End of Season Rankings: Catcher
The 2012 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. This week focuses on catchers.
The players were ranked based on their 2012 production, using the evaluation system explained and updated on this site some time ago. To keep things manageable and avoid skewing the numbers, players were only considered if they amassed 350 plate appearances over the course of the year. The replacement level was also adjusted to account for players eligible at multiple positions. The valuations are built for $260 budgets and traditional 5×5 roto fantasy leagues.
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. So, a player who missed time due to injury but put up great numbers during his time on the field would be worth less.
With all this in mind, here are your rankings.
Rnk | Name | Pos | AB | HR | R | RBI | SB | BA | $$$ |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Buster Posey | C | 530 | 24 | 78 | 103 | 1 | 0.336 | 23 |
2 | Yadier Molina | C | 505 | 22 | 65 | 76 | 12 | 0.315 | 18 |
3 | Joe Mauer | C | 545 | 10 | 81 | 85 | 8 | 0.319 | 17 |
4 | A.J. Pierzynski | C | 479 | 27 | 68 | 77 | 0 | 0.278 | 13 |
5 | Wilin Rosario | C | 396 | 28 | 67 | 71 | 4 | 0.270 | 12 |
6 | Carlos Ruiz | C | 372 | 16 | 56 | 68 | 4 | 0.325 | 12 |
7 | Miguel Montero | C | 486 | 15 | 65 | 88 | 0 | 0.286 | 11 |
8 | Matt Wieters | C | 526 | 23 | 67 | 83 | 3 | 0.249 | 10 |
9 | Carlos Santana | C | 507 | 18 | 72 | 76 | 3 | 0.252 | 8 |
10 | Ryan Doumit | C | 484 | 18 | 56 | 75 | 0 | 0.275 | 7 |
11 | Jordan Pacheco | C | 475 | 5 | 51 | 54 | 7 | 0.309 | 5 |
12 | Jarrod Saltalamacchia | C | 405 | 25 | 55 | 59 | 0 | 0.222 | 1 |
13 | Mike Napoli | C | 352 | 24 | 53 | 56 | 1 | 0.227 | 1 |
14 | Jesus Montero | C | 515 | 15 | 46 | 62 | 0 | 0.260 | 1 |
15 | Brian McCann | C | 439 | 20 | 44 | 67 | 3 | 0.230 | 1 |
16 | John Jaso | C | 294 | 10 | 41 | 50 | 5 | 0.276 | 0 |
17 | A.J. Ellis | C | 423 | 13 | 44 | 52 | 0 | 0.270 | 0 |
18 | Russell Martin | C | 422 | 21 | 50 | 53 | 6 | 0.211 | -1 |
19 | J.P. Arencibia | C | 347 | 18 | 45 | 56 | 1 | 0.233 | -2 |
20 | Alex Avila | C | 367 | 9 | 42 | 48 | 2 | 0.243 | -5 |
21 | Kurt Suzuki | C | 408 | 6 | 36 | 43 | 2 | 0.235 | -8 |
22 | Geovany Soto | C | 324 | 11 | 45 | 39 | 1 | 0.198 | -10 |
23 | Ryan Hanigan | C | 317 | 2 | 25 | 24 | 0 | 0.274 | -11 |
24 | John Buck | C | 343 | 12 | 29 | 41 | 0 | 0.192 | -13 |
25 | Rod Barajas | C | 321 | 11 | 29 | 31 | 0 | 0.206 | -13 |
26 | Josh Thole | C | 321 | 1 | 24 | 21 | 0 | 0.234 | -16 |
Zach is the creator and co-author of RotoGraphs' Roto Riteup series, and RotoGraphs' second-longest tenured writer. You can follow him on twitter.
Is there a reason why Jonathan Lucroy wasn’t ranked? I get the injury decreased his value, but I can’t imagine he still didn’t qualify in the top-20
He fell 4 PA short of 350 PA cutoff.
I followed the method described by Sanders’ previous posts above as best I could, even though he didn’t go into details for what he changed in the Oct 2011 update.
Anyways with a min PA of 345 I’m getting Lucroy between Doumit and Salty, but closer to Salty.