Please see our player page for Elias Diaz to see projections for today, the next 7 days and rest of season as well as stats and gamelogs designed with the fantasy baseball player in mind.
by: Grey
After we went over the top 10 for 2023 fantasy baseball and the top 20 for 2023 fantasy baseball in our (my) 2023 fantasy baseball rankings, it’s time for the meat and potatoes rankings. Something to stew about! Hop in the pressure cooker, crank it up to “Intense” and let’s rock with the top 20 catchers for 2023 fantasy baseball. […]
Please, blog, may I have some more? by: Grey
*takes a long inhale* You smell that? No, not your sweatpants you’ve been wearing for the last week. Well, them, but I’m talking about the smell of the 2023 fantasy baseball draft season. So fresh, so clean. So ulcer, so sniped. It’s good to be back to one of the best times of the year. It’s so much better than “Playing your 9th outfielder because everyone is hurt” time of the year. I’ve even begun rolling out my 2023 fantasy baseball rankings on our Patreon. So, me and a bunch of Razzball commenters got together and took part in an NFBC Draft. Will get another draft started prolly around January/February, if you wanna take part, and, of course, Happy New Year (of drafting fantasy baseball)! Anyway, here’s my NFBC 2023 fantasy baseball draft recap; it’s a 15-team, two-catcher, draft and hold league that goes 50 rounds and has no waivers:
Please, blog, may I have some more?Well, the World Series is over, the citizens of Houston got to have their parade and now here we are – the offseason.
But don’t fret. If you are a regular Razzball reader, then you know we have been looking at the top keepers for 2023. Over the last two weeks we’ve released the 2023 Top Keepers 2023 – Relievers and 2023 Top Keepers – Starting Pitchers. This week – catchers!
Catchers are almost becoming like the place kickers of fantasy football – everyone needs one, but except for a few top players who can actually sway an outcome, they are all the same.
So here are a few simple rules when it comes to catchers:
Catchers, in general, will only play in about 110 to 120 games except for a few outliers. So don’t expect catchers, as a group, to perform like other position players.
If you think two catchers are equal except for age, go with the younger catcher. Few catchers age well.
Be happy if you have a catcher who is a standout in one scoring category. Rare is the catcher who hits for average and homers, even more rare if they add steals.
There are some catchers who make Rule #1, #2 and #3 completely false. If you have one of them, hold onto them for as long as you can.
In backing up rule No. 3, the career leader in home runs by a catcher (as in hitting a homer while playing catcher in that game) is Mike Piazza with 396. There are only three more players who hit more than 300 – Carlton Fisk (351), Johnny Bench (326) and Yogi Berra (305). That is it. This season, the highest batting average by a catcher with more than 200 at-bats was .285 by Alejandro Kirk of the Blue Jays – .285!
So for the below rankings, if you see a player like Martin Maldonado, you are going to wonder why he is even ranked. Dude slashed only .186/.248/.352. But he did hit 15 homers and drove in 45 runs.
You know how many other catchers hit more than 15 homers? Twelve. Do you know how many other catchers drove in more than 45 runs? Fourteen. When looking at a catcher like Maldanado for just his power and run production, he is actually close to being a starter in deep fantasy leagues.
Moral of the story – catchers are their own breed and should be viewed differently.
Please, blog, may I have some more?
