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February 23, 2009 BP Fantasy BeatCatchers
To complete our run through the infield rankings, this week we'll take a look at catchers. The top ten backstops make up a solid list of players ranging from some of the most productive in the game to guys worth two wins with the bat, while numbers 11 through 20 focus more on some solid players who aren't expected to log as many plate appearances. Things aren't as bad as they are at the middle infield positions though, and you should still be able to find worthwhile catchers floating around at the end of your draft. In order to make these rankings, I used the 2009 weighted-mean PECOTA projections as a base, and tweaked the results as I saw fit. This isn't a descending list of projected 2009 VORP by any means. Make sure you check out the players' 75th- and 25th-percentile forecasts on their PECOTA cards, as those may help you to make decisions between players you might be debating over. Since this keeps coming up in the comments, I want to say here that I am ranking the players at their primary position; if you don't see a player here, it's because he's either not good enough or because he's been ranked at a different position. This allows me to cover more players for those of you in deeper leagues. Rank Name Team PA R HR RBI SB AVG/ OBP/ SLG Beta 1. Brian McCann Braves 564 77 23 94 4 .299/.371/.511 0.97 2. Joe Mauer Twins 612 88 12 68 6 .307/.388/.436 0.85 3. Geovany Soto Cubs 551 76 25 85 1 .288/.370/.519 0.94 4. Chris Iannetta Rockies 421 62 16 59 1 .295/.392/.499 0.96 5. Russell Martin Dodgers 579 86 12 64 14 .293/.382/.434 0.95 6. Matt Wieters Orioles 649 105 31 102 4 .311/.395/.544 1.00 7. Ryan Doumit Pirates 426 53 13 56 3 .281/.344/.453 0.97 8. Pablo Sandoval Giants 565 64 15 74 3 .289/.329/.454 1.04 9. Mike Napoli Angels 332 45 18 51 5 .240/.344/.482 0.92 10. Jeff Clement Mariners 426 50 16 58 0 .258/.341/.449 0.86 Ranking McCann, Mauer, and Soto is a problem. McCann is in the middle of a quality lineup and is a great player capable of hitting for average and power with plenty of opportunities to drive in runs. Mauer is more batting average-oriented, but has more pop than most catchers and a boosted slugging mark thanks to that average, and though he stole just one base last year he's usually good for a handful of steals. Soto is one of the most important hitters in the Cubs' lineup, and though I wouldn't rely on him for batting average the same way that I would with the other two, he's got plenty of power to make him worthwhile. Rather than thinking of these players as being ranked numbers one through three, think of it more like #1, #1A, and #1B; they really are that close in value. Chris Iannetta was finally given an extended shot at catching for the Rockies, and it paid off big time, as he hit .264/.390/.505. PECOTA thinks he'll raise the batting average this year without gaining any additional slugging; the boost in average makes sense given that he'll have his home park of Coors Field working in his favor, but the drop in ISO seems strange to me. I have enough faith in him repeating his power performance that I've put Russell Martin and his well-rounded line and speed a notch below Ianetta in the rankings.
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You fell into that trap again, mentioning SLG/OBP instead of R/HR/RBI/SB. I don't care if if Wieters's 10th percentile projects a .280/.355/.461. I want to know what kind of average and HR he's projected to hit.
Also, you can't rank Mauer 1-anything since he had kidney surgery and is still recovering. Given his past problems at healing, and playing a position where he's bent over a lot, it seems prudent to at least mention the surgery.
Shoppach should end up with more than 276 at bats and would outproduce Baker. He should be on the lower part of this list somewhere.
You also didn't even mention Laird, Pierzynski, Varitek, or half a dozen other catchers and a 2xcatcher format is a common thing in fantasy these days.
Please, when you do outfielders, rank at least 50.
To echo, how was Pierzynski passed on? Definitely not a top 10 catcher, but should fall in the 16-20 range.
R/HR/RBI/SB are all posted for each player, are they not? Is it that you want those stats for each projected percentile? If so then the PECOTA card will have that information, and it's not hard to find.
I realize the PECOTA card has those details, and that the list in this article has the AVG/HR/RBI/etc. But if this is a fantasy baseball-related article, than OBP and SLG are not as relevant as projected R/HR/RBI/SB. In the body of the article, OBP/SLG or OBP/SLG percentiles are used as justification for taking players when R/HR/RBI/SB percentiles should be used as justification.
OBP and SLG _can_ suggest that a player will get more of the counting stats, and that is how those stats should be used, but it should not be used as the best criteria for rankings nor of potential performance, unless these lists are intended for Scoresheet or Points leagues.
All the information you're looking for is listed here, so stop whining. You're a smart guy, so you can make these comparisons yourself. What's more, they're clearly included in the rankings. (Except Wieters, but Norm rightfully mentions that this other worldly projection is probably not reasonable.) And even furthermore, slash lines tell a lot about where a player is likely to hit and correlate well with RBIs, Rs and HR.
R and RBI are team-dependent stats. Though OBP and SLG can help R and RBI respectively, they are not always indicative.
Compare Doumit and Clement. They have similar AB, OBP and SLG, but Clement is projected to hit more home runs and get a few more RBI while Doumit is projected to score more runs.