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Nick Mariano profiles three catchers who are likely to be fantasy baseball busts in 2016.
We're here to peek in at some catchers who are going to underwhelm their fantasy owners this year. Given their price point in drafts, they are set to disappoint you all. Whether it is through performance, playing time, or both, they just have this aura of expectations about them that doesn't align with what I see behind the numbers. Let's begin.
Editor's note: Be sure to also check out our 2016 fantasy baseball rankings dashboard. It's already loaded up with tons of great rankings articles and draft analysis. Aside from our tiered staff rankings for every position, we also go deep on MLB prospect rankings, impact rookies for 2016, and dynasty/keeper rankings as well. Bookmark the page, and win your drafts.
Three Catchers Set to Bust in 2016
This isn’t as much about Norris being not that good, but more how I’ve noticed people talking about him. Maybe I’m suffering from a bit of that Baader-Meinhof phenomena where I just acutely notice it every time someone brings up Norris growing heading into his age-27 season even if it isn’t that often, but I just want to calm that chatter anyway.
Derek Norris is Derek Norris, and he is also on the Padres. I’m not even getting into hitting at Petco because he was fine with that last year, but now Justin Upton isn’t even there around him anymore and that lineup is just in a very sad state right now. Yes, Norris finally reached 557 PAs last year, setting career highs in runs (65), home runs (14), and RBIs (62). But...
No, this not mean that next year he is going to reach 18-20 homers and 70-75 RBIs. Also note that he only hit .250 after posting a .270 average in 2014 (nothing strange BABIP-wise, but he did pull the ball less and hit more fly balls, both seeing roughly 6% swings). He saw his strike outs regress back to 2013 levels after he improved it in 2014 (it was 19.5% then, but ballooned back up to 23.5% last year). Most troubling is the walk rate that had been 12.0% and 12.2% in 2013 and 2014 went way down to 6.3% last year.
Basically, do not draft Norris to be anything more than you saw last year, and honestly I’d tamp that down a bit too. I align more with ZiPS projections here, giving him mid 50s runs and RBIs, the same 14 homers and an average around .250, and honestly that feels more optimistic of me.
The primary concerns here are playing time, as fellow catching prospect Christian Vazquez is healthy after suffering a season-ending elbow injury last year and is a great defensive catcher with amazing pitch reception skills.
Swihart is being drafted as the 13th catcher off the board according to NFBC ADP (199.39 average pick), and our RotoBaller consensus rankings have him at #15 (I’m the low man at #17, and honestly I could/should probably go lower). I understand the joys of having a piece of the strong Boston lineup, but he’s got more hurdles than most to get there.
Then there’s also the whole on-field performance piece. In 309 PAs last year he scored 47 runs, hit five homers with 31 RBIs, stealing four bases while hitting .274. Now he was only 23 and was thrust into active duty for Boston after Ryan Hanigan and Vazquez both went down, so he wasn’t exactly called up with the expectation to be “major league ready”.
The numbers are good, but they’re not anything special. He made much better contact as the year progressed and he got some more experience under his belt, but I side with both Steamer and ZiPS on this one, with decent counting stats for Swihart but only hitting maybe eight homers along with a ~.260 average. I’ll pass here.
Everyone was tripping over themselves mid-swoon for this guy last year around the All-Star break after he posted very strong numbers for Oakland in the first half (batting .287 with 14 homers). Of course, we know how he then faded out, hitting .217 with four second half homers while missing some time with a groin injury.
First, the good. He improved his walk rate from 5.6% to 11.0% last year, which is fantastic. His ISO went from .152 to .182 as his line-drive rate went up to 21.9% from 19.6%. Of course his three highest months walk-rate wise were April, May, and June. July saw it drop back down to 3.6%, though it did rebound to ~10% levels in August and September.
Vogt got legitimate playing time for the first time in his career, racking up 511 PAs after posting a career high of 287 PAs the year before for Oakland. This was only helped by the A’s own need to platoon players effectively due to depth/performance issues. Vogt was able to log quite a few additional PAs thanks to DH duties, but now the A’s have some decent bats on the bench (Billy Butler, Yonder Alonso, Mark Canha) that should force Vogt to the bench against lefties and eat into Vogt’s opportunities.
Vogt hits righties much better than lefties, and we know how much Oakland likes to mix and match. That’s why they have Josh Phegley to catch when facing lefties. Look for Vogt’s overall numbers to take a step back as his activity is scaled down a tick, leaving some owners wondering why they didn’t just wait several more rounds for the same numbers out of a guy like Nick Hundley or Welington Castillo.
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