Archive for Catchers

If you’re looking for help at the catcher position, now is the perfect time to start looking at buying low on certain guys.  Regular backstops such as Russell Martin, Geovany Soto and even Brian McCann are struggling out of the gate and it’s probably time to start putting in a few offers and see what it would take.  But what about Alex Avila?  After struggling as a rookie, Avila turned things around last year and put up a tremendous stat line that vaulted him into this year’s preseason top ten and turned him into a highly coveted commodity on draft day.  Now here in his third full season, he’s posting a woeful slash line of .220/.303/.424 and people are starting to wonder if last season was for real or just a fluke.  Is he a good buy-low candidate? Read the rest of this entry »

Two of the catcher situations we said we would continue to follow closely throughout the season revolved around a pair of up-and-coming backstops who, based on pure talent and upside, were expected to eventually steal away the starting job on their respective teams.  Devin Mesoraco from the Reds was being paired with incumbent backstop Ryan Hanigan while the Rockies brought in former-Reds catcher Ramon Hernandez to mentor Wilin Rosario and set him up for future success.  We might be just three weeks into the season, but according to the current game logs, neither youngster is running away with anything right now.

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With just about 10 games into the season and no one amassing more than 40 plate appearances, the Small Sample Size Police are in full force right now.  Hot starts, cold starts, nothing matters to these brazen fantasy owners who dismiss such meaningless statistics at this time of year.  But that doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t have a little fun and appreciate the good fortune bestowed upon us by the fantasy gods as our catchers come flying out of the gate, white-hot, and throw us some always helpful power stats.  I mean, would you rather be sitting there lamenting Russell Martin’s ice cold start and wonder if his batting average will actually be worse than 2011’s .237 mark or give in to your child-like giddiness over the fact that Alex Avila has picked right up where he left off last season?  Yeah, that’s what I thought… Read the rest of this entry »

In an effort to limit the number of times people use the phrase “sample size” in the comments section, a quick post on which minor league backstops to keep on your radar seems more appropriate than discussing Alex Avila’s .417-4-2-5 batting line through three games.  While most rosters are set, save for a few tweaks here and there, there are a number of catchers in the minors that are looking pretty darn good.  Dynasty league owners probably have them locked onto rosters already, but in other leagues, they should be known by you in case something goes wrong on the big league level.

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He probably only cost you a buck in your auction or a 23rd round pick in your 12-team, two-catcher, mixed league snake draft.  Not a very steep price to pay at all.  But the handwriting is already on the wall and it’s only a matter of time before Ramon Hernandez becomes a wasted pick for you.  Wilin Rosario is the catcher-of-the-future in Colorado and when he made the 25-man roster over this past weekend, Hernandez and his owners are learning that the future is now.

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For those that love to follow industry leagues, the Tout Wars drafts took place this past weekend in New York City.  In addition to their usual rundown, this year introduced a brand new Mixed League and as I was looking over some of the rosters, Josh Donaldson’s name stuck out to me.  He went for $4 to Rotowire’s Derek Van Riper who went with a “stars and scrubs” approach, but considering some of the other names that went for a buck, along with RotoGraphs’ reader Jeff’s question in the Catcher Tiers piece, it seems that Donaldson is on quite a few people’s fantasy radar these days.  Now the question remains, is he worth a look?

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So we’ve been through the Catcher Consensus Rankings and we’ve heard some of my initial thoughts on said rankings.  Well, now it’s time to put these guys into tiers so that you can see which players are most comparable to each other in expected production and where you can likely find them in your draft.  I’ll also chime in with a few thoughts here and there…

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As beloved editor/writer Eno Sarris continues to roll out the RotoGraphs Consensus Positional Rankings, those of us not included in the Fab Four (with the handsome mugshots) but that cover a specific position were asked to chime in with our thoughts after the rankings were released.  You can find my personal rankings either on FantasyPros or on my site, but for now, let’s just talk backstops and the consensus rankings.  Also, don’t forget that next week we will be rolling out the position tiers as we did last season.

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I was looking over Ben Duronio’s 10 Bold Predictions the other day and while I may disagree with some of his calls, nothing inspired me to put pen to paper (fingers to keyboard?) quite like his last prediction that Chris Iannetta “puts it all together” this year.  I’m sure there are a number of my predictions that people will criticize and I’m happy to see it, but to me, Iannetta has been one of the most overvalued catchers in fantasy over the years and I don’t see a move to the Angels being the answer for him.

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So we’ve decided to turn this 10 Bold Predictions thing into a friendly competition amongst the RotoGraphs writers. Here are mine… Read the rest of this entry »