Position to Watch: Yankees’ Catcher
During this offseason, the Yankees’ catcher “battle” will be one of the more prominent positional competitions to keep an eye on. Barring a free agent addition, which seems unlikely, the Yankees will go into 2011 with three distinctly different catchers, all of whom could have some value to your team. Here they are, in no particular order.
Jorge Posada
The switch-hitter has been around for a long time, but you already knew that (I hope). While his batting average was poor this year, he was still a top-10 fantasy catcher thanks to his 18 homers. By the time next season ends, Posada will be 40-years old, so will he be able to squat behind the plate more than a couple times a week? I’m doubting it, and the Yankees probably are, as well.
Francisco Cervelli
The Yankees used Cervelli to spell Posada this year, and he racked up over 300 trips to the plate in the process. He does a good job of making contact and drawing walks, but a slugging percentage below .340 really limits the damage he can do to an opposing team. He’s a safe option, and the Yanks are going to keep him around because of it.
Jesus Montero
Montero will always be involved in one of the great “what if” questions for both the Yankees and Mariners after he was almost dealt for Cliff Lee this summer. He has great power for someone who iis still really young, but still has a lot to learn about the defensive side of his position.
In all likelyhood, the Yanks are going to have Posada DH a couple of days a week, in the hopes of keeping up his offensive production. Cervelli will get the playing time behind the plate for the first month or two, as the Yanks try to fine tune Montero’s defense while limiting his service time.
All three of these guys could have some sort of fantasy value, but it could turn out that all three are somewhat worthless depending on how playing time is distributed. While the catchers’ position is the main one to watch, keep an eye out to see if the Yankees bring in a full-time DH for next season. I’d expect New York to keep the DH role fairly open, rotating Posada or Montero through for the majority of the season.
Zach is the creator and co-author of RotoGraphs' Roto Riteup series, and RotoGraphs' second-longest tenured writer. You can follow him on twitter.
Exactly. You don’t need to actually squat behind the plate to rack up fantasy points at the catcher position. I would hazard a guess that Posada is among the leaders in PA among fantasy catchers next season, even if most of those PA come from the DH spot.
unless he gets injured for the third straight year. they might wait to bring up montero next year when jorge isnt blocking him. i mean montero is about as good defensively as posada and will probably be the same offensively, so why insult posada by not letting him catch? cervelli is quick behind the plate (if a little wild), so i see him playing the actual catcher position while posada DH’s more and montero learns how to be a catcher in the minors for another year. if they brought him up in ’11, he would probably be DH-ing a lot, which is a waste of the spot for a 20 something year old kid, especially when he needs to learn the defense. you don’t learn defense at the ML level because you might hurt the team. Montero’s bat is ready, but his glove is not, and he won’t come up until either his glove is ready or they switch his position.
From what I’ve seen peppered around the internet, the Yankees intention at this early date is to let Montero win or lose the catching job in spring training. Jorge’s role is already decided in this scenario as the primary DH. Perhaps he’ll serve as someone’s personal catcher.
As Zach noted, what we need to watch is whether or not the Yankees bring in a DH.
I’m very leery of Montero. With the exception of Jeter, every single one of the Yankees’ highly touted prospects has flopped for the last twenty years. Ruben Rivera, Drew Henson, Eric Duncan — they just don’t pan out.
Cano and Soriano weren’t highly touted? D’Angelo Jimenez was highly-touted and had a decent career as well. I know Bernie Williams was a surprise, as was Posada. While I agree that Yankee prospects may receive more attention than they’re worth (on a whole), we’re not talking about an organizational tendency to overrate prospects quite like the 80s-90s Blue Jays’ outfielders here.
Robinson Cano, Alfonso Soriano, Phil Hughes? That’s off the top of my head.
Cano was considered a marginal prospect who only got playing time because Tony Womack ended up being too terrible to keep a roster spot. Soriano was never considered a top 10 prospect coming up, and similarly only got playing time because Knoblauch couldn’t handle the position any more.
Correct on Cano, incorrect on Soriano – 3 years as a top 40 prospect, as high as #16.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/player.cgi?id=sorian001alf
Hughes has done fine, though he is a pitcher and not a position player. And none of those prospects you mentioned were ever called the best hitting prospect in the game. Montero is a class above the Henson/Duncan crowd.
not to mention that Hughes was still overrated to the point of being “untouchable” in trade talks regarding Johan, etc…he’s only barely started get into that this year
So then I’d say the Yanks were about due to produce a big time hitter