Archive for Catchers

Last week, we were looking at catchers who were having great months in August and had the potential to help fantasy teams, if even just for a short time.  One of the names mentioned was White Sox backstop A.J. Pierzynski who was  hitting .410 for the month with one home run and six RBI.  Unfortunately though, the timing could not have been worse as Pierzynski was hit on the wrist and missed a few games before the team placed him on the 15-day DL.  His owners, and those that were about to take a chance on him, were left to sift through the waiver bin, hoping to land someone that could carry them through.  But why search other teams hoping that their starters were somehow still available, when you could just as easily fix the problem “in-house”?  It’s time for Tyler Flowers. Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Sox are already one of the three best teams in baseball and arguably have the best offense in the land. They possess the highest team batting WAR and the second highest wOBA in baseball. Dustin Pedroia, Jacoby Ellsbury and Adrian Gonzalez are all MVP candidates. David Ortiz and his team leading .404 wOBA is almost an afterthought. So is always exceptional Kevin Youkilis. Well, Ortiz and Youkilis are injured, leaving a void in the lineup. What do the Red Sox do to fill it? They call up one of the hottest hitters in all of the minor leagues, naturally.

Much has been made of the season Ryan Lavarnway is having. He hit well in Double-A putting up an .869 OPS in 239 plate appearances, but he’s really shined in his stint in Triple-A. With Pawtucket he’s put up a line of .301/.385/.608 with 16 home runs and a .306 ISO in 239 plate appearances. He’s always hit for power, smacking 21 homers in 2009 and 25 in 2010. Lavarnway’s numbers are even more impressive when you consider that Pawtucket is in the International League, which isn’t the hitter’s haven the Pacfic Coast League is. League average in the IL is .260/.330/.401, which pity in comparison to Lavarnway.

The biggest struggle for him has been getting comfortable at catcher. He played more games at DH than catcher at Double-A, but has reverted back to his backstop ways at Triple-A, presumably so the Red Sox can get him ready for 2012 if Jason Varitek isn’t retained. He won’t play much, if any, catcher while up with the big league club, sticking to DH duties while Ortiz is out. There’s no exact time table for Ortiz’s return from right heel bursitis but it seems likely he’ll be out at least a week, maybe two, which gives Lavarnway time to showcase his talents for a possible place on the postseason roster. Rosters expand in the next few weeks so it’s likely that Lavarnway remains with the Red Sox for the rest of the season, though his at bats will be limited if Ortiz comes back healthy.

He started last night’s game and batted seventh. He’s bound to receive many opportunities to pick up RBI no matter where he bats in the Red Sox order. He’s a solid pickup in deep A.L. only leagues and is a good candidate to stash away in keeper leagues due to his power from the feeble catcher position.

At this point in the season, roto players are scratching and clawing through their categories looking primarily at the ones that have some shred of movement possibilities.  Head to head owners are gearing up for their fantasy playoffs as their regular season is almost at a close.  Whichever style league you find yourself in, it’s time to start focusing on the hitters that are swinging a hot bat right now, despite their overall value.  The catching position is perfect for this.  If you’re not sitting on one of the top five backstops out there, then chances are, the players you are using are relatively interchangeable with those that are sitting out on your waiver wire.  So why not use the one with the hottest stick right now?  If he starts to cool, you can probably find an easy replacement who is on the upswing for the final month then.  Here’s a look at some of August’s hot bats behind the plate that may be useful at the moment. Read the rest of this entry »

Time to re-visit those monthly rankings, again.  As always, the criteria used for these is as follows:

1.  Current performance level
2.  Expected performance for rest of season
3.  Value based on standard 5×5 categories (avg over OBP)

One note, despite the fact that it is late in the season, we are not accounting for keeper value right now.  We are staying within the parameters of this season alone.  Injured players remain on the list at the bottom so we can just see who was up there from start to finish.  That being said, here’s how the catching position looks right now…. Read the rest of this entry »

Unless Keanu Reeves has been working on calling signs, you won’t be able to replace Brian McCann with a player off the wire with his upside. Now that the 27-year-old Brave has had his career year derailed by an oblique injury in the middle of a marathon game, fantasy owners will be looking for replacements. Let’s take a look at some possible pickups. In tiers!

