Catcher Rankings: RotoGraphs Consensus
Consensus Ranks: OF, C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, and RP and SP.
Tiered Ranks: C, 1B, 2B, SS, 3B, NL OF, AL SP, NL SP, Holds.
After all the positions with all the disagreement, we hit one of the most difficult positions to fill… and we all agree. I mean, look at Alex Avila, who will most probably regress off of his numbers from last year — number eight right across the board. Apparently, I ‘love’ Mr. K, J.P. Arencibia, and showed that love by ranking him a full two spots ahead of everyone else. Even Jonathan Lucroy, who appears halfway down the list hand has very moderate upside, shows up around the same place on everyone’s list.
So which catcher inspired the most disagreement? Maybe it’s Jarrod Saltalamacchia, who finally paired a nice batting average on balls in play with his low-contact approach last year. Will he fend off Ryan Lavarnway (who didn’t quite play enough catcher to be a catcher this year) another season? We can’t seem to agree on John Buck, but maybe that’s because some of us choose to focus on how far away the new park’s walls are, and some of us choose to focus on how much shorter the walls are in that new left field. Some of us think Devin Mesoraco is going to take that job and run, some of us think that Ryan Hanigan will charm his veteran-loving manager into most of the playing time. Oh, and finally (mercifully), the Mets writer on staff liked the Mets player a little more than the rest of the rankers. Phew.
Catch yourself a catcher.
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| Player Name | Eno Sarris |
Mike Podhorzer |
Jeff Zimmerman |
Zach Sanders |
Staff Consensus |
FantasyPros All Experts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mike Napoli | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | view |
| Carlos Santana | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | view |
| Brian McCann | 2 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 3 | view |
| Joe Mauer | 6 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 4 | view |
| Matt Wieters | 4 | 3 | 6 | 5 | 5 | view |
| Buster Posey | 5 | 6 | 5 | 7 | 6 | view |
| Miguel Montero | 7 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 7 | view |
| Alex Avila | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | view |
| Yadier Molina | 10 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 9 | view |
| J.P. Arencibia | 9 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 10 | view |
| Geovany Soto | 11 | 17 | 14 | 10 | 11 | view |
| Wilson Ramos | 13 | 15 | 12 | 13 | 12 | view |
| Russell Martin | 12 | 12 | 15 | 16 | 13 | view |
| Ryan Doumit | 17 | 10 | 17 | 12 | 14 | view |
| Kurt Suzuki | 16 | 13 | 13 | 14 | 14 | view |
| Salvador Perez | 18 | 14 | 10 | 17 | 15 | view |
| Jonathan LuCroy | 14 | 19 | 16 | 15 | 16 | view |
| Ramon Hernandez | 15 | 20 | 21 | 19 | 17 | view |
| Carlos Ruiz | 20 | 21 | 18 | 20 | 18 | view |
| Jarrod Saltalamacchia | 25 | 16 | 25 | 18 | 19 | view |
| A.J. Pierzynski | 24 | 18 | 19 | 24 | 20 | view |
| Chris Iannetta | 21 | 23 | 22 | 22 | 21 | view |
| John Buck | 19 | 30 | 23 | 21 | 22 | view |
| Devin Mesoraco | 27 | 24 | 20 | 23 | 23 | view |
| Josh Thole | 22 | 29 | 24 | 25 | 24 | view |
| Miguel Olivo | 23 | 22 | 28 | – | 25 | view |
| Nick Hundley | 28 | 25 | 26 | 26 | 26 | view |
| Ryan Hanigan | 26 | 26 | 27 | – | 27 | view |
| Rod Barajas | – | 27 | 29 | 28 | 28 | view |
| Yorvit Torrealba | 29 | 28 | 32 | – | 29 | view |
| Jason Castro | – | 31 | 33 | 27 | 30 | view |
| John Jaso | 30 | – | 30 | – | 31 | view |
Fantasy Baseball Rankings powered by FantasyPros
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
How the heck is Avila ranked below Montero? If you look at their numbers, Montero with more walks and four years younger would be Avila. Not to mention Prince Fielder just got added to the lineup that Avila hits in.
downside risk imo
An issue with Avila will be PA’s. He may be maxing out near 450 (with less DH oportunities) while Montero will DH when not catching.
Miguel Montero won’t be doing any DHing.
I’m happy to see Napoli get love as the #1 catcher. I have seen some (in my opinion) extremely good fantasy writers place Santana in a tier at the top by himself. I could never understand that. At the very least they are in the same tier, and I would give the edge to Napoli. One of Santana’s biggest positives is the amount of ABs Cleveland is going to give him. I have to imagine Texas will keep Napoli in the lineup on days he doesn’t catch (assuming he only regresses a bit and settles into a .900 or so OPS level) so I don’t see that argument vaulting Santana above Napoli to the extent it has on some sites.
