Updated Consensus Ranks: Catcher

It’s time for the updated catcher ranks.

I do actually like the process of ranking players. It’s enjoyable to weight different inputs, and consider a player’s long-term track record as well as their short-term work. I like taking a look at the few things that stabilize quickly — contact and swing rates, and (soon) batted ball mix — and looking for legitimate change in the early season.

But it does seem to get us all riled up. And that can be exhausting.

It’s cool, it’s the way of the world. But the number one thing that seems to drive a lot of the discussion is power. And almost every power metric takes a long time to stabilize. Hit a couple of home runs and suddenly your ISO looks fine. Drive a few balls and your batted ball distance improves. As the weather improves, the balls go further.

So it’s not that worrisome to me that Jonathan Lucroy’s power is down. You didn’t own him for power anyway, and he’s still just as likely to hit ten out. Brian McCann doesn’t jump in the rankings because of the homers — well not because of the homers themselves, but because they represent possibly decent health — and Miguel Montero looks to be about the same as ever (with a ground-ball asterisk).

But I tend to take the long view. It’s served me well to have faith that players will play to their track record. As long as they aren’t too old and their body isn’t starting to break down, they should be able to play that way again.

Who do you think we are too patient on? Who did we move too quickly on?

With the color-coding we hope to highlight the biggest movers. That definition changes as you follow the ranks down the list — players had to move more to register a color change as you near the bottom of the list. These are rest-of-season rankings for 5×5 roto.

Also appearing on one ranking list: Erik Kratz, Kyle Skipworth, Mike Zunino, Ryan Lavarnway, Nick Hundley and Kelly Shoppach.