Shallow Leagues
Jonathan Lucroy (38% owned in Yahoo)
Perhaps it was a dropping BABIP that has had Lucroy hitting closer to .250 over the last two months, but if batting average is important to you, he’s one of the better options available in more than half of Yahoo’s leagues. The good news is that the Milwaukee catcher has some upside left — this year. He’s showing a 21.5% strikeout rate, but also a 6.5% swinging strike rate. Last year, those numbers were 18% and 7.0% respectively. It’s possible that since his BABIP (.338) is so close to his xBABIP (.329), his batting average could even rise as his strikeout rate begins to look more like last year’s strikeout rate. His minor league strikeout rates were all much closer to 15%, so this outcome comes close to probable even. The question is his power. A .119 ISO is not going bring you McCann-like rewards. Not many batters have a ground-ball-to-fly-ball ratio above 1.41 and a home-run-rate-per-fly-ball around ten percent. Chipper Jones, Dustin Pedroia, Martin Prado and Melky Cabrera do, though. The nice thing is that all of them have ISOs above average. Lucroy might run into a few more home runs in the second half.

Mixed Leagues
Ramon Hernandez (23% owned in Yahoo)
Sure, you can go with the high-power, low-batting average guys like Miguel Olivo and and John Buck. Or maybe even Jarrod Saltalamacchia, who has resurrected his career and is mostly playable despite a bad contact rate. Instead it’s Ramon Hernandez that gets the call here. It’s taken the 35-year-old a long time to finally put up a .300 batting average, but with a .328 xBABIP and a .303 BABIP, it might just be sustainable. The way he did it was by sacrificing his fly balls. A career low in fly ball rate along with a career high in ground-ball rate makes him a different player these days, but don’t expect that 20.4% HR/FB rate to continue. He has a 11.7% career number and his power, as measured by ISO, has been dwindling for a while. Still, even if he won’t play as much as McCann or have the same power, he won’t kill your batting average.

Deep Leagues
David Ross (1% owned in Yahoo)
Well, now you’re just screwed. Just hope he won’t be out long. Ryan Doumit’s rehab has been moved to Triple-A, but he’s probably not back until the beginning of August. Josh Thole might be out there for you as long as you’re not in an NL-only with two catchers — don’t laugh, I am in the AL version — but the Mets catcher is all batting average because of his choked-up approach at the plate. And that approach is even limited in batting average upside. Instead, consider taking the same approach that the Braves might take and pick up Brian McCann’s replacement. If he’s out there, it’s because it’s obvious the lifetime .236/.325/.449 hitter is above his head at .293/.361/.507 so far this year. You don’t need xBABIP to know his .367 BABIP in 84 PAs is not sustainable. Ross has looked great in Atlanta mostly because he’s been limited to facing lefties, too. Interestingly enough, though, the 34-year-old righty has a .331 career wOBA against righties (.334 vs lefties). Everything but his BABIP is looks the same! Take advantage of perceived flaws and pick up the catcher with the .213 career ISO that has been hitting over .270 for the past three years.

There are certain catchers out there — Joe Mauer, Victor Martinez, Brian McCann, Miguel Montero, just to name a few — that are automatic starts for you.  They get left in your lineup, through good starts and bad, because you know, for the most part, the level of overall production you’re going to get.  But for those that don’t own a top-rated backstop, sometimes you have to play the waiver wire and go with the hot hand.  With that, we’ll leave the top guys out and talk about some risers and fallers at the catcher position that you may want to put in, or take out, from your lineup. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s really time to start looking deeper into your free agent pool these days.  Of course, it looks better when a player is owned in 40% of ESPN leagues, but does that really mean he’s outperforming a guy that may only be owned in 15%?  Not always the case.  It may just mean that fewer people are paying attention and don’t know as much about him to realize that he is the superior fantasy option at this point in time.  Here’s a pair of guys that just might fit that description. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re now sitting here in mid-July and four times the Catcher Rankings have been adjusted to reflect both the current season’s performance and expected rest of season projections.  For the most part, the criticisms have been mild as we all seem to be, reasonably, on the same page.  However, there’s one thing that continuously sticks out at me and today, I feel it’s time to address it.  The title obviously says it all, but still, I feel it necessary to ask the question:  What’s up with all the Chris Iannetta love? Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Wieters was supposed to be a switch-hitting Joe Mauer with power. He ranked as the top prospect in the game prior to the 2009 season, and he inspired a Matt Wieters Facts page with gems like, “Scott Boras Hired Matt Wieters As His Agent” and “Matt Wieters Took Batting Practice This Morning. There Were No Survivors.” Given that backdrop, anything less than MVP-caliber performances from Wieters wouldn’t satiate the masses. And that’s a shame, because Wieters has quietly become one of the better catchers in the game while attention has been fixed on finding the next Next Big Thing.

