Rest of Season Fantasy Baseball Rankings: Kirk Catching Fire

As we enter July, there are 10 hitters in baseball with an expected batting average of at least .300 and an expected weighted on-base average of at least .400. The list generally reads like a who’s who of fantasy baseball royalty. Yordan Alvarez, Aaron Judge, Freddie Freeman, and Rafael Devers are some of the names on the list. Five of the 10 hitters reside in the AL East, which is not a huge surprise. The Toronto Blue Jays claim one player on this list. That is also not much of a surprise. However, who that player is may be. It is not Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who was one of five hitters to reach those thresholds last season. It’s also not George Springer, Bo Bichette, or Teoscar Hernandez. The Toronto Blue Jay who enters July with this prodigious year-to-date track record is none other than Alejandro Kirk.

Alejandro Kirk’s Rise to Prominence

Kirk has always had an impressive skill set at the plate. He hit well over .300 in the Minor Leagues in roughly a season’s worth of playing time (672 plate appearances). In the Minors, Kirk totaled 19 home runs, though 10 of those were in Rookie ball back in 2018. His biggest attribute was not his power per se, but his batting eye. Throughout his Minor League career, his swinging strike rate hovered between five and six percent, and he had more walks than strikeouts. We have seen plenty of players possess these types of profiles in the Minors only to struggle mightily when asked to face Big League pitching. That is especially true of younger players, as Kirk was just 21 years ago when he made his MLB debut. But Kirk has not missed a beat since joining Toronto. In fact, he might be getting better.

Last season, Kirk played in 60 games and had 189 plate appearances. He hit just .242, but the underlying metrics suggested that his batting average was hampered by some bad luck. His BABIP was just .234 last season. However, Kirk had an 11 percent barrel rate to go along with a 46.9 percent hard-hit rate. As a result, his xBA was a robust .288. And his plate discipline was steady. Kirk had a Z-swing percentage (percentage of pitches a batter swings at inside the zone) of 65.4 percent, compared to an O-swing percentage (percentage of pitches a batter swings at outside the zone) of just 28.4 percent. His Z-contact (contact rate on pitches in the strike zone) was 86.2 percent. Kirk had a double-digit walk rate (10.1 percent) while striking out just 11.6 percent of the time, with a swinging strike rate of just eight percent.

With a tantalizing skill set and a place in the loaded Toronto Blue Jays lineup, Kirk was a popular breakout candidate this season. But questions remained about whether he was truly ready for a full workload. Danny Jansen was still very much a part of Toronto’s plans, and top prospect Gabriel Moreno loomed in the Minors. But Kirk has put many of those doubts to rest with a phenomenal first half to the 2022 season. In addition to currently reaching the coveted .300 xBA and .400 xwOBA thresholds, Kirk ranks in the 99th percentile in strikeout rate and 96th percentile in whiff rate. Kirk’s 9.3 percent strikeout rate is fourth-lowest among qualified hitters. He and Keibert Ruiz are the only regular catchers with a rate lower than 15 percent. And only three others have a rate below 19.7 percent. Kirk also ranks in the 95th percentile in xSLG (expected slugging).

Kirk sits second among catchers in year-to-date fantasy production behind Willson Contreras. I don’t quite have him that high in my latest rest-of-season rankings, but he is certainly a top-five catcher for me. Even though I do expect a slight drop-off from what he has accomplished thus far this year, I am a big fan of Kirk’s game. In the era of “three true outcomes”, it is refreshing to see a hitter who can stay alive by fighting off tough pitches and avoid chasing outside the zone, instead waiting until he gets a pitch he can handle. Few lineups offer better protection than Toronto’s, so Kirk can certainly continue to build on his current pace. Regardless of what he does from here on out from a fantasy perspective, Alejandro Kirk is one of the better pure young hitters in the game.

Fantasy Baseball Rest of Season Rankings