Archive for Catchers

It seems to be fair to say that most fantasy baseball gamers didn’t have high expectations for Travis d’Arnaud this season. The New York Mets’ backstop went undrafted in nearly all rotisserie and head-to-head leagues at Yahoo! and ESPN. His CBS ownership rate in the first week of the season was 63%. I surmise that the numbers basically placed him near the fringe of indifference in two-catcher mixed leagues, where he still resides, for the most part.

I thought that it was a tad surprising. Granted, d’Arnaud slashed .202/.286/.263 in the 112 plate appearances that made up his MLB debut in 2013, but peripheral numbers suggested that his control of the strike zone was good. His bat speed is considered top-notch. Plus, he was still a top prospect. Most who do the fantasy thing like prospects, don’t they? I don’t have and didn’t want any shares then, but I figured that someone did.

Read the rest of this entry »

In need of another catcher? Rummaging through the discount bin in the hopes of finding an undervalued arm? That’s funny — we’re looking at the same things this week in another edition of the deep league waiver wire.
Read the rest of this entry »

Brian McCann, whose batting average rests at .230 after a 3-for-5 performance on Monday night, is acutely aware of the quality of his performance at the dish this season. Despite the usual shortage of media attention on the New York Yankees, his feelings on the subject weren’t lost in the shuffle. He’s notorious for high expectations of himself, and he may have taken that to a new level this year, but he’s confident that he’ll turn it around. So is his manager. “He’ll figure it out,” Joe Girardi says.

But what if he doesn’t? McCann, 30, hasn’t hit .270 or better since 2011. His ISO is at .149 and his home run and doubles totals are at just 10, however. Fantasy owners drafted McCann with the expectation that 20 home runs were practically a given and that 25 or even 30 were possible, thanks to the move from spacious Turner Field to the new Yankee Stadium, complete with short right-field porch. It seemed like a good fit. What kind of effect does pressure on oneself have? What if he just stinks?

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s time for another day of deep league wire fun. If you’re in dire need of a catcher or some speed, you have stumbled upon the right place.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today is kind of a big day for the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team. I’m excited. I haven’t really done the chant thing yet, but that’s mostly because I watched their group-stage matches in my home, where for some reason I’d feel more uncomfortable doing it.

I categorized the catchers for this month by USMNT’s all-time leaders in clean sheets. (That’s “shutouts,” which are registered by goalkeepers, for the uninitiated.) The Yanks could use one of those today versus Belgium. I doubt that they’ll be so fortunate, but I expect them to exhibit considerably more promise in the attacking third than they did against zee Germans.

The more clean sheets, the higher the netminder. No subjective hierarchy here. Just like my catcher tiers. Wink wink. You’re welcome to compare to last month’s.

Read the rest of this entry »

Is Wilin Rosario the high-upside player he seemed to be a couple of years ago (and appeared to remain coming into this season)? Is he just on the wrong side of some bad platoon splits these days (and perhaps screwed for eternity)?

A reader asked questions like these in a comment on a recent podcast, and we discussed them in a subsequent pod. I think the reader did well to get at the heart of the matter. (I added the “screwed for eternity” part.)

The player has a lot potential value because he has a lot of power, even if it’s not reflected in his home run total. The batting average (.245) this season has been disappointing, naturally. Brett Talley’s survey of “The Best Fantasy Hitters of the Past Calendar Year” doesn’t do enough to console 2014 Rosario owners, especially those in redrafters or those who’ve experienced only these last nearly three months.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Oakland Athletics indirectly piqued the interest of astute fantasy owners – and Mike Podhorzer – with the preseason news that they planned to slot John Jaso at DH regularly in order to help him to maintain his health. Naturally, this carried other implications, the primary of which is that right-handed-hitting catcher Derek Norris appeared to be in line for a spike in playing time.

The A’s seemed to dash hopes of fantasy owners in deep leagues, but only briefly. By the end of spring training, they’d elected to go with Daric Barton at first base and to relegate Brandon Moss to DH. That arrangement meant more time behind the plate for Jaso and less time for Norris, period, initially. Barton failed to impress at the dish after less than a month and a half, so he and his plus mitt were designated for assignment. Thus, the excitement about Norris was on again.

Read the rest of this entry »

We just finished ranking week (find them easily on the right-hand nav bar), and since I’m apparently a masochist, I’m going to jump right back in and examine where I was different from the consensus. We’ll do as many positions as possible today — I’ll focus on those players that are most differently positioned in my rankings — before checking out the pitchers.

Read the rest of this entry »

Some fantasy pundits – including a few at RotoGraphs – and owners were optimistic about the fortunes of Joe Mauer entering this season, in large part because the Minnesota Twins were moving him away from catcher permanently. Although his brand of statistical output is mediocre for a first baseman, the catcher eligibility he retains could make him one of the more valuable rotisserie commodities in this transition year.

Mauer’s apologists – such as yours truly – were confident of his chance to avoid injury as long as he manned a less stressful position. His rough first two-plus months of the 2014 campaign seem to have done little to tarnish the RotoGraphs group’s and my hopes, though.

Read the rest of this entry »

Rankings lists always result in a firestorm of comments as everyone values players differently. It’s hard enough to do such an exercise in the preseason, but in the middle of the season is even more difficult. How much do you weight such a small sample of performance when you have an entire body of work to analyze from a player? Is the skills change real or just a mirage? So like I did in the preseason, I’m going to compare my updated rankings with the rest of the crew. I removed my rankings from the consensus and then reordered it to get a truer picture of what the other guys are feeling. We’ll start with the catchers. I won’t include everyone, only the noteworthy names.

Read the rest of this entry »