Akil Baddoo 2022 Player Outlook: Strong Source Of Steals, Unclear Everything Else
3 years agoBaddoo started off the 2021 season with a bang, homering four times in his first 33 plate appearances. The clear issue there was the egregious strikeout rate, he posted a 44% K% in April. That seemed to lead him to a major change in approach. When the calendar turned to May, he began making a ton more contact, which dropped his end-of-year strikeout rate the whole way down to a pretty decent mark of 27%. With more contact came less power, as his barrel rate came down from the 17% mark he posted in April to a 9% mark for the year. When the dust settled, Baddoo came out with a .259/.330/.436 line with 13 homers. Given all of this, there are serious questions about his power production. If he continues to go the route of making more contact, he will likely struggle to surpass 20 homers, but it's quite possible that he will find a nice middle ground and become a 25-30 homer guy with a slightly higher strikeout rate than you'd like to see. The best part of his fantasy profile is the steals, as he ran often in 2021 racking up 18 steals in just 461 PA. At the age of just 23, this profile could change in a hurry. For right now, we seem to be left with a guy that should help your fantasy team in steals while also chipping decently in batting average or home runs (probably just one or the other, not both). At an ADP of 160, you could do a whole lot worse than that!