Take a look at Wieters’ offensive performance over the period of 2009-2011:

2009: .288/.340/.412, .330 Weighted On-Base Average (wOBA)
2010: .249/.319/.377, .303 wOBA
2011: .265/.324/.417, .326 wOBA

Some people might look at those lines and say that Wieters had a promising rookie year, tanked in 2010 and is hitting slightly worse in 2011 at 25 years of age than he did as a 23-year-old. Viewed through that prism, Wieters looks like a disappointment. But that thought process is flawed because it doesn’t frame those numbers within the context of changing run-scoring levels across baseball.

In 2009, major league teams scored an average of 4.6 runs per game. That total fell to 4.4 runs per game in 2010 and is down to 4.2 runs per game in 2011. Look at the effect that drop has had on the collective MLB line for hitters over the years:

2009: .262/.333/.418, .329 wOBA
2010: .257/.325/.403, .321 wOBA
2011: .253/.319/.391, .315 wOBA

The line for catchers over that time frame has nosedived from .254/.320/.395 in 2009 to .249/.319/.381 last season and .242/.314/.379 this year. With teams scoring fewer runs, comparing a hitter’s line in 2011 to years past is an apples-to-oranges exercise.

Put in proper context, Wieters’ 2011 season is indicative of a young player making solid offensive progress. At a time when hitters are faring worse as a whole, Wieters is showing more power, hitting fewer ground balls and striking out less. His park-and-league-adjusted line this year is two percent better than average (102 wRC+), while his rookie season was five percent below average (95 wRC+). But it might not feel that way to some fantasy players, given Wieters’ gargantuan expectations and the difficulty in mentally adjusting to the lower run-scoring levels in the game over the past several seasons.

Wieters has the sixth-highest wOBA among catchers qualified for the batting title, and his rest-of-season ZiPS projection ranks in the top 10 among backstops who figure to get frequent playing time. Yet, he’s still on the waiver wire in 13 percent of Yahoo! leagues. Some owners waiting on Superman are missing out on a quality, mid-twenties catcher with upside remaining.

Not long after the final out of the All-Star Game was recorded, work broke that the Mets had traded closer Francisco Rodriguez to the Brewers for two players to be named later. Obviously this deal has major fantasy impact, so let’s break it down.

The Brewers

“Francisco has been one of the best relievers in the game for many years,” said Brewers GM Doug Melvin in the press release. “He is a high-quality arm who will be a tremendous asset to our bullpen as we prepare for the final months of the regular season and playoffs.”

That language (“best relievers,” not “best closers”) leads me to believe that the Brewers will continue to use John Axford in save situations. He’s outperformed K-Rod this year (2.26 FIP vs. 2.98 FIP) but doesn’t have the same kind of track record, however there’s the issue of Rodriguez’s vesting option. If he finishes 21 more games this year, it’ll lock in a $17.5M salary for next season. There’s a better chance of Trevor Hoffman coming out of retirement to be the seventh inning guy than there is of Milwaukee letting that sucker kick in.

Axford owners, you’re safe. His role doesn’t figure to change. Yeah, K-Rod might steal a save here or there (they have the wiggle room to let him finish 10-15 games), but nothing crazy. Rodriguez owners are pretty much out of luck, you’ve got a great option for holds but just took a big hit in the saves department.

The Mets

There are two obvious candidates to inherit the ninth inning in Flushing. Jason Isringhausen has been doing a bang-up job as K-Rod’s primary setup man this season, though his 4.67 FIP and 4.81 xFIP do a better job of telling the real story than his 3.14 ERA. Izzy isn’t missing many bats (6.4% whiffs) and is giving up a ton of fly balls (just 30.5% grounders), so CitiField is saving him some headache. He has the Proven Closer tag and is seven saves away from 300, things that could impact his role even if they really shouldn’t.

The other option is hard-throwing Bobby Parnell, who has seen quite a bit of high-leverage work of late. He’s pitched to 1.56 ERA with 19 strikeouts and just four walks in 17.1 IP since coming off the disabled list at the end of May, and his stuff is clearly superior to Izzy’s. Parnell has just one career save (back in 2009), so if he does get the job, he might be on a very short leash. The team would probably be better off letting him handle the sticky situations in the seventh/eighth while Isringhausen starts the ninth fresh with no one on base anyway.

The dark horse is rookie Pedro Beato, but he seems like an extreme long shot. His 3.38 ERA matches his 3.38 FIP, but he’s seen more sixth and seventh inning work than anything else this year. Perhaps down the road, but Beato’s time is not now. I suspect that Isringhausen will get the call for the time being, but keep in mind that he’s on the trade block as well and could have a new address in three weeks. He’s the short-term option, but Parnell is the clear long-term solution here.

Aside: Heath Bell just got that more valuable on the real life trade market, so if you’re concerned that he’ll get moved to a club with an established closer, I’d look to sell him in fantasy now.