Archive for Catchers

Writing up players in October is, to some degree, useless. At this point fantasy owners only care about what the player is going to do next year. And while looking at what a player did the previous year is a big part of determining what they’ll do next year, it’s all kind of pointless without knowing what the cost will be to acquire the player next year. Without ADP or an average auction value, player write ups at this time of year can often be moot come draft season.

With that said, it’s really hard to tell you whether Yadier Molina is a good player to target in drafts next year. On one hand, you could assume that the injury that limited him to 445 PA might make him available at a bit of a discount next year. Then again, fantasy owners overvalued Molina last year. He ended 2013 as the 81st most valuable fantasy player according to ESPN’s player rater, but he was drafted as a borderline top 50 player.

Ignoring assumptions about whether Molina will be over or undervalued by the masses, let’s determine how he should be valued. He finished the year as the 19th most valuable fantasy catcher according to Zach Sanders’ end-of-season values and 16th according to the player rater. As mentioned, a stint on the DL cost him about 100 PA given that he finished with 445 and averaged 552 in the previous two seasons. Extrapolated out to 550 PA, here’s what Molina might have produced absent the injury.

Not all that impressive. The batting average contribution helps given that only four catchers who finished ahead of Molina had a higher average. In an attempt to not undervalue the batting average, Molina’s extrapolated production looks somewhat similar to that of Derek Norris who finished the year as the 11th most valuable fantasy catcher according to Sanders and 13th according to the player rater.

My guess is that Molina won’t just be drafted like a borderline top 12 fantasy catcher next year even though he wasn’t on pace to be better than that. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see him drafted as a top five fantasy catcher. If that assumption is correct, is there any reason to expect Molina to outperform the pace he was on this year?

If he’s going to “bounce back,” it’s going to be because his batting average contributions are huge. When he led all catchers in fantasy value in 2013, he did it primarily because he had the 10th highest batting average contribution among all hitters according to the player rater with a .319 average in 541 PA. A career-high .338 BABIP helped him have the high average despite his strikeout rate being in double digits for the first time since 2007. To be fair, the high BABIP wasn’t totally undeserved as he had the 24th best line drive rate among qualified hitters.

This year his BABIP fell back into the “normal” .270-.310 range at .307. Early 2015 Steamer projections have his BABIP being .305 next year. That’s still good, and his batting average contributions will surely continue to be above average for the position. But it’s unlikely his average spikes back up to where it was. His strikeout rate continued to rise this year, and his line drive rate fell from its peak. With Molina entering his age-32 season, it’s hard to expect those things to rebound.

The home runs and steals are pretty projectable assuming that the 22/12 combo he produced in 2012 was a one-year aberration. And without the average rising again it’s hard to predict his R+RBI total bouncing back up to the 130-140 range. If the Cardinals go back to being the best clutch hitting team in baseball, he could rebound in those counting stats, but it’s not always a great idea to count on teammates to prop a player up.

The one thing to love about Molina is the relatively low floor. Absent another injury, it’s hard to see him being worse than what is conservatively being projected here. And what’s being projected here is a starting catcher in 12-team and maybe even 10-team leagues. Other catchers going between, let’s say, 8th and 14th at the position will be far less projectable. So if Molina falls that far, he’s a solid pick. But it would be a surprise if people weren’t more optimistic about him.

So “Yan” and “man” don’t actually rhyme, which makes the title less fun, but has nothing to do with its accuracy. Maybe it’s because I am an Indians fan and see him play almost daily, but I spent much of the last two years wondering why Yan Gomes wasn’t getting more love from the fantasy community. You have to look no further than these very pages, where Gomes was mentioned for fantasy purposes all of twice in 2014.

The first time it was because Brett Talley was covering the Cleveland infield and Gomes was listed there only as a sleeper (and likely only because you can’t just ignore a team’s starting catcher in talking about their infield). The second was when Nicholas Minnix noted, in September, that Gomes was a top five fantasy asset at his position. By the end of the season, he was top four.

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After a ho-hum small sample performance in 2012, Jason Castro enjoyed a big breakout in 2013, driven by a power outburst and inflated BABIP. With nothing in his performance history supporting the offensive surge as being real, it was an open question whether he could repeat. Personally, I was a believer, and actually drafted or bought him in each of my three leagues. But alas, he was a bust, ranking just 20th in catcher value. So what happened?

