Ottoneu: Lucas’ Keep or Cut Decisions at C

Assuming each team in your Ottoneu points league rosters two catchers, and you are playing in a twelve-team league, the replacement level points per game (P/G) mark for catchers in 2024 was 3.4. That means in most leagues, you should be able to find a catcher who can match somewhere around that mark at any point in the season on the waiver wire. In this example, we would set the rostered catcher mark at 24. But that’s not always the case. For example, if only five teams are rostering two catchers (10) while everyone else is rostering one (7), we would decrease our number of rostered catchers from 24 to 17, bringing up the replacement level mark to 3.9 P/G. For the point of this article, let’s set it at a hard 3.6 P/G and move on. In this article, I’ll list some of the catchers I am rostering and analyze whether they should be kept on my roster.

Gabriel Moreno, C
Salary: $5
Average Salary: $7
2024 P/G: 3.97
Proj 2025 P/G: 4.84

Moreno is only 24, going into his age 25 season and hopefully, healing his injuries. He spent a lot of time on the IL in 2024. Groin injuries, thigh injuries (adductor), wrist injuries, and back injuries. It was a tough year for the young catcher. This should raise red flags. If your Moreno salary is creeping above average, spend a little extra time considering your keep/cut decision. He is a catcher and catchers get beat up on the reg. You can hope he had a rotten luck year with injuries, that can happen, but you don’t want to be paying too much. But, a salary under the average? His skills are worth the risk of another injury-laden season. Take a look at how some of his hitting metrics compared to the league average in 2024:

HardHit%: 41.0% vs. 38.7% avg.

BB%: 11.7% vs. 8.2% avg.

Z-Contact%: 89.1% vs. 85.8% avg.

He is a good offensive catcher. Is he a good defensive catcher? Well, he’s second in Field Bible’s Stolen Base Runs Saved behind Will Smith among catchers with at least 1000 defensive innings in the past two years. He’s also third in Field Bible’s version of DRS behind Patrick Bailey and Alejandro Kirk. He’s not great at catcher framing, but he’s not at the bottom of the list. You could easily argue that Gabriel Moreno is defensively above average and that he shouldn’t have negative performance at the position impacting his playing time.

Keep or Cut?

I’m keeping this version of Moreno. If he were on my roster for $7+, I’d probably end up shifting him back and forth between the “Cut” and “Keep” sections of the roster organizer all off-season long, landing on “Cut” right at deadline day.

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Joey Bart, C
Salary: $3
Average Salary: $4
2024 P/G: 4.50
Proj 2025 P/G: 4.22

Dang, it’s hard to analyze Bart. In any season where he’s played more than 50 games, he hit at least 10 home runs. This season he hit a career-high 13 home run in a second career-best 282 plate appearances. His final season slugging mark was .462, another career best. He increased his zone contact rate and kept his K% below 26% (still high). He whooped up on the replacement level 3.6 P/G I set in the intro. Yet, Steamer has a regression and come-to-earth season on deck for Bart and is not expecting him to come anywhere near that .462 slugging percentage (.388 projection) in 2025.

It would be easy to write that the change of scenery helped and that this is the true Joey Bart San Francisco had given up on, but that’s not very quantifiable. What is quantifiable is the high BABIP Bart experienced in 2024 (.321 vs. a .291 league avg.) which made all of his expected stats (xAVG/xSLG/xwOBA) lower than his actuals. It’s a gamble pick and though he may have been building towards a breakout in his age 27 season, it was also very likely a blip of a good season with the real world headed his way.

Keep or Cut?

Cut. If he were costing my team $1 less, I’d be more inclined to keep him.

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Samuel Basallo, C/1B
Salary: $4
Average Salary: $4
2024 P/G: NA
Proj 2025 P/G: 4.09

Data points on Basallo make me more nervous than excited about rostering a yet-to-debut prospect for $4. His player page indicates that he may not be in the majors until 2027! That seems off given his fast-track through the minor league system. Between 2023 and 2024 he touched every level of A-ball, finishing last season in AAA where he slashed .222/.267/.370. As a 19-year-old at AAA he struck out 31.4% of the time. That’s fine if he can develop at the plate, but that’s a lot of development that needs to happen. Now we see why 2027 is the projected debut date. He displayed power in AA in 2023 when he slugged .465, but that power was not present at the higher level. Still, it’s hard not to get excited about his prospect TLDR:

Prospects TLDR: Basallo has Gary Sánchez’s skill set, except from the left side of the plate.

