Adventures in Positional Scarcity - Catchers Edition for Fantasy Baseball Drafts

April 1, 2022

Where should catchers be drafted in fantasy baseball? Jon takes a big-picture look at catcher positional scarcity and optimal fantasy baseball draft strategies.

This question of how to handle the catcher position has taken on a new level of tough in 2022, at least in the opinion of this analyst.

Catchers have always underperformed offensively relative to the rest of the positions, mainly because the first bullet point on their job description is not to hit the ball well. The defensive side of the game is of much more important at this position, anything added with a bat in their hands is icing on the cake.

For fantasy purposes, we don't care about defensive ability - we are only concerned with the offensive numbers these guys can put in the box score. For the last decade or so, it has been an overall winning strategy to wait on catcher and scoop up one of the lower-ranked names, as you would typically get very similar production from there as you would with the names higher up. This changed a bit last year, as you may know. Let's dive into the waters of scarcity once again - this time talking about backstops.

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2021 Season Review

It seems that every season there proves to be a standout or two at the catcher position. But 2021 was a different story. Here's how things finished up, I used DraftKings points so as just to have one metric to show performance, I also included plate appearances on this plot as well:

This plot displays two things that most people already know:

• Playing time is king (especially so in points formats), these dots are almost in a perfect line
• Salvador Perez was a league-winner last year

Perez scored 37% more points than the second-place finisher (J.T. Realmuto), 41% more than third place (Will Smith), and by the time you get to the 15th-best catcher, you have Perez doubling them up in points scored.

If that was sure to repeat, Perez would probably be worth a first-round pick. Of course, nothing is ever sure to repeat, and that's even more true at the very volatile catcher position.

2022 Projections

We'll take another look at ATC projections here. A criticism of projections is that they represent median outcomes rather than the true possible floors and ceilings. There is no real getting around that, predicting the future is a tough business. Because of this, we have a much more even picture painted here. Here's the same scatter plot as above, but this time using 2022 projections rather than 2021 actuals, and we're limiting it to just the top-26 catchers being drafted right now.

You see two distinct groups near the top right. Perez (1,129 projected points) and Realmuto (1,097) stand above the third cluster of Smith (1,022), Grandal (980), and Contreras (927). The difference between the top-two and the bottom-15 is quite substantial. Tyler Stephenson is projected for just 72% of Perez's production, and by the time you're outside of the top-10 catchers (Gary Sanchez), you get to just 64% of Perez's production.

Now, we have to do more than just compare catchers to other catchers, we should also compare catchers to the rest of the game's positions. I took the top-200 hitters, found the primary position for each hitter, and then aggregated those groups all together to find the average projected 5x5 line for the positions. Here are the results:

All of the red is on that catcher line. The average catcher in the top-200 hitters is projecting for just 52 runs, 17 homers, 55 RBI, two steals, and a bad .247 batting average. Now, it might be a little harsh to take this big of a sample - not many league types are drafting 26 catchers (the ADP I'm using is NFBC, which has runs mostly 12+ team, two-catcher leagues, so that skews things a bit).

Cutting it down to the top-150 hitters, we get rid of 11 catchers here and get a better picture of the league type more casual players are playing in:

Catchers are still the red line, but they catch up a bit. Now, they're averaging 58 runs, 20 homers, 61 RBI, three steals, and a .252 batting average. Looking at this in terms of projected DraftKings points:

Now that we have these averages, we can take each player's projected total points and subtract the positional average from it to get a sense of how they stack up against the rest of their position. Here are the top projected players by that metric:

So, what you see there is each player's projected DraftKings points total derived from ATC projections and then that number with the positional average subtracted from it in the "Pos Delta" column. I took the top-11 because Realmuto turned out to be #11 and there is actually quite a big drop to the #12 player after Realmuto (Devers at just +242).

What you see here is basically a list of the top hitters for 2022 based on ADP, plus Perez and Realmuto. Pretty interesting stuff.

When we look at just catchers, it looks like this:

After that, you have Zunino, Diaz, Kelly, and McCann as the remaining four coming in above -200, and the rest of the group below -200.

Interpretation is the name of the game, and that can vary person-to-person and league to league. My interpretation is that, based on the projections, it seems perfectly fine, if not quite advantageous, to reach quite a bit for Perez. Right now, he sits with an ADP of 31 on NFBC, which actually seems like quite a value in leagues where 24 catchers are being started. I don't feel nearly as confident in saying the same about Realmuto (ADP 48) or the rest of the top catchers there. Personally, if I don't get Perez, I'm likely to just hold off and fill my catcher slots much later on.

The Big Problem

Everything we said in that section above is derived from projections. Being overly reliant on projections is dangerous territory. It's not as though the projections are expecting a repeat of 2021 for Perez (ATC has him with 34 homers, quite a bit short of the 48 he hit last year), so a ton of regression is already baked in here. What the projections have trouble accounting for are the inherent risks with the catcher position.

The nature of the position puts a much higher toll on the human body than the rest of the positions. Injury probabilities are higher when your body has to absorb dozens of 95+ mile-per-hour foul tips throughout the season. There is no great way to account for injury risks, and you could make the argument that all catchers come in with similar risk profiles, which would cancel out, it is just extra risky to invest a bunch of draft capital (whether it be a high draft pick or a bunch of auction dollars) into the catcher position. The payoff is enormous in the case of a 2021 Perez situation, but the risk is at the other end of that tottering seesaw.

Conclusion

I am not an expert fantasy baseball player, I just play one on RotoBaller. The thing I am best for is displaying, interpreting, and displaying numbers. Those numbers seem to tell us this.

In one-catcher leagues:

1. Try to draft Perez somewhere after pick 30.
2. If you fail, wait a long time to draft a catcher.
3. Hope for the best, a makeshift four-leaf clover will suffice.

In two-catcher leagues:

1. Really try to draft Perez somewhere after around pick 30.
2. If you fail, grab one of Varsho, Grandal, or Contreras around pick 100.
3. If you fail, probably just draft three or four of the names near the bottom of the list after pick 200.
4. Get on your knees and pray to God.
5. Hope God cares about your fantasy baseball team (I'm not a prophet, but he probably doesn't).

This has been adventures in scarcity - catcher's edition. Thanks for being here.

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