Yan Gomes: Among the Best?

Congratulations to fantasy baseball players who drafted Yan Gomes in 2014. He’s batted .285/.321/.472, with 17 home runs, in 452 plate appearances. He’s been a top-five catcher-eligible commodity in standard mixed leagues. That’s not bad for the 12^th one of those drafted, on average, across the most well-known places to play, according to FantasyPros. The owners who landed him at Yahoo! or ESPN, where he was several spots lower on that list, if he was even drafted, feel a little extra special. Unless they play in 1-C leagues.

I’m not one of those people. I didn’t avoid him, but I didn’t target him, either, and aiming for Gomes appears to have been a smart move. Because of that, I kind of want to know what I was missing, and why.

I thought I’d spotted confirmation that my preseason hesitance was justified when I looked at some of the dashboard material of fantasy’s top 10 catcher-eligible players.

Rk	Name	PA	HR	R	RBI	SB	BB%	K%	ISO	BABIP	AVG	OBP	SLG
1	Buster Posey	538	20	67	79		8.0%	11.3%	.183	.316	.309	.362	.492
2	Jonathan Lucroy	573	13	68	62	4	9.4%	11.3%	.179	.321	.299	.366	.478
3	Carlos Santana	575	25	60	73	3	17.4%	19.5%	.206	.245	.228	.365	.434
4	Devin Mesoraco	387	22	47	70	1	8.8%	22.5%	.260	.318	.283	.364	.543
5	Yan Gomes	449	17	55	57		4.9%	23.2%	.188	.342	.287	.323	.475
6	Salvador Perez	528	16	52	63	1	4.0%	12.5%	.151	.280	.267	.299	.418
7	Evan Gattis	391	22	41	52		5.6%	24.0%	.237	.306	.270	.325	.507
8	Dioner Navarro	463	12	36	63	2	6.0%	13.0%	.128	.301	.282	.324	.410
9	Brian McCann	468	17	48	61		5.8%	14.7%	.157	.246	.238	.288	.395
10	Miguel Montero	508	13	38	71		10.2%	18.1%	.136	.289	.254	.341	.390

Gomes isn’t the only player who sticks out, obviously. (Ahem, Navarro.) But he has the highest average on balls in play and second-highest strikeout rate in the group. It seems like there may be some good fortune involved in his outcomes.

Of course, we know that a better-than-league-average BABIP isn’t automatic evidence of the stamp of approval from mythical entities. Gomes’ has been outdoing his xBABIP, based on the latest Jeff Zimmerman-approved method, however, so that’s a little concerning.

Terry Francona seemed to think last month that Gomes has been coming into his own, offensively. Tito points out Gomes’ ability to drive the ball to the opposite field. It’s true, the right-handed hitter posted a .217 ISO to right last season and has fashioned a .170 ISO that way this year. I tend to think of batters who don’t just get good results the other way but get them with power as likelier to last, perhaps more capable of beating xBABIP. His batted-ball mix is nice.

But that oppo-ISO has dropped, and Gomes has a couple of bothersome traits in terms of plate discipline. He has a bit of a problem with contact (76.9%) and swinging strikes (11.2%), the latter a noteworthy jump from last year. His 36.2% reach rate is also above-average, in a bad way. The players around him in that bottom quarter of the league, among qualifiers, with that type of plate discipline either have bad batting averages or have been playing the game for a long time – Torii Hunter, for example. Such vets’ marks in plate discipline weren’t so bad in their peak years.

The Cleveland Indians were confident enough in the then 26-year-old to extend him, in late March, for five years beyond this one. That clue was a little late for most fantasy owners, not that many of them consider such developments meaningful in the rotisserie or head-to-head universe. It could have opened some eyes, though. Jason Collette highlighted then the reasons that said deal should turn out to be a good one for the Tribe. Pretty much all of them had to do with his defense, it should be noted.

Gomes’ next season or two will be interesting. He came onto the scene late, but he’s basically about to hit his peak, if he hasn’t done so already. Fantasy owners can be thankful that Cleveland gave him a regular gig so that they could enjoy him for a couple of years. There’s definitely some raw ability here, enough that, I think, he could be a top-five asset among backstop-eligible players again in this peak stretch. But the exploitable areas of his game aren’t shrinking, so betting on that will come with some risk.

I’m curious to see how much Gomes’ 2015 price will have gone up. Most catchers don’t provide a ton of offensive value, and there isn’t anything in his game that says his bat will be good enough to net PT at other positions. A peak season, if 2014 isn’t it, may not be much better than this, so a much more expensive Gomes sounds a lot less attractive.