Most reports on Basallo point to the power potential and skill set as a catcher. But, what will the Orioles do if he starts to catch fire in AAA? Adley Rutschman can’t catch every game, but he should catch most games. Despite the projected debut date of years from now, Steamer and FanGraphs Depth Charts are projecting over 80 major league plate appearances in the upcoming season. That’s not nothing. Basallo is an exciting prospect, but I can’t keep him for the 2025 season at this salary without a clearer timeline and path to playing time.

Keep or Cut?

Cut…or trade. $4 is too high and the ETA is too far away.

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Austin Wells, C
Salary: $4
Average Salary: $4
2023 P/G: 3.76
Proj 2024 P/G: 4.71

Wells is on the strong side of a platoon with Jose Trevino. In 2024, his second year in the big leagues, he reached a career-high 414 plate appearances. He had a very low BABIP (.261 vs. .291 .avg) and each of his expected stats (xAVG/xSLG/xwOBA) were higher than his actuals. He walked more often in his second season and hit 13 home runs, a near top-10 accumulation among qualified catchers in 2024.

While Wells has proven himself as a major leaguer, it’s a little worrisome to see so many catchers in the “Minor Leaguers You Should Know” section of the Yankees RosterResource page. Wells still has three MiLB Options left and slashing .236/.327/.434 against righties as the catcher who is supposed to hit righties isn’t exciting. His overall .395 slugging percentage was under the league average .399, but Steamer’s projection expects him to take a step forward in 2025 with a .417 slugging projection. Where does that power add come from? I’m not sure.

Keep or Cut?

There’s not enough in Wells’ profile to get excited about at $4. Cut or trade.

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Adley Rutschman, C
Salary: $26
Average Salary: $24
2023 P/G: 4.44
Proj 2024 P/G: 5.42

There’s no doubt that Adley had a down year. Down in wOBA, down in BB%, down in SLG and up in K%:

Will he bounce back? I would bet on it. He performed at 2023’s level in terms of wOBA against lefties and hit them better than 2023 in terms of batting average:

While he was productive against lefties, he still had a drastic change in his BB% and K%. Did the same happen against righties?

The changes were not so drastic against righties and in a much larger sample. Still, there’s a pattern. Rutschman stuck with his patient approach to start at-bats. His 10.3% swing rate on first pitches last season was the lowest among hitters with at least 400 first pitches seen, and since he had displayed that discipline in 2023, pitchers took advantage in 2024, throwing more first-pitch strikes, betting on a take. Adley’s F-Strike% crept up 3.6% from 2023, but his overall 59.6% rate wasn’t even in the top 100 among qualified hitters. Pitchers still respected him, especially because so often Gunnar Henderson was standing on first base. Adley tied Keibert Ruiz with 197 plate appearances with runners on base among catchers with at least 90 PAs. That ranks tied for 7th.

You could explain a lot of his 2024 declined slash line by his change in plate discipline. He swung more (Swing%), chased more (O-Swing%), and made less contact (both Contact% and Z-Contact%), but it’s also fair to blame luck. His .272 BABIP was well under the .291 league average in 2024 and he should have done better in his average, slugging, and wOBA based on the actuals vs. expected statistics.

There was another time when I wrote about a catcher I thought was unlucky. One that I suggested everyone should take it easy on. That he’d be ok. That no one should bail and that he would bounce back. Adley Rutschman going into his age 27 season is not Yasmani Grandal starting out his age 33 season. He’s an accumulator who can get you what you need:

Keep or Cut?

Keep. Duh. The Baltimore Orioles socks on my feet won’t let me cut. There is no doubt that if I did cut Adley, he would go for a higher salary in the re-draft. I may have him rostered over the average, but that doesn’t bother me at all. Cut the generational, switch-hitting catcher who consistently hits in the top half of the order? Nah.

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Yainer Diaz, C/1B
Salary: $8
Average Salary: $8
2023 P/G: 4.92
Proj 2024 P/G: 5.10

Diaz finished 2024 with 619 plate appearances split between catcher, DH, and first base. That alone should tell you that his bat is good enough to stay in the lineup. His very low 3.9% BB% was actually an improvement over his 2023 2.9% BB%. Yet, his OBP of .325 was better than the league average (.312). He accomplished that by making contact (77.6%) slightly more than the league average (76.8%) and better yet, making contact in the zone 88.7% of the time, also better than the league average (85.8%). But, in 2024 he declined in Barrel% by a significant margin and lost some of the ISO he displayed in 2023:

A lot of that can be attributed to his slow start to the season and power slump at the end of the season. Steamer seems to think the power will bounce back, projecting improvements in wOBA and slugging while accumulating more home runs, yet his batting average and OBP are expected to take a step back. In an Ottoneu points league format, that’s ok. Slugging is key and a young catcher with room to grow at a league average salary is an asset.

Keep or Cut?

Keep!