career best 29 homers and 86 RBI last season. This year he went 8-35. Now he played just 98 games as he could never get out there, but when your OPS falls from .820 to .582 – you stunk.

Nelson Cruz was finally caught by Father Time. Last season he went .265-32-86. This season he went .234-10-64. Didn’t play the final three weeks with an eye issue as well as the Nationals would not place him on the IL costing us a roster spot the whole time. Says he will play next year.

Ian Anderson is just about the biggest failure on any of these lists. He was brutal over 22 starts posting a 5.00 ERA, a 1.51 WHIP and 11 percent walk rate leading to a 1.80 K/BB ratio. He was awful.

Jacob deGrom was a failure given his cost. I was right. You were wrong. Move on.

Kyle Gibson made 31 starts which is nice, but his ERA crept over five by seasons end. He also had a 20 percent K-rate and 1.34 WHIP. Good for the Phillies. Bad for fantasy baseball.

Trevor Rogers was dominant in 2021. He was just as awful in 2022 as his entire game fell apart. He gained nearly three points in ERA while his WHIP swelled to 1.50. A few nice starts to end the year rekindled the hope.

Josiah Gray had a strikeout and inning and threw 148.2 innings. That was a win. Alas, he continues to be a batting practice pitcher at times as evidenced by the THIRTY-EIGHT homers he allowed. He’s 42 outings into his career having allowed 57 home runs in 219.1 innings. That’s scary bad awful horrible.

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