by: Dan Pants
Reds rookie starting pitcher slash heartthrob Nick Lodolo turned in what was likely his best start of the season Friday night pitching a career high eight innings of two-run baseball, allowing just five hits, and striking out 11 (ELEVEN) Brewers in Milwaukee to notch his fourth win. Nick generated 20 whiffs on his mid-90s fastball […]
Please, blog, may I have some more? by: Grey
Yesterday, the Nats’ GM Rizzo put his feet up on his desk, rolled up a million dollar bill and used it to lit a cigar filled with million dollar bills, saying, “And that’s why I gave Patrick Corbin $140 million eight years after his prime.” Patrick Corbin went 8 IP, 1 ER, 7 baserunners, 12 Ks, ERA at 6.06. You can think to yourself, “Damn, I should’ve streamed Patrick Corbin yesterday because the Streamonator loved it,” but I’d prefer to think, “I ain’t ever starting a pitcher with a 6+ ERA.” His last three years of ERAs are…I’d ask for a drum roll, but they deserve a sad trombone…4.66, 5.82, 6.06. If we were in Bizarro World, you’d be collecting your crown from America’s Next Top Model and Patrick Corbin would be an ace. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:
Please, blog, may I have some more?Welcome back to another edition of the wire, where we check in on guys swinging hot bats who should be free to pick up. Hopefully your team is off to a blazing start, crushing the competition and setting the weekly high score. But if it isn’t, fret not for there are some hot hitters out there turn the ship around. Plus even the best teams can always get better. It’s still too early in the season for ratios to stabilize but we can use these early season performances as a guide to try and gauge a hitter’s value and what they can do for your team. So sit back, relax and heed my wisdom. Then run to the wire and upgrade your team.
Please, blog, may I have some more?
by: Mitch Staniger
Raise your hand if you had Taylor Ward as the second coming of Mike Trout. Nobody? Same here. Let’s look back at Week 1 of the Taylor Ward experience; one in which I was able to land him in two season long leagues but lost out to his almost $200 FAAB price tag in my […]
Please, blog, may I have some more? by: Grey
Here, friend, are some catchers that I will be targeting at my 2022 fantasy drafts after the top options are gone. I’m not going to get into the strategy of punting catchers. Been there, half-drunkenly wrote that during the Ottoman Empire. Click on the player’s name where applicable to read more and see their 2022 projections and blurbs I wrote for them. This is a (legal-in-most-countries) supplement to the top 20 catchers of 2022 fantasy baseball. Now, guys and five girl readers, I am not saying avoid catchers like Daulton Varsho if they fall, but, to get on this list, a catcher needs to be drafted later than 200 overall, and, yes, I will go around the entire infield, outfield and pitchers to target very late. In regards to the ADP in the parenthesis, NFBC is mostly for two catcher leagues, so that should be taken into account. Anyway, here’s some catchers to target for 2022 fantasy baseball:
Please, blog, may I have some more?
by: Laura Holt
The last two weeks we’ve talked about fantasy baseball from more of a mixed-league perspective, but this week I’m ready to start swimming back to the slightly deeper end of the pool as we continue to look at ADP and how it may affect early drafts. Even with ADP readily available, it’s tricky to know just how high you’ll need to grab ‘sleeper’ targets when there’s little to no ADP information out there. If you start drafting in November, as I do annually, it really can feel like a complete crapshoot. What I’m going to look at this week is a handful of players who I had at least loosely targeted and figured I could get very late, but have recently been going off the draft board earlier than I originally expected or hoped they would. Getting back to the deep league theme: while these players could ultimately prove to be options in shallower leagues, they all had an NFBC ADP outside the top 250 for the months of October and November combined. As you’ll see, some of them have already creeped significantly higher up the ADP ranks now that we have an additional two months of draft data (i.e. numbers from December and January combined) to compare to the original October/November marks. Obviously a solid spring (should spring training be a thing that ever happens again) could propel any of them even further up the draft board.
Please, blog, may I have some more? by: Grey
After we went over the top 10 for 2022 fantasy baseball and the top 20 for 2022 fantasy baseball in our (my) 2022 fantasy baseball rankings, it’s time for the meat and potatoes rankings. Something to stew about! Hop in the pressure cooker, crank it up to “Intense” and let’s rock with the top 20 catchers for 2022 fantasy baseball. Am I at all selling you on the top 20 catchers being good? No? Good, don’t want to give you the wrong impression. Here’s Steamer’s 2022 Fantasy Baseball Projections for Hitters and 2022 Fantasy Baseball Projections for Pitchers. The projections noted in this post are my own, and I mention where tiers start and stop. Subscriptions are up and running, and you can already get Rudy’s Draft War Room. Anyway, here’s the top 20 catchers for 2022 fantasy baseball:
NOTE: All 2022 fantasy baseball projections are based on a 162-game season, and will be until we hear definitively there will be less games, due to the CBA. Also, I’m going on the assumption the NL is getting the DH.
