The Big Picture - Backstops Balling Early

April 23, 2021

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.

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.

CATCHER APPRECIATION POST: This was a ridiculous play pic.twitter.com/u7ENR4qp55

— Eric Samulski (@SamskiNYC) April 15, 2021

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:

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.

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.

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).

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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