Ranking the 10 Best Hitters Entering the 2022 MLB Season
This is fun, but not the easiest question to answer: Who are the top 10 hitters in baseball?
What kind of hitters are we talking about? Power hitters? Contact hitters? Guys who just get on base, one way or another?
Our B/R team has done an excellent job breaking down some of these differences. You can find rankings for the game's top power hitters here and the top contact hitters here.
In this exercise, we shorten it up a bit to marry these ideas and determine the game's top hitters entering the 2022 season.
Truth is, there are far more than 10 players worthy of being in this conversation. But we narrow it down based on a combination of career performance, last year's production and expectations for sustaining it in 2022.
10. Mookie Betts, Los Angeles Dodgers
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Despite a down year for Mookie Betts, it's difficult not to put a hitter this talented in the top 10, especially if it's reasonable to expect a bounce-back season.
Betts dealt with a hip injury that seemed to hamper him for much of 2021. His numbers improved after the All-Star break, from a .256/.366/.472 slash line to .280/.369/.516.
It will take more than one down year to get Betts off this list. He trails only Mike Trout and Freddie Freeman in offensive WAR since 2016, per FanGraphs.
Betts also has an impressive 13.3 percent strikeout rate for his career. With that kind of plate discipline and what he's shown over time when healthy, expect him to once again be one of the game's top hitters.
Don't sleep on his power, either. It's fair that his slugging went down last year, but he owns two 30-homer campaigns and a career .518 slugging percentage.
9. Aaron Judge, New York Yankees
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Aaron Judge brings league highs in average exit velocity (95.8 mph) and hard-hit rate (57.9 percent) from 2021. Those numbers alone were good enough to notch him into the top five of the B/R power hitter rankings.
His weaknesses as a hitter are well-established. He strikes out a lot and struggles to hit the soft stuff down and away. Judge's 24.9 percent strikeout rate last season was not ideal, but that number has steadily gone down throughout his career, except for a noticeable slump in 2019.
Judge hit 39 home runs last year, tied for fifth in the American League and second to his career-high 52 in 2017 when he was runner-up for AL MVP.
Simply put, Judge is one of the game's premier power hitters who's done a phenomenal job improving his plate discipline.
8. Kyle Tucker, Houston Astros
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After a rough start to the 2021 season, Kyle Tucker turned into one of the game's breakout stars. He started with a .175/.242/.342 slash line and five home runs through May 8 before registering a .329/.394/.620 line and 25 more homers the rest of the way.
In the second half of the season, Tucker ranked third in weighted runs created (177) behind only National League MVP Bryce Harper and Juan Soto.
Post-All-Star, the Astros right fielder had the fourth-highest OPS (1.029), again behind Harper, Soto and Joey Votto.
Tucker, who just turned 25 in January, has excellent power and played at an MVP level for most of his first full year in the big leagues. Tucker's spot on this list is mostly projection, considering the small sample size.
But at this rate, he's sure to be a top-10 hitter for years to come.
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7. Mike Trout, Los Angeles Angels
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Mike Trout's season was cut short by a right calf strain suffered on May 17, and the prior one was shortened to 60 games because of the pandemic.
So the three-time AL MVP has not played in more than 53 games since 2019, the last time he won the award. While that's two full years and a season-ending injury in between, Trout has to still be considered one of the game's top hitters until he shows a decline in performance that tells a different story.
Before the calf injury, Trout hit .333/.466/.624 in 36 games. He turned 30 last August and is entering his 12th MLB season, so the fall from this list will come eventually. But when healthy, which he is expected to be in 2022, Trout is not someone any pitcher wants to see waiting in the on-deck circle.
6. Ronald Acuna Jr., Atlanta
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If not for a torn ACL suffered last July, Ronald Acuna Jr. likely would have remained a front-runner in the NL MVP conversation.
Acuna had a 155 OPS+ with 24 home runs through 82 games. And just consider how much his metrics have improved over his first four seasons in the big leagues. His barrel rate, exit velocity and expected slugging percentage have all increased over time.
