Some time has passed since Anthony Rizzo caught Kris Bryant's throw to put an end to the 2016 season. Like Rizzo, I put baseball in my back pocket and just mellowed out - the season is a grind for all those involved, including baseball writers. Enough time's elapsed for me to look back. As far as catchers go, this was not the best year for those who wear the tools of ignorance. No one absolutely dominated - no ridiculous Mike Piazza-type years. In fact, only one catcher broke the 30-homer barrier: Evan Gattis. "El Oso Blanco" only started 49 games behind the dish. Yasmany Grandal had the second highest total, with 27.

I mean, it wasn't that awful. The usual suspects had solid numbers. Buster Posey, Yadier Molina, Salvador Perez, and Jonathan Lucroy all come to mind. Like much of MLB though, there were more have-nots than haves. If you didn't own these players, your chances of picking up good replacements on the waiver wire stunk. Here were some of the top performers behind the plate.

Breakout Catchers in 2016

Gary Sanchez, New York Yankees

Allow me to say it first: Duh. The Kraken came up and rendered Brian McCann an afterthought almost immediately. He hit an astounding 20 homers in only 201 at-bats. Sanchez also had a great 1.032 OPS. Extrapolated, his 162-game stat line would have looked like this: .259/59/124, which is pretty amazing though the RBI total would have been pretty low. These numbers are purely speculative, since it's hard to know what would have happened with pitchers facing him and teams being able to collect information about his tendencies at the plate. It's still fun to imagine, isn't it?

The question is: what 2017 will bring? Will he continue to be a wrecking ball? It depends on adjustments. I'm old enough to remember when Kevin Maas, another Yankee phenom, came up and crushed homers at a prodigious rate. He arrived in the Bronx in 1990 and proceeded to hit 21 jacks in 254 at-bats. That display of home-run prowess netted him second place in the American League Rookie of the Year voting, behind Sandy Alomar.

This was during a dark time in Yankee history, when they finished at the bottom of the American League East, before Derek Jeter and the next Yankee Dynasty. Maas was a life raft for bummed Bomber fans, and they envisioned him hitting, minimum, 97 homers in '91. That obviously didn't happen, though he did have a fairly decent 23 homers. Problem is, he needed twice the at-bats to reach that. The next two seasons saw his power numbers fall off a very steep cliff, with 11 and nine, respectively. After not playing in the strike-shortened '94 season, he came back in '95 with the Minnesota Twins and managed only one dinger before then concluding his career.

Does that mean that the Kraken will become Fried Calamari next year? Will fantasy players who either draft him high or pay a lot for him in auction leagues be able to wreak havoc on their competition or will they be dragged down to the depths of the standings should he struggle? OK, that's that last squid joke of this column, I promise. He may go a lot higher than he's worth in upcoming drafts, but that's also because he's got youth on his side as well. Many of the current catching corps are moving closer to 30 or older and there needs to be an influx of fresh blood. You might prepare to be aggressive if you want him on your roster.

Wilson Ramos, Washington Nationals

It's a pity that his injury eclipsed what was a truly strong year - his line of .307/22/80 was easily his best since coming into the league in 2010. He's going to spend the offseason rehabbing another ACL injury, which does put a damper on endorsing him for a high pick in any draft. The fact that he's done it before and likely knows what he has to do to reach peak physical condition is why I still have him on this list as opposed to Grandal.

Ramos is turning 30 in August, but that's not the age of decline like say... an NFL running back. There're still five or more possibly productive seasons left for him. Add the fact that he'll likely sign a below-value one-year contract and you could reap the benefits of his putting together another free-agent push in '17. He could be a good mid-to-late round pick who gets stashed away until he comes back in May or so.

J.T. Realmuto, Miami Marlins

Realmuto showed that he has wheels before - he stole eight bases in 2015. He did even better this year, garnering 12 steals. His percentage of success didn't suffer either - he was caught four times, same as the previous year. That meant that he was even better at choosing his spots... and he didn't have all these bases swiped when Noah Syndergaard was pitching. A fast catcher is a rarity in the game and it's also likely a fleeting part of his arsenal should he remain behind the plate.

Realmuto is 25 now, still fairly young, but as he spends more and more time crouching as he gets older, those wheels are going to get flatter and flatter. He had career highs in hits, which also led to his finishing with a .303 average. All said, he hasn't reached his athletic prime yet - that's nearly two years off, so it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility for him to net 15 or more steals in '17 and also hit 15 or more homers. That'll be a very good value for a catcher. Obviously, if you can get Posey before him, get Posey, but he's moved up the pack in terms of catcher rankings.