Archive for Catchers

Mike Zunino reached the majors in 2013 with just 208 plate appearances in the upper minors on his resume. It’s not as if he raked his way to The Show, either. In 47 games at the Double-A level, he tallied a .238/.303/.503 line with a 105 wRC+. He also struck out a ton (28.4%) while walking at a low rate (6.7%). Alas, the M’s brass didn’t seem to care about his shortcomings at the dish.

Big leaguers exploited him, and he tallied a .214/.290/.329 line with a 77 wRC+ and a 25.4% strikeout rate. He spent the entire 2014 season in the majors and smacked 22 homers. That’s where the offensive positives end. His power was dragged down by a 33.2% strikeout rate and .199/.254/.404. He also grew more impatient and walked in just 3.6% of his plate appearances. Remarkably, things got worse for Zunino in 2015, yet he remained in the majors until the end of August. At that point, the Mariners finally sent him down to the minors for more seasoning.

His 47 wRC+ and 34.2% strikeout rate in 386 plate appearances in 2015 were dreadful, and not even his strong work behind the dish could make up for his truly dreadful offense. In general manager Jerry Dipoto’s second year with the Mariners, he and the rest of the M’s brass made the wise decision to start the year with off-season acquisition Chris Iannetta starting at catcher and 25-year-old Zunino starting at the Triple-A level.

Even after a fast start, the Mariners exercised patience and allowed the previously-rushed top-five pick the opportunity to hone his craft with the lumber in the minors, and he thrived (17 homers, 10.7% walk rate, 21.1% strikeout rate, .286/.376/.521 and 138 wRC+ in 327 plate appearances). His improvements in the minors resulted in a strong showing from July through the end of the season in the majors. What’s on the horizon for the still young backstop? Read the rest of this entry »

Sorry for the title. Let’s move on. At the start of this season, I recommended J.T. Realmuto as someone deep-league managers should target for his speed and his price. At the time, Realmuto was coming off a season in which he led his position in stolen bases during a year in which steals were at a 20 year low. He was also going 17^th overall at catcher in public leagues, despite being picked 10^th in NFBC drafts. Given that Realmuto popped 10 homers while lacking the typical red flags of a regression candidate, he seemed criminally overlooked during drafts and possibly primed for a breakout. So how’d he do?

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Well, it wouldn’t be much fun if the ball just rolled to the wall every time the pitcher threw it, so obviously the game needs a catcher, even if robot umps take over. But my impression of trying to draft stud catchers from year to year is that it’s folly.

Maybe because the position is so demanding defensively, my impression of their ability to hit is somewhere between ‘American League pitcher’ and ‘Defensive Replacement’. The numbers say that catchers debut later, but even that finding is muddied by late-career backup catcher debuts. Aging for catchers seems about the same, and finding value in a catcher is easy even if they hit 13% worse than league average as a group this year, worse than any other position players — you still need to fill the position, so even an okay batter should be valuable.

Still… am I crazy? It seems that catchers are more volatile, year to year, and I just want to shop in the bargain bin for the most part. Let’s jump in and see if I am loony tunes.

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Gary Sanchez wasn’t the most valuable catcher in 2016. He earned his owners just $8.60 per the FanGraphs Auction Calculator. He also posted a ludicrous .299/.379/.657 line with 20 home runs 34 runs and 42 RBI in just 229 plate appearances. Obviously, the late start limited his earning potential. If we extrapolate over 600 plate appearances, a fair expectation for a healthy Sanchez, he was on pace for 52 home runs, 89 runs, and 110 RBI. That’s comparable to a more powerful Nelson Cruz, and he was on the fringes of the top 10 fantasy hitters this year.

Sanchez wasn’t just magnificent among catchers, he was comparable to a top 10 talent for one-third of a season. Now what do we do?

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2016 was an odd year for catchers in fantasy baseball. Something that caught my eye was the ownership rates of the top-ranked catchers. Only two catcher-eligible players — Jonathan Lucroy and Buster Posey — ended the season above 90% ownership in Yahoo leagues. Gary Sanchez got close (87%, with those other 13% likely being dead leagues), as did Salvador Perez (also 87%), and Wilson Ramos was in the 80+% range for a while as well, before he was widely dropped following his late-season injury.

Regardless of the reasoning, the fact that only the top two catchers were owned in >90% of leagues is significant, seeing as shortstop was the position with the second-fewest >90% owned players, with seven. The weirdest aspect of this is that 2016 was a good year for catchers in fantasy; so good, perhaps, that it was too deep for some smaller one-catcher leagues.

