Archive for Catchers

We’re going position by position this week and next with our initial roll out of rankings. We will update these in March based on Spring Training activity and injuries.

We’re using Yahoo! eligibility requirements which is 5 starts or 10 appearances. These rankings assume the standard 5×5 categories and a re-draft league. If we forgot someone, please let us know in the comments and we’ll make sure he’s added for the updates. If you have questions for a specific ranker on something he did, let us know in the comments. We can also be reached via Twitter:

• Paul Sporer
• Jeff Zimmerman
• Mike Podhorzer
• Brad Johnson
• Justin Mason
• Al Melchior

There will be differences, sharp differences, within the rankings. The rankers have different philosophies when it comes to ranking, some of which you’re no doubt familiar with through previous iterations. Of course the idea that we’d all think the same would be silly because then what would be the point of including multiple rankers?! Think someone should be higher or lower? Make a case. Let us know why you think that. The chart is sortable. If a ranker didn’t rank someone that the others did, he was given that ranker’s last rank +1.

Schwarber is C eligible at Yahoo! and has been added to the rankings.

Key:

• AVG– just the average of the seven ranking sets
• AVG– the average minus the high and low rankings
• SPLIT– the difference between the high and low rankings

Previous Editions:

• OF
• SP
• 1B
• SS
• 3B
• 2B

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Some fans call him Superman, and for good reason. He hits for average and for power; he draws walks and barely strikes out; he plays premier defense at a premium position. He’s won Rookie of the Year, Most Valuable Player, three Silver Sluggers, a batting title, a Gold Glove, and oh by the way, three World Series rings. Read the rest of this entry »

I just got done entering my catchers for our positional rankings series. After the first dozen players, I noticed the selection turns south quickly. The cliff happens around the 15th guy off the board. I think owners need to have a plan going into a draft or auction on how they want to approach the situation. Here are my ideas this year for different league sizes.

10-Team, 1 Catcher (#1 to #10)

• Buster Posey
• Gary Sanchez
• Jonathan Lucroy
• Russell Martin
• Yasmani Grandal
• Willson Contreras
• Salvador Perez
• Stephen Vogt
• Yadier Molina
• Brian McCann

I am fine with any of the above being my catcher.

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So far in my Tout Wars preparation series, I’ve documented the league’s draft tendencies and the stats needed to win. Today, I’ll create the framework for player pricing. Along the way, I will show how there is no position scarcity except with catcher. At least for this league

Completing this step brings the preparation is laborious, but necessary. Once it’s done, I can spend most of my time evaluating players and their projected playing time.

For evaluating players, I utilize the Standings Gain Points (SGP) method. I previously outlined the procedure and it‘s the same method Larry Schechter recommends in his book, Winning Fantasy Baseball. Normally, this procedure is fairly straight forward since I’ve historically used three-year average values. Last year’s offensive explosion complicates the math. With more offense available, home runs, Runs, and RBIs become less important. Predicting 2017’s run scoring environment is impossible so I won’t for now. I feel I need to use a weighted average system with 2016 getting the most weight but I am just not sure how much to weight them. To get the process started, I will use the average standings from 2014 to 2016 for this work.

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We have been blessed with many outstanding rookie seasons throughout the history of baseball, especially in recent decades. Ichiro Suzuki crossed the Pacific and instantly turned into a super star. Mike Trout, well, he did Mike Trout things. We’ve seen Mike Piazza, Britt Burns, and Troy Tulowitzki all put up 7 WAR rookie campaigns. Each of these stories are amazing in their own right, but they are all about guys with truly phenomenal rookie seasons. Emphasis on season. Gary Sanchez, well, he was just a little bit different.

Gary Sanchez put up similar power numbers to a lot of those guys I just mentioned, he hit 20 home runs and 12 doubles, not too shabby for a rookie.  That isn’t the story here, of course.  No, he did this all in less than half a season, 229 plate appearances.  Closer to a third of a season, really, and in that time he put up over 3 WAR and made a strong case for the league ROY (and MVP, which lead to many silly arguments).

