Among the many surprises we witnessed during the 2012 season, the ridiculous year that A.J. Pierzynski had is probably one of the biggest. Based on the decline in his overall numbers over the last several years, a season in which he posted career-best totals in nearly every offensive category (including nose hair), after being a relative afterthought on draft day had fantasy owners completely baffled. Appreciative, yes, but baffled nonetheless. And now that he’s signed on to play for the Texas Rangers in 2013, the big question on everyone’s mind is whether or not he can do it again. Read the rest of this entry »

This week the Mets exchanged Cy Young award winner R.A. Dickey for Blue Jays catching prospect Travis d’Arnaud (pronounced dar-no). The deal is logical for two teams moving in opposite directions. While the merit of the Blue Jays’ off-season moves are not above reproach, the Mets are in no position to compete in 2013 as evidenced by their attempt to field a team without a single outfielder. But, that’s of little consequence to us here at RotoGraphs. Here, we want to know who Travis d’Arnaud is and how this trade affects the prospect Comrade Newman called the best catcher prospect he has ever seen. Read the rest of this entry »

On a different website, I’ve made my opinions pretty clear: Joe Mauer should not catch much longer. But luckily for most fantasy owners — myself included — there seem to be no indications that the Twins will move Mauer off the backstop position anytime soon. This season, Mauer graded out as the third-best catcher at $17, trailing only NL stalwarts Buster Posey and Yadier Molina, who incidentally finished first and fourth respectively in the MVP balloting on the senior circuit.

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During the 2008 World Series a few friends and I began calling Carlos Ruiz “Babe Ruiz”. The light hitting 29-year-old catcher in his second season was destroying the Tampa Bay Rays. He hit .375/.500/.688 in the five games compared to .219/.320/.300 during the regular season. We were miffed and upset that our beloved Rays were getting destroyed by Carlos F’ing Ruiz.

He’s come a long way since then.

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It seems as though Carlos Santana has been all figured out. I don’t mean that opposing pitchers have figured him out — that certainly isn’t the case. While pitchers struggle to get him out, various projection systems have him absolutely pegged.

The following table is a combination of various pre-season projections as well as his final line. The accuracy is pretty remarkable.

Everyone give a cap tip (and a follow) to our friend Dan Szymborski. He and his system came the closest to Santana’s actual numbers, but none of the projection systems were too far off base.
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Owners who hopped aboard the Mike Napoli bandwagon in 2011 (and stayed on it through injury) were handsomely rewarded with excellent value from a traditionally weak position in fantasy. 2012 drafts saw this value reflected in his pre-season rankings, and Texas’ offensive backstop slash first-baseman hybrid was coming off the board first among catchers and 44th overall (at least, in ESPN drafts). And owners who paid the high price for Napoli’s Arlington talent were correspondingly not shocked to see him slip all the way to 13th in Zach Sanders’ End of Season Catcher Rankings – most of them probably grumbling about burning a fourth-rounder or double-digit auction dollars on a guy who saw practically everything drop across the board from 2011 to 2012. Runs down from 72 to 53, runs batted in dropping similarly to 56 from 75, average crashing from 0.320 to 0.227 and even Napoli’s taters tailing off from 30 to 24 in only 15 less plate appearances. An all-around down year.

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Russell Martin hit a career-high 21 homers in 2012, backed by a .192 ISO that was eighth-best among catchers with 350 plate appearances. On the surface, that sounds like the mark of a pretty good season, yet Martin was ranked only 18^th in Zach Sanders’ end of season catcher rankings, behind even non-starters like Ryan Doumit, Jordan Pacheco, & Jesus Montero. He was behind Brian McCann, who suffered through the worst year of his career while fighting injury, and he was behind former teammate A.J. Ellis, who made a splash in Martin’s old home of Los Angeles.

You probably know where this is going: Sanders was in no way wrong to rank Martin as low as he did, even despite the power. In nearly every other way Martin has continued his freefall from his outstanding first few years in the bigs, and it’s difficult to see him rebounding at this point. Going back to the question Howard Bender asked here in February of “Should You Trust Russell Martin?”, well, no. Remember, this is how Bender phrased his worry about Martin after the catcher’s first year in the Bronx: Read the rest of this entry »

Brian McCann was as consistent as they come until last season. At a generally weak position, McCann’s solid batting average and above-average power numbers led him to finish at the top of catcher rankings for six straight seasons. Owners expected more of the same in 2012. That streak of success came to a screeching halt last year. McCann still managed to hit 20 home runs, but his .230/.300/.399 batting line was easily the worst of his career. Near the midpoint of the season, it was revealed McCann had been dealing with an injured shoulder. The injury would linger the remainder of the season, causing McCann do receive cortisone shots just to stay in the lineup. At season’s end, he revealed that he would have surgery, possibly causing him to miss time early on next season. For the first time in his career, McCann carries a lot of risk.

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For the regulars of RotoGraphs, you know that I covered the catchers all season and somewhere in the early goings of the second half, I finally put Buster Posey in the top tier, all by himself. Every other catcher to me was flawed in some way and for at least one way or another paled in comparison to the Giants backstop. Well, after looking at Zach Sanders’ Catcher End of Season Rankings and looking at Posey’s return value of $23, I would say that I was not wrong in my thinking. Posey is, indeed, a cut above the rest and is well-deserving of his number one ranking. Read the rest of this entry »

While the rest of the baseball community tries to make heads or tails out of yesterday’s Marlins/Blue Jays trade, a deal that only furthers the belief that Jeffrey Loria is one of the worst in the business, I’ll stick with Zach Sanders’ Catcher End of Season Rankings and scroll on down to a personal favorite of mine, at number seven, Miguel Montero. If you’ve owned him at any point over the last four seasons, then you know how valuable he can be in fantasy and if you haven’t, then you’re about to be let in on one of the best kept secrets at the catcher position. Read the rest of this entry »