2022 Fantasy Baseball Draft Prep: Fernando Tatis' wrist injury shakes up the top of draft boards
The first round of your Fantasy drafts will now look a little different

Fernando Tatis entered Fantasy baseball draft prep season as the No. 1 player on most draft boards despite some pretty serious injury concerns after multiple IL trips in 2021 due to a shoulder injury. However, it's a different injury, a fractured wrist, that will keep Tatis out for the start of the 2022 season, as we learned Monday.
That's bad news for Tatis' 2022 value, obviously, though we don't know just how bad the news is just yet because it's not clear what treatment plan Tatis and the Padres are going to pursue. Tatis could undergo surgery on his left wrist, a procedure that would likely keep him out three months – likely sidelining him for much of the first half of the season. If he opts to avoid surgery, it's not clear how much that would shorten the timetable, but it wouldn't necessarily improve Tatis' outlook all that much if it increases the chances of re-injury or limits his ability to be the player we want him to be.
We'll learn more in the coming days, but if you're drafting right now, I don't see how you could take Tatis in the top 100. I've dropped him to 14th at shortstop in H2H and 16th in Roto – 111th and 115th overall, respectively. That could be an overreaction if Tatis avoids surgery and returns in May, but it's also entirely possible it isn't moving him far down enough. At this point, we just don't quite know enough about the timetable to say for sure.
Tatis is the best player in Fantasy by a decent margin on a per-game basis in my eyes, and if he's right, he's going to be a huge boon to your lineup. Plus, it's not like you get a zero in your lineup when Tatis is out – if you gave him 100 games of his projection from THE BAT projection system and combine that with 40 games of Brandon Crawford's projection, you get a .278 average, 37 homers, 19 steals, 95 runs, and 95 RBI. That'd be a pretty good outcome, and Crawford is effectively free in many drafts.
Taking the chance on Tatis in the 10th round or so could work out quite well, in other words. However, that's probably something close to a best-case scenario, and you shouldn't expect that. He's going to lose all of his prep for the season and will be trying to get back up to speed while avoiding a setback no matter which course of action he pursues. The worst-case scenario would be trying to rehab the injury without surgery, suffering a setback and requiring surgery later on down the line – at a point in the calendar when it could cost him nearly the whole season.
Want more fallout from the Tatis injury? The Fantasy Baseball Today team has you covered:
And, of course, there's the performance risk even if his recovery from this injury is on the positive end of the range of timelines. Wrist injuries can be especially tough for hitters, and there's no guarantee Tatis is himself even when he plays. Add in the existing risk with his shoulder history, and there's no shortage of ways this season could go wrong for Tatis now.
How you view Tatis is going to come down to your personal risk tolerance. I put him in the 10th round range, around where Christian Yelich and Cody Bellinger are going as similar risk/reward picks. He could still make a significant impact in 2022, and your team could benefit from his presence if you can overcome his absence, however long that lasts. But there is now also a real risk that Tatis just doesn't make much of an impact at all this season.
The Padres will likely slot Ha-Seong Kim into the everyday lineup in Tatis' absence, and the 26-year-old isn't without upside, even though he hit just .202/.270/.352 last season. It was his first season in the majors after making the leap from Korea, and that's a tough adjustment for anyone to make. He rated out as a plus defender and has some baserunning chops, so if he can cut his strikeout rate and make some better contact, there's a potentially interesting Fantasy option there to consider for deeper leagues -- a 15-15 pace while Tatis is sidelined isn't out of the question.
