With a clean bill of health in 2022, there's no reason to expect anything less than picking up where he left off.
At the very least, videos he's posting on social media are encouraging.
5. Bryce Harper, Philadelphia Phillies
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The reigning NL MVP, Harper led baseball in weighted runs created last season (170), ahead of Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Juan Soto and Fernando Tatis Jr. This is in large part due to his incredible second half.
Harper's 137 wRC+ in the first half of the season ranked 22nd, but that number jumped to 201 in the second half.
The Phillies' slugger also boasted the game's highest OPS (1.044), but again, the numbers before the All-Star break and after it are noticeable. He turned it around from a .282/.379/.520 slash line to .338/.476/.713.
Harper led MLB slugging percentage and OPS, tied for first in doubles and was second in the NL in walks.
If the Phillies actually surround him with a team, they could make some noise in the NL East.
4. Fernando Tatis Jr., San Diego Padres
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Injuries hampered the 2021 season for Tatis, and even then, he led baseball in percentage of barrels per plate appearance (12.8) and led the National League with 42 home runs in 130 games.
If he's healthy the entire season, Tatis is competing with Guerrero, Perez and Ohtani to be the home run leader.
Last year, Tatis ranked fourth in wRC+ (156), behind Harper, Guerrero and Juan Soto. For the first half of the season, when Tatis was healthy, he was third in wRC+ (165). He was also second in slugging percentage (.611) behind only Harper for the whole season.
Unlike Soto or Guerrero, Tatis strikes out at a higher clip than desired. But the payoff is one of baseball's most prolific power hitters. It will be fun to watch Tatis when he's not playing the majority of the season with a nagging shoulder injury.
3. Shohei Ohtani, Los Angeles Angels
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Ohtani at-bats became appointment viewing last year as he displayed incredible power. Pete Alonso stole the show at the Home Run Derby, but everyone was there to see Ohtani.
That's because he ultimately barreled the ball more than anyone (78), and his 12.2 percentage of barrels per plate appearance ranked only behind Fernando Tatis Jr.
If fatigue had not set in toward the end of the season (.216/.379/.422 with nine homers in 235 plate appearances over the last two months), who knows what Ohtani's numbers would look like?
The fact that he's pitching at an All-Star level while producing otherworldly metrics at the plate tells you how good he really is. Just imagine if hitting was all he focused on, year-round.
2. Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Toronto Blue Jays
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Whether it's hitting for power or contact, Guerrero is awesome at the plate. He is the only player to crack the B/R top 10 in both power hitting and contact hitting skill rankings.
Guerrero tied with Kansas City Royals catcher Salvador Perez to lead the league with 48 home runs. But even when he's not hitting it out of the ballpark, Guerrero almost always makes contact (73.9 percent in 2021), hits the ball hard (55.2 percent) and rarely strikes out (15.8 percent).
In addition to tying Perez for the home run title, Guerrero's near-MVP season included leading the AL in on-base percentage (.401), slugging (.601), OPS (1.002), OPS+ (169) and MLB in total bases (363).
1. Juan Soto, Washington Nationals
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The fact that pitchers rarely throw him anything to hit and he's still putting up numbers says a lot about how dynamic of a hitter Soto is.
Pitchers are clearly going out of their way to avoid him as best they can.
Ben Clemens of FanGraphs wrote that Soto "sees pitches in the strike zone only 44.3 percent of the time in obvious walk situations, as opposed to 48 percent the rest of the time."
Toward the end of the season, David Adler of Statcast noted pitchers had thrown Soto 796 waste pitches far out of the zone, and he'd swung at just 39 (4.9 percent) of them. He just does not offer at nonsense pitches, and when he finds something to drive, it's a site to see.
Soto hit .313 with a 175 OPS+ in 654 plate appearances, despite teams trying to pitch around him. He also led the majors in walks (145), intentional walks (23) and on-base percentage (.465).
Stats via Baseball Reference, FanGraphs or Baseball Savant unless otherwise noted.
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