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In the run-up to last season, I started a position-by-position series aimed at deep league owners and who, outside of the top 15 or 18 players at each position, they should target in drafts. I don’t know if it was helpful and I’m sure if I looked back at my picks, I’d find some duds in there. As I quickly found out covering my Deep League beat last season, finding studs amongst the bottom rung of players can often feel like an exercise in futility. But don’t tell that to deep league managers for whom there’s value in mediocrity. So, with that compelling introduction, let’s look at some mediocre catchers, eh?

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Can you feel it? Baseball is inching closer and closer. I realize the country was just punished with devastatingly low temperatures almost everywhere (it was in the 20s here in Texas), but STATS recently released the early NFBC average draft data to keep us warm. You better believe I’ve got some thoughts, but I can’t fit them all in one piece, so I’ll cover two positions per and knock this out throughout the week.

CATCHER

• It’s basically Buster Posey (pick 35), Gary Sanchez (47), and Jonathan Lucroy (50), then everyone else. Even an ailing Posey finished second to only Lucroy among catchers last year.
• I want to preach caution on Sanchez, but he was so otherworldly, even accounting for the small sample. There just aren’t any comparisons. The only other catchers to put up a 150 or better OPS+ in their rookie seasons were Carlton Fisk and Mike Piazza and they both did it for way more than Sanchez’s 229 PA.

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Time to talk a little Kyle Schwarber

I touched on it yesterday, but Schwarber’s fantasy value is going to fluctuate a ton depending on each league’s settings. In all my keeper leagues, he is getting the Utility tag because he didn’t make the minimum five games played last year (just two games in the outfield). I can’t emphasize enough, know your league settings. Most leagues require five starts until a player is eligible at a position, so I see him getting outfield eligibility the first or second week depending on the schedule and weather.

For him to get the five games at catcher to gain eligibility, let me say I am skeptical of him catching just one game, let alone five. Just to make sure I wasn’t off kilter, at least on this subject, I ask my Twitter followers when they thought he would reach the five games.
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Carlos Santana had/is having quite the season. It’s his best by virtually any metric. Pick slugging, isolated slugging, strikeout rate, batting average, hits, home runs, even baserunning runs, and you’ll get either a career-best or second-best effort this year. He ended up the 10th-best fantasy first baseman and we have so many positive changes to choose from if we want to say why he was so good this year.

Here’s my guess: he swung more this year. I’ll explain, but it’s clear from his career-low walk rate and career-high swing rate that he was more aggressive. That might have been more important than anything else he did, and that might give us a road map to finding other mid-career breakouts like Santana.

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Way way back in 2015, the catcher position was Buster Posey, Buster Posey, and more Buster Posey. Per Zach Sanders’ calculations, Posey outperformed the two next-best catchers (Russell Martin and Brian McCann) by $11. The fourth best guy was $15 less valuable than Posey. Clearly, it was a year to own Posey.

This year, Jonathan Lucroy, Posey, and Wilson Ramos produced between $20.60 and $22.60 according to the FanGraphs auction calculator. Several other catchers weren’t too far off their pace. However, we can’t do a pure apples-to-apples comparison between the two calculations. Sanders did his analysis for a one catcher league. I assumed two catchers.

For the purposes of conducting fantasy analysis, I consider the two catcher format to be more instructive. In a one catcher league, the optimum catcher strategy is overly simplified. You can pay out the nose for Posey, hope to get a bargain on a modest investment like Realmuto, or take the best $1 catcher. Personally, I always opt for the $1 unit. You’re almost as likely to get the next version of Ramos.

However, I’m still curious how 2015 compares to 2016. Fortunately, the auction calculator is very flexible. I recreated the values for a one catcher league. The prices for the top trio decreased by about $7 – mostly because the position adjustment dropped by $6.

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