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The Big Picture - Backstops Balling Early

Pierre Camus examines the trend of catchers as rising offensive stars in fantasy baseball early in the 2021 MLB season. Should our view of catchers in fantasy change to a streaming approach with so many quality players available on waivers?

A necessary evil. A statistical sinkhole. A dark cloud hanging over your roster. That's how the catcher position is largely viewed these days. Much like the tight end position in fantasy football, if you don't grab one of the top three or four performers on draft day, you might as well just wait it out and punt the position. Turns out, that would have been a great plan in 2021.

Wilson Ramos has six home runs - only Ronald Acuna Jr. has more. Yadier Molina looks like he drank from the Fountain of Youth, batting .322 and already matching last year's HR total. Carson Kelly has been the best hitter in Arizona, although that's not saying much.

With so many catchers raking early on, most of them still floating around on waivers in single-catcher leagues, it begs the question of whether we should even draft catchers at all and just take a streaming approach to the position all year long.

Be sure to check all of our fantasy baseball lineup tools and resources:

 

As If Catchers Even Matter...

If the above phrase entered your mind as soon as you began reading this article, don't let @SamskiNYC know. The former backstop and host of the Catcher's Corner will go to bat (not literally) for catchers any day.


In the fantasy realm, catchers get a bad rap. Maybe it's somewhat deserved though.

Using a reasonable points-based scoring system like the one at CBS Sports, you can see the relative dearth of quality options at catcher compared to every other position.

In 2020, only one catcher, J.T. Realmuto, reached the 150-point threshold and eight broke the 100-point threshold. By contrast, there were 19 first basemen over 150 total points and 34 over 100 points. There were 36 players qualified at second base over 100 points and 37 at third base. Many of these players are duplicates based on positional eligibility but you get the idea - if you're looking for consistent fantasy production, catchers ain't it.

Earlier this preseason, I rhetorically asked whether J.T. Realmuto was worth his draft cost. Since draft season is well over by now, I'll spoil the ending for you: sort of.

The jarring conclusion was that he did provide a huge advantage at a thin offensive position that warrants a top-50 selection but you will have to navigate the other positions more wisely by foregoing an SP2 or corner infielder at that draft range. Salvador Perez was strongly recommended as someone who could put up comparable numbers at an ADP 30 spots later.

But what if you wait at the position and pick from the dregs? That was going to be a recipe for disaster because you'd be left with fading vets like Wilson Ramos or Yadier Molina. You see where this is going.

 

The New Power Position

Are catchers taking over as the new premium power position instead of first base? Not quite but the gap is closing. So far, catchers across the majors have bopped 80 homers while first basemen have gone yard 101 times. That's not the sizeable difference we're used to seeing. First basemen are posting a wRC+ of 105.9 so far in 2021 as opposed to 93.9 for catchers. You're not going to be putting a catcher in your utility spot any time soon but they don't represent a black hole for fantasy value like they once did.

It's not a strict pattern, but catchers have been more productive in terms of weighted runs created plus in recent years based when we look at five-year trends:

Year wRC+ SLG
2021 93.9 0.389
2020 88.1 0.381
2019 84.5 0.402
2018 83.3 0.371
2017 88.1 0.403
2016 86.2 0.388

The fascinating part about this is the fact that most catchers are getting to the plate less often because strict platoons are in place for half the teams in the league. The days where one catcher would don the tools of ignorance for 120+ games, only giving way to a backup once a week, are disappearing.

Forgetting 2020, as we keep trying to do, four catchers registered over 500 plate appearances in 2019, or enough to qualify for a batting title. If we flashback 10 years ago, there were 10 catchers who hit the 500-PA mark. Go back 30 years, to the early dawn of fantasy baseball itself, and you see 11 catchers with 500 PA and 18 with at least 400 PA.

