Archive for Catchers

You’ve seen the news no doubt. The Mariners made, in language that I would use with my three year old when he smears macaroni and cheese goo all over my wool work pants, “a bad choice.” They jettisoned John Jaso and brought in Ryan Langerhans Mike Michael Morse. The fantasy impact has already been documented in these Rotographing pages. But I’d like to expand a little on Jaso.

First of all, the title has two meanings. One real, one fake (but alas, real to us nerds). It’s not breaking news to tell you that John Jaso was unappreciated in Seattle. He’s now going to a place where, if you believe the lip service, he’s going to be appreciated. One would have to assume that appreciation, coupled with expected on-field performance, will result in playing time. So John Jaso is freed from the Eric Wedge shackles, and chances are he’s just barely north of free in your fantasy leagues. For these two reasons, you should sit up a little more straight in your chair and push your glasses up off the end of your nose.

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Through the first 10 rounds of the RotoGraphs Ridiculously Early Mock Draft, a draft for a single-catcher league, we saw a total of eight backstops come off the board. In an effort to see how our picks matched up with public opinion, we’ve been comparing the results to ADP found on both Mock Draft Central (MDC) and the National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC). However, given how unreliable MDC data is right now due to small sample sizes and the fact that they don’t differentiate between one and two-catcher league mocks, we’re basically casting that ADP data aside and just matching up with that from the NFBC, a two-catcher league draft. With the current depth at the position, it should have been safe to assume that the top backstops would go a bit earlier in our draft than in the NFBC, however, in looking back at the comparisons, that was not the case. In fact, save for everyone agreeing that Buster Posey was a consensus late-first round pick, nothing went as expected. Read the rest of this entry »

With Eno releasing the results of Rounds 6 through 10 of the RotoGraphs Early Mock Draft (you can find the first five rounds here), now is as good a time as any to take a look at some Average Draft Position (ADP) numbers for backstops and see where you can expect certain players to go in the first part of your draft. We’re not splitting the atom here. We’re just taking a look at a few early results — something we’re going to do from time to time here throughout the offseason. The results we’re looking at today come from an incredibly small sample size in comparison to the amount of draft data we’ll have even just a month from now, but it’s good to start keeping track now so that you can follow the upcoming trends and stay fully prepared for when you actually start drafting your teams this year. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »