With news that the Boston Red Sox have signed longtime Atlanta back-up David Ross, now would certainly be an appropriate time to look down Zach Sanders’ Catcher End of Season Rankings, scroll down to number 12 and take a look at Jarrod Saltalamacchia. With a breakout year that saw him play a career-high 121 games and post career-best numbers in the primary fantasy categories, save for average and on-base percentage, the Red Sox now face some tough decisions. Do they keep Salty as their primary backstop and keep Ross in the reserve role to which he is accustomed or do they deal Salty away and make room for a potential catcher platoon with Ross and upstart Ryan Lavarnway? Read the rest of this entry »

In a testament to the weakness of the position, Jordan Pacheco spent 505 plate appearances being seven percent worse than league average with his stick, and yet he ended the season as the eleventh-best catcher, worth five dollars in 5×5 mixed leagues when all was said and done. It’s a head-scratcher, at least going forward.

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After seven seasons spent meticulously climbing the Tampa organizational ladder, John Jaso finally got his first chance to play regularly in the bigs in 2010, and the then-26-year-old rookie catcher quickly made a splash. A .372 OBP! A 14.6% walk percentage! The luck to be with an organization that appreciated those numbers, enough to hit him leadoff 45 times!

That made Jaso a trendy fantasy sleeper pick headed into 2011, and… *thud*. That OBP dropped all the way to .298, thanks in no small part to a BB% that fell five points and a K% that rose nearly four, and it’s not like we weren’t already seeing this declining performance before he missed six weeks late in the season with an oblique injury. Oh, and to top it all off: in November, he was traded to Seattle for an alleged felon. Coming off a poor year, headed to a bad team in a ballpark that kills offense, and with competition from Miguel Olivo & Jesus Montero to deal with, Jaso was a complete afterthought headed into 2012. Read the rest of this entry »

There is a difference between a bad year and a disappointing one. Plenty of players were terrible this year, but since no one expected anything less, no one was disappointed, and that’s not really where the confusion lies. When a player is expected to do great, amazingly wonderful things and instead only does good, above-average things, it’s not uncommon to hear that he had a bad season when the reality is that his production was adequate, it was just not as good as expected. (There is, of course, the third category of player who was expected to do well and in fact does very badly. At that point, either branch of criticism is fair game; take it away, Dr. Zoidberg!)

Given the expectations heaped on him after 2011’s tour de force, Alex Avila definitely had a disappointing season, there’s not much disputing that, but did he actually have a bad one? That largely depends on whether or not the driving number of your league is average or OBP. In any holistic sense, Avila was an effective enough offensive player. His wRC+ of 104 isn’t going to win him any awards, but it does mean he was slightly above average offensively speaking at a position where it’s still acceptable to hit poorly provided the player defends and/or commands the pitching staff well. So, given that he stayed healthy enough to qualify for the batting title and finished with an above-average wRC+, why is Avila ranked 20th out of the 26 catchers who qualified in Zach Sanders’ rankings? Read the rest of this entry »

Catcher is a bit of an odd position in fantasy. Very few players accrue enough PA to be full-time starters – only three cracked 600 and only eight more broke 500, meaning that in a 12 team league, every team needs a legit backup and at least one team is going to run a full-fledged platoon.

So with a 350 PA cut-off on Zach Sanders’s end of season rankings, it should come as no surprise that six of the top 30 ottoneu catchers didn’t even crack the 5×5 rankings. It makes it a bit more difficult to identify ottoneu’s feelings on players, as some guys “fall” in the rankings only because a player who did not qualify in 5×5 made some noise in linear weights. But we can identify some studs and some duds.

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To all of our readers of the female persuasion, (unofficial) Sadie Hawkins Day is today. Well, at least according to one source it is.

• If Mike Napoli can be considered a full time catcher going forward, then he is most likely the best fantasy catcher that is a free agent. I say that with all due credit to David Ross and his new hitter friendly home at Fenway Park. Even though Napoli is unlikely to repeat his crazy 2011 season, even in a down year last year he managed to his 24 home runs and put up an above league average wRC+. The Boston Red Sox — among other teams — have shown interest in Napoli thus far. There is also up-and-coming Ryan Lavarnway in their system as well. On the face of it, with both Jarrod Saltalamacchia and the newly signed Ross on the roster, it may seem unlikely that the Red Sox pursue Napoli. However, the Sox may deal Salty, as a platoon of sorts Napoli and Ross could make for a very strong receiving corps. Another option would be to have Napoli play first base and catch on occasion. Really, anything that keeps Napoli’s catcher eligibility is the key here. Calling Fenway home would be a near ideal situation. With his right-handed power and fly-ball tendencies, one could expect his HR/FB rate as well as extra-base hits to both climb. For what it’s worth, despite normally punting catcher, I would draft/bid on Napoli if he became a Red Sock.
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Jesus Montero was traded before the 2012 season from the Yankees to the Mariners for Michael Pineda. Montero was finally given a full time job after not being able to break into the Yankees’ lineup. With the Mariners, Montero didn’t hit great, but not horrible either. For 2013, Montero will need to continue growing as a complete hitter for his fantasy value to increase.

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A.J. Ellis turned 31 last season. That might surprise you, since he had only 244 career plate appearances before this season. He’s so long been the focus of stat-heads for his walk rate that he might have debuted right at his power peak. That allowed him to show the best power of his career and “leap” up to fantasy replacement level status as the 17th-best backstop in roto last season.

But without that power, he ends up a lot like Ruben Tejada among shortstops — devoid of the skills that make a player valuable in most fantasy baseball leagues. No power, no speed, and only a walk rate… that doesn’t play in your average 5×5 fantasy league.

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That was unexpected. At age 35, A.J. Pierzynski shattered his season-high home run total and churned out a top-5 season among catchers. Over his career, Pierzynski’s main asset has been his durability and ability to hit for decent averages. He had a few average power seasons once he joined the White Sox, but seemed to be slowing down during his age-33 and age-34 years. Pierzynski’s power surge was the main culprit behind his exceptional season.

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As we sift through Zach Sanders’ end of season catcher valuations, we find a surprising name sitting at number five, having earned $12 (would be more in two catcher leagues). Well, not surprising given that we know how he performed, but surprising in that we didn’t even rank him as part of our consensus during the pre-season. Ramon Hernandez was supposed to receive the bulk of the backstop playing time for the Rockies, but he suffered a hand injury in late May that opened the door for rookie Wilin Rosario. When Hernandez finally returned, Rosario had already run away with the job.

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