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Please see our player page for Tom Murphy 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.

After we went over the top 10 for 2024 fantasy baseball and the top 20 for 2024 fantasy baseball in our (my) 2024 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 2024 fantasy baseball. […]

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The Dodgers have spent more than $1.1 billion this winter with the signings of Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Shohei Ohtani and Tyler Glasnow. Eight teams haven’t spent a million. Is this [watches a butterfly flap out of one’s hand] competitive balance? So, the Mets’ owner Steve Cohen flew to Japan, took him out to dinner and Yamamoto went home with the Dodgers. [searching PornHub for cuckold, seeing a video of Steve Cohen paying the check for Yamamoto’s dinner] Damn, that’s brutal. Yamamoto was also rumored to possibly be on the Giants’ radar, but Yoshinobu saw a news report of a smash and grab at a vape shop in The Castro, and decided against San Francisco. Ouch. As I believe I said before, how about rather than the Dodgers buying free agents, they just get all the free agents and tell us which ones they don’t want. Might be easier that way. 

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Catchers – you can’t live with them, and in fantasy baseball, we can’t live without them.

This is a position that is not deep and not that talented after the top tier of backstops. You may get a catcher who has power but kills your average and on-base percentage. Or you may get a catcher who hits well and gets on base, but has no power at all.

There are very few perfect catchers in baseball, and the few that are close are going to be tough to get or trade for due to the scarcity of those players. But you almost feel compelled to try to go after them or hang onto them a year or two too long because for every Adley Rutschmans, there are two Martin Maldonados who just kill your team.

I came up with forty catchers to rank, but that is mostly to help fantasy owners who play in 20-team (or more) leagues or the leagues that require two catchers. If you are in a 12- to 16-team league, the Tier 4 and perhaps Tier 3 players will likely mean nothing to you.

Anyway, let’s get to the 2024 Top Keepers – Catchers.

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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.

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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.

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As we hit the home stretch of the fantasy baseball season, every single stolen base counts. As we reach this point in the season we often have to hold our noses and play anyone with a whiff of stolen base potential. So grab your clothespin and let’s dive into some players who may be available in your leagues to lead you to fantasy glory.

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“Hello, I’d like to sign up for your bartending course, Concocktailions. Yes, I saw you were officially endorsed by Bryan Brown who played Doug Coughlin in Cocktail. No, no, I don’t want to bartend professionally. Yes, just do some recreational cocktail slinging. Ideally, I’d just like to learn one drink. How to make a tasty drink from Drano.” Luis Robert will miss at least 12-16 weeks with a tear of the hip flexor, which is the season, boys and five girls. You can’t find a vacuum that sucks this much. Between him and Eloy, I mean, I mean, I mean! UGH! I can’t even grasp words! This is all Tony La Russa’s fault! And the Fantasy Baseball Overlord! *sticking head out of a window* I HATE YOU FANTASY BASEBALL OVERLORD!!! FBO, “I hate me too. Why do I suck so much?” Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

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The bomb to right-center, his fourth homer of the year, wasn’t even the most impressive thing Shohei Ohtani (3-for-5, hitting .364) did yesterday. He beat out a single to short with a sprint speed of 29.5 ft/sec. That’s the 5th best Sprint Speed this year, just a bit better than Ronald Acuña Jr. Uh…*looks around for forty-five minutes, looks back*…Is anyone else seeing this? Can Acuña, serious question, also throw 101 MPH and have an under 2.00 ERA? Yo, is Shohei Ohtani really Roy Hobbs? ACKCHYUALLY If you had Roy Hobbs hit a 460-foot homer, beat out a grounder to short and pitch 101 MPH speedballs, you’d be like, “I appreciate the love story, and the friendship he built with the cross-eyed bat boy that he saved from a burning supermarket, but the baseball stuff isn’t believable in this movie.” Ohtani is not believable. That’s it. He’s one of the best baseball players ever, tools-wise. Truly not believable how good he is at each tool. Unfortch for fantasy, the Angels insistence on him pitching is hurting his overall fantasy value. Sorry, I’m not being a giant idiot. I mean, I might be a giant idiot, but not in this case. You miss a game or two each week as a hitter, and your stats are going to suffer. Hopefully, he has three months’ worth of Rich Hill blisters and can’t pitch all year. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

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