Name Team G PA HR R RBI SB AVG wRC+
Gary Carter MON 154 653 29 91 97 2 .293 150
Terry Kennedy SDP 153 604 21 75 97 1 .295 128
Ted Simmons MIL 137 581 23 73 97 0 .269 110
Bo Diaz PHI 144 572 18 69 85 3 .288 116
Bob Boone CAL 143 539 7 42 58 0 .256 79
Carlton Fisk CHW 135 536 14 66 65 17 .267 101
Keith Moreland CHC 138 532 15 50 68 0 .261 96
Jim Sundberg TEX 139 531 10 37 47 2 .251 97
Lance Parrish DET 133 529 32 75 87 3 .284 135
Tony Pena PIT 138 523 11 53 63 2 .296 110
John Wathan KCR 121 502 3 79 51 36 .270 90
Jody Davis CHC 130 466 12 41 52 0 .261 95
Darrell Porter STL 120 445 12 46 48 1 .231 111
Bruce Benedict ATL 118 438 3 34 44 4 .246 68
Milt May SFG 114 429 9 29 39 0 .263 92
Mike Scioscia LAD 129 419 5 31 38 2 .219 67
Rick Dempsey BAL 125 402 5 35 36 0 .256 94
Alex Trevino CIN 120 401 1 24 33 3 .251 68
John Stearns NYM 98 392 4 46 28 17 .293 116
Ron Hassey CLE 113 382 5 33 34 3 .251 96

Keep in mind catcher was primarily a defensive position back then, which made Gary Carter and Ted Simmons fantasy rock stars. At least it would have if anybody outside of Daniel Okrent knew what fantasy baseball was.

Side note: how the hell did Carlton Fisk steal 17 bases? I would kill to know his home plate to 1B sprint speed.

Since the turn of the millennium, there were always between 8-10 catchers we could rely on for a full season's worth of production up until 2017 when it first dropped to four. Those four (Buster Posey, J.T. Realmuto, Gary Sanchez, Yadier Molina) are all squarely in the spotlight of this analysis, proving their reliability.

As of April 21, there are eight backstops technically qualified for a batting title, if the season were to end today (no jinx!). Factoring in the possibility for future injuries, slumps, and platoons, that number is likely to drop.

Despite fewer catchers reaching high at-bat totals, there seem to be more that are productive when they step in the batter's box. Maybe there's something to that load management theory after all.

To reinforce this point, let's look at the top-20 catcher leaderboard in terms of offensive rating.

Name Team PA HR RBI R AVG OBP SLG xwOBA wRC+
Carson Kelly ARI 48 3 8 7 .375 .563 .719 .468 231
Omar Narvaez MIL 55 3 10 7 .396 455 .604 .428 185
Yadier Molina STL 65 4 12 12 .322 .369 .593 .379 160
J.T. Realmuto PHI 62 2 9 6 .288 .403 .481 .411 142
Tucker Barnhart CIN 41 2 8 8 .378 .439 .649 .327 191
Willson Contreras CHC 64 5 9 11 .269 .391 .577 .382 161
Salvador Perez KCR 73 5 12 11 .279 .329 .559 .415 146
Will Smith LAD 54 2 4 9 .195 .370 .415 .438 120
Wilson Ramos DET 63 6 8 8 .246 .295 .614 .364 149
Buster Posey SFG 46 4 4 9 .310 .370 .619 .386 168
Tyler Stephenson CIN 29 1 5 7 .385 .448 .538 .335 170
Roberto Perez CLE 45 3 9 6 .200 .378 .457 .411 140
Jacob Stallings PIT 54 0 7 4 .227 .370 .318 .349 102
Francisco Mejia TBR 35 1 6 2 .323 .353 .516 .302 145
Dom Nunez COL 37 4 9 6 .235 .297 .676 .367 136
Christian Vazquez BOS 63 2 5 11 .271 .317 .424 .308 106
Yan Gomes WSN 32 1 5 3 .276 .344 .414 .396 102
Yasmani Grandal CHW 49 2 9 6 .150 .306 .350 .375 95
James McCann NYM 40 1 3 2 .250 .325 .333 .295 91
Mike Zunino TBR 43 3 8 9 .184 .279 .474 .327 115

This list doesn't include the most notable player of all, Yermin Mercedes, who came up through the minors as a catcher but has yet to get behind the plate in the majors. While he does have the potential to reside there if Yasmani Grandal should get hurt, right now he qualifies only at DH in most fantasy leagues.

