In Defense Of Two Catcher Leagues
It has become fashionable to complain about two catcher leagues. In the last week alone, four people have made offhand comments to me, assuming I agreed with them. I’m sure more people will find the time to reach out and gripe now that I’ve written this article. And if it’s not clear, I’m very much a fan of the two catcher setting.
The classic argument against two catchers is that the position is too shallow. Even in a 12-team format, some fugly players will be rostered. That… is the point. One catcher leagues are boring – everybody has a good catcher? What’s the fun in that?
The double catcher opens considerable strategic variance. Here are a few of your options.
- Use early picks/auction dollars to acquire two of the top catchers. Gain a big advantage at catcher and put pressure on your cheap sleepers to pan out. How confident are you in your $1 targets? Will they actually be $1?
- Take one big name and a cheapie. Should guarantee roughly average catcher production while giving you an easy opportunity to upgrade. Opens an additional streaming spot.
- Snag two mid-tier catchers. Yawn.
- Reserve all your budget/picks for the most productive positions. Punt catcher while searching for the next Cameron Rupp or Willson Contreras. Gain two streaming spots.
That’s a sampling of your choices. Obviously, the specific execution of those plans opens the door for even more variety. There are dozens of ways the double catcher can affect your draft and roster construction. By comparison, in a one catcher league, there are really only three metas – draft early, middle, or last. The opportunity costs are similarly simplified.
Beyond the draft, two catchers can mean two more opportunities to stream. When I use the “punt” approach (about half of leagues), I’ll stream my catcher slot on Mondays, Thursdays, and Sundays until I find my Contreras.
Perhaps it’s not intuitive, but you can get more out of your catcher slots by not rostering a catcher. On those certain days. Most starting catchers sit on Sundays, so you’ll want to stream in a solid backup like David Ross. Oh, he’s gone… maybe Josh Phegley? Jett Bandy? Perhaps there’s a great pitching matchup to snag.
Mondays and Thursdays are where you’ll really make up ground. Odds are, you have several fallow roster positions on those days. Andre Ethier versus a crappy righty has a higher expected value than all but the best catchers. The waiver wire will have several of these options along with starting pitchers and unrostered elite relievers like Brad Hand. Fill your actually productive spots before worrying about accruing catcher days.
While it’s true that you also have this option in a one catcher league, you’ll be more hesitant to cut Wellington Castillo. And the difference between a Castillo and an Ethier is less stark. Assuming your league isn’t also shallower in other respects, you’ll receive considerably less benefit from streaming.
I get it. Really, I do. You don’t want to worry yourself Austin Hedges‘ swing adjustments or Omar Narvaez’s existence. My fantasy experiences are improved when I have to dig deep for strategic advantages. I prefer to have as many pathways to success as possible – and I like to try them all. Two catcher leagues enable me.
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I’ve played in one serious league for years, an AL only auction dynasty league, with 2 catcher spots. It should be fun this year not only watching someone roster Yan Gomes and James McCann, but watching an actual bidding war ensue for their “services”.
“One catcher leagues are boring – everybody has a good catcher?”
Maybe in the past but this is not true anymore. I think there’s more than enough uncertainty and ugliness in a one catcher league, and bidding wars over undeserving players.
Disagree. I’m in a 12-team league where I’m going with a dollar catcher strategy. After the few elite or semi-elite guys, everyone is roughly .250/50/15/50 until about the 15th-16th ranked catcher.
Do you play in a 2-catcher league?
Completely agree. And there is also the unsung joy in drafting or picking up a non-Catcher who suddenly becomes eligible (eg, Gattis last season, a certain portly Cub this season?).
Thinking about Swihart possibly this way in AL only formats.
In my experience, most 2 catcher leagues only allow weekly lineup changes, so streaming is not an option. And you can’t use a bench spot on a platoon guy that you sub in when he’s facing a righty/lefty.
I prefer a solid playing time projection for my catchers, as opposed to targeting only skills. It’s very hard to find a catcher projected for more than 150 plate appearances via FAAB, so if your skillsy catcher gets stuck as a backup or in AAA, you’re screwed.
Well yea, weekly leagues are very different. That’s also a very different niche. Few people who regularly read fantasy sites play weekly leagues.
what is that based off of? I don’t necessarily think there is a strong correlation between daily leagues and more time spent on fantasy. Weekly league players can just put in the same amount of time but just when they find it during the week. Daily players have to spread it out each morning.