Probably because Napoli’s BA was inflated by a career high .344 BABIP. He’s a career .264 hitter with a career .302 BABIP. Experts expect a level of regression because of that, he is not a legit .320 hitter.
With some extra BABIP luck, Santana could pass Napoli in every single catergory because of the point you made with Santana’s extra AB’s.
I don’t think anything you said is untrue. There is absolutely a case to be made for Santana over Napoli, but I don’t think there is a case that Santana’s in another tier unless the scoring system is heavily based on all counting stats (like a points league with singles, doubles, triples, walks, etc).
My opinion on the two is skewed a bit because I play in an OPS league (standard 5 categories + OPS). But, his OPS should still be elite and his BA shouldn’t kill you even with projected regression in his BABIP. Bill James, Steamer, RotoChamp, and Zips all have Napoli between an .885 and .931 OPS and a non-crippling average (BABIP’s between .299 and .321). All projections exceed Santana’s. I’m always hesitant to base value too much on counting stats. Give me the superior hitter and I’ll hope that the counting numbers are in line with overall production.
Napoli also had 172 at bats in the final two months of the season, so a 500+ AB season isn’t out of the question now that Texas realizes what they have. Santana vs. Napoli is a fair argument but I don’t see a huge gap between the two.
Jesus will be very disappointed that you didn’t invite him to this party.
Seriously, I know that different leagues have different eligibility requirements, but it’s reasonable to assume that Montero is going to become catcher-eligible in most leagues at some point this season. If you’re going to leave him off of this list, at least justify that decision in the post’s introduction.
That’s been a consistent problem throughout this whole series of posts. Since they are being used for draft prep, they should consider players for the positions that people will be drafting them for. Most will want Jesus to be their C, not a UTIL.
+1, Jesus Montero will be ranked as a Catcher in my league too..
The FantasyPros tool draws from the Yahoo pool, and on some level it makes sense to rank players at positions at which they will be eligible to start the season. Montero won’t be a catcher on day one in many leagues, so you’ll have to draft another player to catch for you.
That said, we’ll be doing the tiered rankings all week with all players ranked at their future positions. I would put Jesus one spot ahead of the other Montero personally.
Why so low on Buster Posey? Do you think he hasn’t recovered enough?
I wouldn’t consider Posey “so low”, but concerns obviously stem from how he recovers from his leg injury, plus also questions about his real power level. Is it closer to the .200 ISO and 15.4% HR/FB ratio from 2010 or the .105 ISO and 10.3% HR/FB ratio from 2011? The projection systems all say slightly closer to 2011, but still more of in between. He’d need to recapture 2010’s power though to rank any better.
Everyone’s pretty low on Nick Hundley but he’s the sleeper-est of the group, any reason why? I know it’s Petco, but he is batting 6th while most of these schmos are batting 8th, more RBI opps, 15 hr/.275 updside. Surely that’s worth at least a Carlos Ruiz/John Buck?
Pshaw, any ranking without Jeff Mathis is a joke.
Pet peeve:
I really think it’s far far far past time we stop referring to Dusty Baker as “veteran-loving”. The characterization may have held water a decade ago, but it’s extremely lazy at this point.
With the Reds, at least, the guy gave Mike Leake a rotation spot w/ ZERO minor league experience; not to mention giving Cueto/Volquez/Bailey rotation spots w/ little experience; he never held back the development of Votto/Bruce/Stubbs by keeping them on the bench, etc.
I wouldn’t use Stubbs as an example. Baker ended up half-platooning and moving him around in the lineup by the end of the year. Votto and Bruce are studs that forced the issue. He’ll throw anyone. Just watched him coach too long and have talked to him too much to think he’s going to just give Mesoraco the job and run with it, especially at that position, especially given the fact that Hanigan is a pretty good catcher and the team isn’t hurting that badly for offense. Maybe I don’t need to fall back on calling him veteran-loving to discuss how I personally project him to use Mesoraco this year, I’ll give you that, but I don’t think he’s a guy that has moved the pendulum needle far back the other way.
No one ever accused Dusty of using kid gloves with his pitchers – the theory plays to hitters mainly.
Is it just me, or is Tyler Flowers flying way under the radar this spring? Granted, it’s a deep-league play only, but he’s got just AJP in the way and the Cell is a good park for his all-or-nothing history. (And, for the record, I’m not saying he should be ranked highly or anything, just pointing out that all winter/spring these sort of lists–on FG and elsewhere–don’t even mention Flowers.)
Or maybe I’m just crazy, which is entirely possible.
Top 8 at the position is great. After that you really start to making compromises. I plan on trying to grab one of those top 8 guys, but if it doesn’t line up, I’m not reaching for anyone else. No sense in grabbing Yadier Molina when the difference in value isn’t all that great from Russell Martin or Kurt Suzuki. In a league that uses OBP instead of AVG, I can snag Iannetta in that 19th round and be perfectly content. In others, I might gamble on Saltalamacchia