 

Obligatory Prolepsis

Clearly, this is a classic example of overreacting to a small sample size. Anybody can go on a hot streak over a week or two-week period. It just so happens that multiple catchers have done so in April. We don't need to overhaul our thinking on a position based on anything yet.

But of course, we should at least consider the possibility that things are changing. The very idea of this series is to take a step back and identify trends proactively in order to get ahead of the curve. If closer committees are going to become a thing, why should burgeoning offensive catchers be any different?

Catchers in the right team context can be hyper-efficient in spurts. Their final counting stats may not be impressive but when combined with another player to calculate a full season's worth of at-bats, you may come away with stats that are favorable relative to other infield positions, other than steals of course. The key is finding the right pair and who to stream at what time. The same goes for SP streamers too though, doesn't it? We've been playing that game for years so why not view catchers the same way?

 

The Dirty Dozen

Not all catchers are raking, of course. These are the 12 lowest-performing offensive catchers so far (minimum 20 plate appearances).

Name Team PA HR RBI R AVG OBP SLG xwOBA wRC+
Alejandro Kirk TOR 32 1 4 1 .179 .281 .321 .324 74
Kevin Plawecki BOS 24 0 0 3 .227 .261 .273 .341 49
Chad Wallach MIA 28 0 3 2 .231 .250 .269 .218 47
Luis Torrens SEA 47 0 1 3 .200 .234 .244 .236 39
Ryan Jeffers MIN 30 0 1 3 .179 .233 .214 .164 29
Tom Murphy SEA 35 1 1 4 .125 .176 .219 .268 15
Curt Casali SFG 24 0 1 0 .095 .208 .143 .279 11
Luis Campusano SDP 33 0 1 0 .100 .182 .100 .260 -10
Chance Sisco BAL 24 0 1 1 .130 .167 .130 .208 -15
Danny Jansen TOR 38 0 0 3 .059 .158 .088 .225 -26
Martin Maldonado HOU 40 0 0 2 .081 .150 .081 .159 -27
Elias Diaz COL 31 0 0 2 .071 .161 .071 .209 -38

It's worth noting that multiple players on the same roster appear in the cases of Toronto and Baltimore with Miami's Jorge Alfaro barely missing the cut to join Chad Wallach as poor-performing platoons. It's not as if Mitch Garver in Minnesota or Jason Castro in Houston are lighting things up either. We often see catcher rotations that produce at a high level together like Cincinnati this season or Minnesota in 2019 but it can go the other way too. For now, avoid these situations and find a place where the catcher will slot above eighth in the lineup and/or be sandwiched by quality hitters.

 

Conclusion

The takeaway isn't so much that catchers are the new glamour spot for power. While the next wave of prospects like Adley Rutschman, Joey Bart, Bo Naylor, Shea Langeliers and others will make their mark eventually, too many of the offensive-minded players at the position get moved elsewhere to make a lasting impact.

If anything, we should start to view the catcher position in fantasy the same way Major League teams are doing so - interchangeably. In a single-catcher league, try rostering two catchers so you can play daily matchups. This is less feasible for highly competitive leagues with short benches or those with weekly lineups but it never hurts to switch things up on waivers. Don't be afraid to cut bait quickly on someone like James McCann just because he is expected to finish top-10 in plate appearances at his position. It's not about quantity, it's about quality. An undrafted player like Dom Nunez might very well outproduce him over the course of the season, as he has been doing already to this point.

Streaming catchers isn't just a viable strategy, it could prove to be a winning one for years to come. Especially if you know where to find really smart advice each week.



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