While it’s worth noting that Rotographs is using an updated auction calculator this year, it’s plainly clear how much more productive the position was this year compared to 2015. Last year, just one player earned his fantasy owners more than $20 worth of production, and that was Buster Posey. This year, Posey was joined by Lucroy and Ramos above the $20 threshold. Furthermore, the value of this year’s No. 10 catcher — Brian McCann at $10.20 — makes it even wackier that A.J. Pierzynski was the No. 10 fantasy catcher last year, with a whopping $3.42 value.

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So as I do annually, I compared my personal dollar values and resulting rankings to the RotoGraphs consensus rankings (excluding my own of course) at each position before the season began and identified those I was most bullish on as my picks and those I was bearish on as my pans. Last week, Brad Johnson published the catcher end of season values and rankings, so we’ll begin by reviewing my 2016 Pod’s Picks and Pans at catcher.

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Twice during the course of the season I highlighted Cameron Rupp for his offensive performance.  In May I brought up a concern about Rupp over performing his talent level, since he had a massive and unsustainable leap in exit velocity, but I questioned exactly how much he would regress.  In 2015 he had a relatively low 89mph average EV, and by the end of May he was hitting north of 96mph.  A month later, in late June, I wrote about him again, by this point his EV had setting to around 92mph, and by mid to late June we had seen enough of Rupp to know the changes were real. He had a different spray chart, heat map, higher exit velocities, much more high quality batted balls, and a huge leap in offensive production.

Lets take a step back, though. Upon the conclusion of the 2015 season, the Phillies management told Rupp he needed to dramatically improve his offensive performance during the 2016 season or he could end up losing his job with the team.  Rupp spent the offseason with a batting instructor he has worked with since childhood, Chris Edelstein, and together they refined his swing and approach.  Their work seemed to pay off noticeably from day one this season, with his April production significantly exceeding his 2015 numbers.  After a weak month of May, he went on a tear in June, July, and August where he put up the best numbers of his career.  His season ended on a low note, with a September so underwhelming that it threatens to wash out the success he had during the heart of the season.Rupp had three scorching hot months, one pretty decent month, and two exceedingly weak months.  He finished the season batting .252/.303/.447, with .321 wOBA, 16 HR, 36 R, and 54 RBI.  Among catchers, he ranked 20th in HR, 18th in R, 13th in RBI, 17th in AVG, 27th in OBP, 8th in SLG, and 36th in strike outs.  This may not be especially exciting, but there are some good signs here. Read the rest of this entry »

It was a very strange year at catcher. The top of the end of season catcher rankings don’t look too unusual with Jonathan Lucroy and Buster Posey at the top, but those full-season numbers do not capture the amazing impact three catchers who become starters midseason had. Gary Sanchez’s prospect star had faded a bit in recent seasons, but that reflected defensive doubts. Most scouts agreed that Sanchez would hit if he could field his position. Willson Contreras had become the top catching prospect, and he immediately delivered on that promise with the Cubs.

Sandy Leon was completely different. Leon made his debut with the Nationals all the way back in 2012, and Wilson Ramos was not the only reason Leon never played regularly before this season. In his 235 plate appearances from 2012-15, Leon slashed an abysmal .187/.258/.225. His .223 wOBA over that period made him roughly equivalent at the plate to Mike Leake. This season, Leon was tied with Lucroy for the third-highest wOBA of .362. He was nearly identical to Contreras in both plate appearances and production.

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With the regular season over and the postseason rumbling along, it’s time to look back at the top performers of 2016. As is usually the case, we’re starting at the catcher position. For those of you who are familiar with this series from previous offseasons, we have a major change to the way we’re calculating values. Let’s talk about that first before diving into the numbers.

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We’ve done a good thing for those of you that still care about fantasy baseball right now. The Auction Calculator now has 2016 stats as an option so that you can look backwards at what has just happened. That’s going to be part of our effort, on the way to the end of the year, to look at last year to learn more for next year.

This is an important part of fantasy that usually gets ignored. Not only does the league itself change year to year, so retrospection is important in that way, but we can learn things about fantasy itself that will improve our ability to value players going forward.

The fourth-best player in the game last year, by this list, has already inspired a possible change to the auction calculator going forward. Let’s see what else it jars loose.

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