NOTE II: All my rankings are currently available on Patreon for the price of a Starbucks coffee, if you get one of those extra grande frappuccino jobbers. Don’t wait for the rankings to come out over the next month, and get them all now.
NOTE III: Free agents are listed as just that and not yet projected. Once a guy signs, I will write out their blurb and add in projections, or remove them, if they sign in an unfavorable place. They are ranked currently where I think they might be if they sign on for a full-time job.
Please, blog, may I have some more? by: Grey
Not a bad year for me with the 2021 catcher rankings in the broadest of terms. This year I only left one guy unranked who ended up in the top 20, and if anyone ranked Eric Haase in the top 20, then kudos to them for figuring out a reliable, gas-efficient time machine. That doesn’t mean my rankings are a chef’s kiss from Padma as I win the Quickfire. Oh, some of these are a hot mess from where I ranked them, compared to where they ended up. Please don’t ask if this is a ranking for next year. It’s not a ranking for next year. It’s me recapping last season. Please, for the love that all is holy, understand this. It’s all I ask of you. Well, that and shower me with praise. The latter isn’t hard, the former is. Also, remembering which is the ‘latter’ and which is the ‘former’ is hard too. Quibbles and semantics, my good man and five lady-mans. It wouldn’t be fair for me to preseason rank the players, then rank them again in the postseason based on my opinion, so these postseason top 20 lists are ranked according to our Fantasy Baseball Player Rater. It’s cold hard math, y’all! Anyway, here’s the top 20 catchers for 2021 fantasy baseball and how they compared to where I originally ranked them:
Please, blog, may I have some more? by: Dan Pants
Red Sox first baseman slash DH slash pink hat heart throb Bobby Dalbec continued his power barrage Friday night going 2-for-4 with a solo home run, his 21st, and a triple with two runs scored. Bobby D now has three dingers (we call them Bobby Dal-jacks) in the past three days and he’s done nothing but mash since Boston gave him full reign of the first base job post-All Star break. He was a BUY this week, and I while told you to grab him back in June, I’ll admit that was a bit premature. Bobby is a little bit, hmm, how do I say this nicely, “raw”, as his 138 strikeouts in 368 at bats clearly illustrates. But yo, the power is real, and it is spectacular. Something has clicked for him post-All Star break, maybe it was the hitting coach, maybe it was the COVID, maybe it was the Kyle Schwarber trade threatening his playing time. Whatever it was, he slashed .339/.431/.774 in August with seven Dal-jacks and 21 RBIs. He also struck out just 18 times, his lowest monthly total all year. His September has looked a lot like his August so far, .321/.387/.786 with a 1.205 OPS. He’s also taking more pitches, and this is resulting in him getting the pitches he wants to hit into the stands. He’s got 11 walks since the start of August, and he had just 13 walks through the first four months of the season. I’m saying the kid is figuring it out, on the job, at a crucial time for this Red Sox team in a wild card race and he is delivering. Sure the Ks are still there–ten strikeouts in the past 10 games, but like I said the power is legit-piece, and his .247 isolated power is one of the tops in the league. I don’t know what your fantasy team needs at this point in the season, and tbh you might be better off checking out Razzball’s Fantasy Football Rankings, but if you need power–Bobby D has got you covered. He’s hitting .317 over the past two weeks with 5 homers and 11 RBIs (9 homers in his past 23 games) and should continue to get plenty of chances while the Red Sox chase the postseason. Grab him if you like home runs–this kid’s gonna be a star! Ha-cha-cha!
Here’s what else I saw in fantasy baseball Friday night:
Please, blog, may I have some more?