I’ve done some informal polling over the years. A weekly owner can put in as much time, but most weeklies are made so the owners have to put in less time/effort. They tend to be lower skill bracket too. Obviously that doesn’t apply to every league. Sounds like yours are probably tough.
Man, Brad, you should really join the NFBC. Sounds like you’d really clean up there.
I’ve never considered weekly leagues to be inferior in terms of owner quality. Though I may have too many hobbies to devote time every single day solely to lineup changes. I love strategy and depth more than anyone and I read and contribute to fantasy baseball conversations daily, but I think lineup setting and daily roster moves borders more on tedious than fun. At the end of the day, to each their own.
Full disclosure: I play in one daily h2h league.
Heartily disagree with this sentiment. Me and my friends largely play in weekly leagues and we all read several fantasy sites regularly. I’d venture a guess that weekly leagues are more popular than daily leagues.
From my experience, most free/cheap leagues (up to $50) are daily transactions and quite often H2H, whereas the ones that people pay big money for (every NFBC league, and there are hundreds every year) and the expert leagues (LABR, Tout, XFL, etc) are almost exclusively weekly transaction roto leagues with FAAB. The focus is more on strategy (draft/auction strategy, valuation, FAAB strategy, team composition, where to place risk, etc) as opposed to daily transaction leagues which are heavily favoured to whoever spends the most time streaming through the free agent pool, most often the unemployed guy sitting on his couch all day that has SMS alerts from CloserMonkey.com and RotoWorld. So, yeah, I’m sure your average joe that reads Fangraphs is more likely to play daily leagues, just as the average joe that drinks beer goes for Bud Light. But to say that weekly transactions leagues are a “lower skill bracket” is pretty ridiculous.
“Few people who regularly read fantasy sites play weekly leagues”. What?? All the 2 catcher leagues I’m in are weekly and they are of much higher quality leagues than the daily ones I’m in, which tend to be H2H or just cheap keeper leagues. Also, aren’t most of the industry leagues like Tout weekly?
I see at least 13 people who read these comments play weekly leagues.
Yea, some of the industry stuff is weekly, but that’s usually because they’ve been that way since back when weekly was a popular format and/or they’re intended to reduce the time investment required.
I assume it comes through pretty clearly, but I don’t have much respect for weeklies. They tend to emphasize all of the things I like least about fantasy baseball. I mean, what did you expect? I write almost exclusively about streaming and related strategies.
You’re a true grinder!
I play an old school AL only Roto 4×4 with two catcher spots. No player moves allowed barring injury replacements until FAAB season, but there’s also no minimum on ABs and as long as a guy is on the 25 man at the beginning of the season you can draft him and roster him all year. The guys most likely to be rostered end up being the top tier guys or what we jokingly refer to as “dead” catchers. Jesus Sucre and his 29 PA’s were very valuable last year.
I play Ottoneu 4×4 Roto with two C positions and a 162 game position limit…the format recognizes that you’ll need two catchers to reach the 162 game limit and that you can maximize the production (scoring) from the position
So I actually overpay for catching in this league, and look to offset the additional cost with lower relative cost OF platoon pairings
I’m in an AL only 5×5 league with 8keepers and $260 budget for 23 players (2 catchers). I’m planning on keeping Lucroy at $23, which sounds high to most. However, my plan is to pick up a $1 injured catcher hopefully. I don’t see another scenario where the catcher position avoids being a big drag on avg. ThoughtS?
I actually agree after reading this article, but not for my particular league. The biggest reason is that we have a hard cap on acquisitions for the season. So streaming catchers is not an option. Instead when my Travis D’arnaud and Devin Mesoroco crumbles to salt and ash I am stuck rostering Brayan Pena etc. It is less “fun” and more just miserable. Thankfully our very deep Keeper league has decided to switch to 1 Catcher. I couldn’t be happier.
I like 2 catchers in a mixed league setting. Deep enough where you at least have to know every team’s starter, but not so deep that you have to stress out over backup catchers. I think that is the line. I like when it’s deep enough you at least have to consider young catching prospects (the few that exist anyway) and sneaky catcher qualifications.