March Composite Rankings – Catcher

Our staff composite rankings are back! We’re kicking things off with Catcher and we’ll be rolling out a new position each day over the next week-plus. I will still be doing my commentary by position rankings to give a quick little thought, but those will be separate posts. When all the positions are out, I’ll make a spreadsheet that has all of them together with team and league columns added.

We’re using Yahoo! eligibility requirements which is 5 starts or 10 appearances. These rankings assume the standard 5×5 categories and a re-draft league. If we forgot someone, please let us know in the comments and we’ll make sure he’s added for the updates. If you have questions for a specific ranker on something he did, let us know in the comments. We can also be reached via Twitter:

There will be differences, sharp differences, within the rankings. The rankers have different philosophies when it comes to ranking, some of which you’re no doubt familiar with through previous iterations. Of course the idea that we’d all think the same would be silly because then what would be the point of including multiple rankers?! Think someone should be higher or lower? Make a case. Let us know why you think that. The chart is sortable. If a ranker didn’t rank someone that the others did, he was given that ranker’s last rank +1. On catchers that wasn’t necessary because we all ranked 50 which made getting a top 40 pretty easy.

Updated March 12th – Paul updated Lucroy with OAK and adjusted his Iannetta ranking after further research.

Key:

  • AVG– just the average of the four ranking sets
  • Adj. AVG– the average minus the high and low rankings (maybe less necessary with just four rankers, but we had it in past years)
  • SPLIT– the difference between the high and low rankings

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March Catcher Rankings
NAME Paul S Mike Jeff Justin AVG Adj. AVG Split
1 Gary Sanchez 1 1 1 1 1.0 1.0 0
2 Buster Posey 2 2 2 2 2.0 2.0 0
3 Willson Contreras 3 4 3 3 3.3 3.0 1
4 J.T. Realmuto 4 5 4 4 4.3 4.0 1
5 Evan Gattis 5 7 5 5 5.5 5.0 2
6 Salvador Perez 7 3 6 6 5.5 6.0 4
7 Wilson Ramos 6 8 8 7 7.3 7.5 2
8 Yadier Molina 8 6 7 9 7.5 7.5 3
9 Welington Castillo 10 13 11 8 10.5 10.5 5
10 Mike Zunino 12 11 13 10 11.5 11.5 3
11 Jonathan Lucroy 11 16 9 12 12.0 11.5 7
12 Brian McCann 15 15 12 14 14.0 14.5 3
13 Austin Barnes 13 21 10 13 14.3 13.0 11
14 Robinson Chirinos 20 9 16 15 15.0 15.5 11
15 James McCann 19 12 14 18 15.8 16.0 7
16 Yasmani Grandal 9 24 27 11 17.8 17.5 18
17 Christian Vazquez 18 20 15 21 18.5 19.0 6
18 Travis d’Arnaud 21 10 17 26 18.5 19.0 16
19 Russell Martin 22 14 18 20 18.5 19.0 8
20 Tucker Barnhart 16 22 19 22 19.8 20.5 6
21 Tyler Flowers 24 19 20 16 19.8 19.5 8
22 Austin Hedges 17 17 24 24 20.5 20.5 7
23 Chris Iannetta 14 26 22 23 21.3 22.5 12
24 Matt Wieters 26 18 23 25 23.0 24.0 8
25 Manny Pina 29 30 26 17 25.5 27.5 13
26 Francisco Cervelli 30 27 21 28 26.5 27.5 9
27 Stephen Vogt 27 25 28 29 27.3 27.5 4
28 Kurt Suzuki 25 31 25 30 27.8 27.5 6
29 Alex Avila 23 33 32 27 28.8 29.5 10
30 Jorge Alfaro 28 32 38 19 29.3 30.0 19
31 Bruce Maxwell III 33 29 30 32 31.0 31.0 4
32 Jason Castro 35 23 29 40 31.8 32.0 17
33 Chance Sisco 31 38 33 31 33.3 32.0 7
34 Caleb Joseph 32 34 36 36 34.5 35.0 4
35 Yan Gomes 37 36 35 33 35.3 35.5 4
36 Martin Maldonado 38 28 40 35 35.3 36.5 12
37 Mitch Garver 36 39 31 37 35.8 36.5 8
38 Devin Mesoraco 40 35 34 39 37.0 37.0 6
39 Roberto Perez 39 37 41 42 39.8 40.0 5
40 Blake Swihart 34 50 37 43 41.0 40.0 16





Paul is the Editor of Rotographs and Content Director for OOTP Perfect Team. Follow Paul on Twitter @sporer and on Twitch at sporer.

29 Comments
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Mario MendozaMember since 2017
7 years ago

Mike, the rebel. I’m with you on Chirinos, but D’Arnaud?

Mike PodhorzerFanGraphs Staff
7 years ago
Reply to  Mario Mendoza

Hey, I just project the players and let the math create the rankings! I have D’Arnaud at:

0.251-16 -56-47

This is in 407 ABs which would be the most of his career. Obviously health is the biggest question mark, but the projection in those ABs aren’t that much better than what he did last year. Also, big dropoff after Ramos — the next 8 guys are worth within $2 of each other! That’s important as it means they are essentially all interchangeable.

DBA455
7 years ago
Reply to  Mike Podhorzer

And how did Salvy Perez end up ahead of Contreras? That was the most surprising outlier to me.

OTMHeartBBCMember since 2025
7 years ago
Reply to  DBA455

in OBP yeah, but in BA league Salvy is #3 obviously