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The 2014 fantasy baseball season has come to a close, so it is time to look back at the season past and determine which players were the most valuable at each position. As we have in the past, we’re starting out with catchers.

The players were ranked based on their 2014 production, using the evaluation system explained and updated on this site some time ago. The valuations are built for $260 budgets and standard 5×5 roto fantasy leagues, where only one catcher is started. Players are listed only at their primary positions from 2014.

One important thing to note is the premium (or lack thereof) placed on the position a player occupies in your lineup. For example, while a first baseman may be able to accumulate superior overall numbers, the availability of such production lower in the rankings severely dampers the amount the player was worth. These rankings are meant to reflect a player’s value should he have occupied this spot in your lineup for the entire year. A player who missed time due to injury but put up great numbers during his time on the field would be worth less.

This year, I’ve added in RotoGraphs’ preseason consensus rankings so you can see what we thought of each player coming into the year. This ranking can be found in the “Pre” column. “EOS” of course stands for End Of Season, and the rest should be self explanatory.

With all this in mind, here are your rankings. Read the rest of this entry »

I made a lot of predictions this year, all of which were enjoyable to make. But they were all shared for the same reason — to point out players I believe to be undervalued or overvalued. Aside from the assortment of bold predictions, I also annually compare my personal rankings to the rest of the RotoGraphs ranking crew and dub the series Pod’s Picks. So let’s see if my rankings proved more accurate for the players we differed on most. We’ll start with the catchers, of which you could check out the original picks here. Actual ranks are taken from the soon-to-be published dollar values by Zach Sanders.

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Coming into this season, some fantasy baseball players felt that one of these backstops was an elite option and the other a strong rebound candidate. One disappointed, while the other didn’t. But in the last month or so, each has flipped the script, prompting questions about what lies ahead.

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The curtain has not yet come down on the 2014 regular season, but if you’re like me, flushed out of the playoffs with not a whole lot to do except look ahead to next year, you’re probably already mulling over your keepers. For me, no one quite draws my eye like Travis d’Arnaud, who I took in the last round of my 12-team, mixed H2H single-catcher league as a stasher and rode through what’s been a roller coaster-like season for him.

A keeper backstop is an uncommon and risky venture. Catchers, after all, get hurt. They don’t steal bases. They don’t hit for a high average. It’s a rare bird who notches more than 20 home runs, and rarer still the ones who knock in more than 80 RBIs. It’s a position that typically offers a terrible return on investment, which makes keepers a premium commodity — especially when they come at a post-hype price tag.
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Fantasy baseball players, coming into this season, probably knew that Mike Zunino has shortcomings. Most of them have to do with his hitting. But some drafters were happy to target him as a dirt-cheap second catcher in two-C mixed leagues, for example. I wasn’t one of them.

I thought that those folks were excessively ambitious. There existed significant power in his Louisville Sluggers, but I didn’t believe that he’d go deep often enough to satisfy my hopes for one of my choices at the position. And I value power production most from my catchers. I’m more than willing to swallow a crap batting average for 20 bombs. I figured that his major contact problem and thorough lack of experience against even pro competition, period, would prevent him from threatening, perhaps even sniffing, that level.

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At this time of year, it’s easy to find a number of September call ups to write about. The trick is to find those who might actually garner enough playing time to earn some actual fantasy value. Here are two of those fine gentlemen.

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Congratulations to fantasy baseball players who drafted Yan Gomes in 2014. He’s batted .285/.321/.472, with 17 home runs, in 452 plate appearances. He’s been a top-five catcher-eligible commodity in standard mixed leagues. That’s not bad for the 12^th one of those drafted, on average, across the most well-known places to play, according to FantasyPros. The owners who landed him at Yahoo! or ESPN, where he was several spots lower on that list, if he was even drafted, feel a little extra special. Unless they play in 1-C leagues.

I’m not one of those people. I didn’t avoid him, but I didn’t target him, either, and aiming for Gomes appears to have been a smart move. Because of that, I kind of want to know what I was missing, and why.

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