Rest of Season Ranks - Catchers
A summer series of posts re-ranking players by position
Everybody likes lists of players, right? It’s about mid-season, so it’s a good time to re-rank players. Let’s get into some rest-of-season ranks starting at the catcher position.
Tier One
J.T. Realmuto
Will Smith
Realmuto was drafted as the #1 catcher in most drafts but is only 4th in points scored at the position this year. But that’s fine. I don’t want to overreact too much to just one half-season of data, so I’m keeping him at #1. The things working in his favor
Good barrel rate (11.4%)
Good strikeout rate (24%)
Stealing bases (10)
There has been a slight decline in his playing time. He’s currently only 9th in plate appearances at the position, and he hasn’t DH’d at all this year (even before Harper came back he wasn’t doing that). So he’s going to have a more normal workload for a catcher for the rest of the season, and that hurts a good amount (Rutschman leads the position at 310 pAs right now, 56 above Realmuto).
Will Smith is my #2 guy with his .919 OPS on the year. He’s been great. More walks than strikeouts, hitting in a prominent spot in a great lineup. The downsides are a mediocre barrel rate again (7.5%) and the fact that he’s not DHing either. Both Realmuto and Smith will play significantly less than the league leaders at the position as we go, but I think they’ll make up for it with production.
Tier Two
Sean Murphy
Adley Rutschman
Daulton Varsho
Sean Murphy leads the position with a .919 OPS. He’s managed a 16.8% Brl% and a 22.6% K% with a 10.7% BB%. He’s doing everything well besides stealing bases, but the RBIs and homers are great and the batting average has been a positive as well.
Adley Rutschman gets a bump up from my pre-season ranks because of how much he’s playing. He’s been in the lineup nearly every day and he’s been a well above-average hitter with a line of .277/.377/.432. The ten homers are more fine than great, and he has just one steal, but the playing time and the batting average and the runs and RBI really do mean a lot - so I’ll take him at #4 here as I can poke some holes in the rest of these names.
It’s been a slightly disappointing year for Daulton Varsho, but he has played almost every game and has eclipsed 300 PAs already, and the volume alone has gotten him to 12 homers and 10 steals. So he’s on pace for like a 25-20 season, which means he actually hasn’t been all that disappointing after all! Yeah, the batting average sucks (.228), but we knew that was going to happen - the 20-20 pace more than justifies it.
Tier Three
Salvador Perez
Jonah Heim
Francisco Alvarez
I might still be too high on Salvador Perez given that he’s been really rough of late and doesn’t seem to be able to do anything but hit homers, but at least we know he can still do that - and I think there will be a good supply of dingers for the rest of the year.
Jonah Heim has really tailed off after a sweet start to the year, but the’s the primary catcher on one of the league’s best lineups and he’s still managing a .272/.324/.452 line with 9 homers, 51 RBI, and two steals. There will most likely be a lot of names behind him in these ranks outperforming him as the rest of the season goes, but he seems locked into a really good spot in the lineup and that will result in a good number of homers and RBI and I don’t think he’s really bad at anything.
As for Francisco Alvarez, he just made the cut into tier three. He has a .228/.282/.494 slash line but a nice 10.8% Brl% with his 24.1% K%. He has massive raw power (115.5 max velo), so the power ceiling is up there with the best. The downside is a high GB% (47%) and a bad contact rate (69%) that could send his K% upward. He’s also settling more into a split of time at the catcher position for the Mets, and there won’t be a ton of opportunity for DH reps on that team that has so many options. The raw power and upside keeps him here for now though.
Tier Four
Travis d’Arnaud
Willson Contreras
Henry Davis
Keibert Ruiz
MJ Melendez
Cal Raleigh
William Contreras
Elias Diaz
Haven’t seen enough of Henry Davis to really make a judgment yet, but I would guess that he’ll struggle a bit to start his big-league career like most guys do. He feels like a pretty good fit in this tier. These are mostly players with big holes in their game in one way or the other. Keibert Ruiz hasn’t done much for fantasy, but his Brl% (9.5%) and K (8%) combination has he believing he’s going to surge soon.
The disappointments have been Melendez, Raleigh, and Contreras - they aren’t doing what we thought they would, but they all still have a good amount of raw power, so they separate from the rest of the names below because of that.
Tier Five
Patrick Bailey
Alejandro Kirk
Tyler Stephenson
Yainer Diaz
Bo Naylor
I’m done with Alejandro Kirk. I think the power he showed last year was a fluke. He’ll put up a decent batting average but not do much else, and he’s not playing every day like he was near the beginning of the year.
The upside names here are Bailey, Diaz, and Naylor - but I have my doubts about all of them. We’re well into “deep leagues only” territory now, but any of those three names could end up as top-ten guy going into next year depending on what happens the rest of this season.
Tier Six
Gary Sanchez
Gabriel Moreno
Shea Langeliers
Yasmani Grandal
And here’s the final four that I figured I should rank. None of them do more than one thing well, and they’re really only considerations in two-catcher leagues where you’re just looking for someone with a pulse.
Please comment below if I missed anybody that should be in the top 25. I’ll be doing these ROS ranks every few days until we get through all of the positions.
Other than Varsho still being so high, especially over Salvy and Heim, 👌
Did you intend to include Danny Jansen?