RADIO
Identifying fantasy baseball busts is never fun, but avoiding certain landmines on draft day is essential to building a top-tier squad. What constitutes a bust is relative, but at the heart of the matter, a bust is someone who underperforms relative to draft-day cost.
The tricky thing regarding busts, however, is labeling a player a bust doesn’t necessarily mean that player will be bad. It's actually quite the opposite. The bust candidates we’ll examine below absolutely need to be drafted in fantasy leagues, just nowhere near their current average draft position (ADP). The exorbitant price tag attached to some catchers is an overreaction to the perception that the catcher is a weak position. While that’s still partially true, the gap between the best catchers and the start-worthy catchers has shrunk.
Gone are the days when you can gain a significant advantage over your league mates by paying up for a stud. Thanks to an influx of talented, young catchers, there are plenty of viable options to go around, making it less important to get a catcher before all the good ones are gone. The best strategy for 2024 is to wait on the position and draft one of the breakout candidates we looked at last week. Be sure to also check all of our preseason fantasy baseball rankings for roto, points, H2H, dynasty, best ball, prospects, and more!
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Overvalued Fantasy Baseball Catchers
Adley Rutschman, Baltimore Orioles
ADP: 39, C1
Let’s get one thing clear: Adley Rutschman is awesome. He was the No. 1 catcher in fantasy last season and deserves to be the first catcher drafted this year. Rutschman’s bust case is simply a matter of how much draft capital it costs to acquire the All-Star backstop.
Last season, Rutschman slashed a respectable .277/.374/.435 to go with 20 homers, 84 runs, 80 RBI, and one stolen base. Those are great numbers for a catcher, but not necessarily great numbers for a top-50 player, which is where his ADP currently resides on all the major sites with draft data. Throw in the fact Rutschman needed a whopping 687 plate appearances to put up that stat line and it’s easy to envision those numbers regressing if he falls short of playing 154 games as he did last season.
The last case against Rutschman is the fact he may be a better real-life ballplayer than a fantasy asset. His sub-15% K rate and shiny 0.91 BB/K rate are nothing short of elite, but fantasy managers generally aren’t getting credit for all those walks and the lack of strikeouts.
At the end of the day, the former first overall pick deserves all the hype surrounding him as he’s one of the rising stars in the game entering the prime of his career. Unfortunately, that hype has elevated his ADP to the point where drafting a catcher -- even the best catcher -- isn’t a wise choice in fantasy given the other stud players available when Rutschman is typically drafted.
J.T. Realmuto, Philadelphia Phillies
ADP: 73, C3
Like Rutschman, Realmuto is a good player and his case as a bust is mostly due to his elevated ADP. Unlike Rutschman, Realmuto is on the wrong side of 30 years old and showing signs of decline after years of stud-like performance at the game’s most physically demanding position.
In 2023, Realmuto posted the highest strikeout rate of his career and his lowest walk rate since 2017. He also pulled the ball 42.1% of the time, his highest mark since 2018, and had a ghastly 9.3% pop-up rate. That batted-ball profile from a 32-year-old has all the signs of a player selling out for power, which still only produced 20 home runs and a good-not-great .452 slugging percentage. The most glaring red flag in Realmuto’s batted-ball metrics, however, is a steep decline in production vs fastballs, the easiest pitch to hit.
| J.T. Realmuto | K% | BB% | PU% | BA vs Fastballs | xBA vs Fastballs |
| 2021 | 24% | 8.9 | 5.7 | 0.273 | 0.278 |
| 2022 | 21.20% | 7.30% | 5.60% | 0.304 | 0.303 |
| 2023 | 25.60% | 6.5 | 9.30% | 0.273 | 0.272 |
A huge drop in production against fastballs is not a good sign for aging players. Throw in his elevated K rate and pop-up rate and we’re looking at a player more likely to regress further in 2024, rather than a player we should expect to bounce back to the elite backstop he once was.
Realmuto is still a good player and a must-start catcher for someone in all fantasy leagues, but his price tag in the top 75 of ADP is more based on his name rather than his game. Realmuto would need to fall outside the top 100 picks for me to consider calling his name on draft day.
Salvador Perez, Kansas City Royals
ADP: 135, C6
This one hurts as Salvy is a fantasy baseball legend whose 2021 season was arguably the most valuable season ever for a catcher in fantasy. Unfortunately, Father Time remains undefeated, and Perez has seen a steep decline in production since that magical 48-homer, 121 RBI season.
| Salvador Perez | HR | SLG | xSLG | Brl% | Exit Velocity |
| 2021 | 48 | 0.544 | 0.566 | 16.30% | 93 MPH |
| 2022 | 23 | 0.465 | 0.473 | 11.20% | 91.4 MPH |
| 2023 | 23 | 0.422 | 0.463 | 8.80% | 90.1 MPH |
As we can see, he hit more homers in 2021 than in the two ensuing seasons combined. He’s also displayed a year-over-year decrease in slugging percentage, expected slugging percentage, barrel rate, and average exit velocity. Entering his age-34 season, the continued decline should be expected by fantasy managers using a top-150 pick on a catcher whose own team is phasing him out from behind the plate.
At the height of his powers, Perez played darn near every day and his extreme advantage in plate appearances made him a weapon in fantasy leagues. In recent seasons, however, the injuries have piled up and Kansas City has already started playing Perez more often at first base or DH. He’ll continue to catch more often than not, but the Royals also like backup Freddy Fermin, who will cut into Perez’s playing time.
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