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It's your resident catcher advocate here, with my weekly defense for baseball's most maligned position. Instead of giving into easy narratives about the lack of talent at the catcher position and how they're the kickers of fantasy baseball, I'm here to create a place where catchers are celebrated for how they can help our teams.
Each week, I will take a look at the upcoming schedule ahead and give you my favorite streaming options at catcher. By looking at lineup trends, amount of games ahead, the location of the games, and potential pitching matchups, I'll try to guide you towards catchers that I think can be most useful for you in the upcoming week. For each catcher listed, I'll also add a chart that will provide you with data about the potential opposing pitchers that I think are meaningful in terms of allowing potential fantasy production. Plus, I'll also give a short explanation about why this catcher made the list. Every week I'll also look back at my previous recommendations so that we can have some transparency about what's working or not.
Since many fantasy managers will pay no attention to the catcher spot, your ability to constantly look for the best matchups will be a good way to get an advantage over your competition.
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Last Week Check-In
Not including Sunday's games (5/2)
- Omar Narvaez (4 starts) 4-14, 0 HR, 0 Runs, 0 RBI (WIN - barely but a .280 average helps)
- Carson Kelly (4 starts) 5-16, 1 HR, 3 Runs, 5 RBI (WIN - and now he's no longer a streamer)
- Mitch Garver (3 starts) 2-10, 2 HR, 3 RBI, 2 Runs (WIN - 2 HR from a catcher is a win)
- Kurt Suzuki (2 starts) 2-8, 1 Run (LOSS - Max Stassi came back from the IL mid-week)
- Mike Zunino (4 starts) 3-13, 1 HR, 2 RUN, 1 RBI (WIN - more of a push but the landscape is bad)
STREAMING RECORD: 13-9
All matchup projections are made in conjunction with Roster Resource and @Rotoquotes on Twitter, which is a great fantasy resource for upcoming schedules.
Week Six Catcher Waiver Wire (5/3 - 5/9)
For the purposes of this article, we are considering a "streaming catcher" one who is rostered in under 50% of Yahoo! leagues. Whether or not these catchers will be useful for you will depend entirely on your league size and the number of catchers you need to play. In order to help, I will keep a weekly list of "Untouchables," meaning catchers who, in my opinion, should NOT (if healthy) be dropped for a streaming option.
Untouchables: Catchers who shouldn't be dropped for these streamers in any format: J.T. Realmuto, Salvador Perez, Yasmani Grandal, Willson Contreras, Will Smith, Christian Vazquez, Buster Posey (Yadier Molina and Travis d'Arnaud on IL)
The injuries have started to find their way to the catching position, which is really thining out the potential streamers. Even as Austin Nola returns from the IL, we add Omar Narvaez, Travis d'Arnaud, Jorge Alfaro, and likely Alejandro Kirk to the list of inactives). That makes our list this week even harder to put together. I think there are a few strong options here, but the injuries have also created a lot of situations that we are simply avoiding altogether.
Max Stassi, Los Angeles Angels (3% Rostered)
Stassi appeared on this sheet a few times earlier in the year before he got hurt, so you know I had to get him back on now. He only has 26 plate appearances on the year due to the aforementioned injury, but he's hitting .304 and has continued to show the plate discipline improvements that helped his breakout last year. As a result, he currently has an 11.1% barrel rate, 61.1% HardHit%, and a .572 xSLG. I know all of those metrics are taken with a massive grain of salt given the few games he's played, but it boils down to this: Stassi is healthy, not swinging at bad pitches, and making good contact consistently. I want that in a streamer.
The only knock against Stassi this week is that he has to face both Tyler Glasnow and Walker Buehler. However, the Angels have a seven-game week, which means there are five other games on the slate and it's filled with either below-average arms (Michael Wacha and Ryan Yarbrough - that makes me sad) or unproven talents (Julio Urias and Shane McClanahan). Considering we also don't know who is replacing Dustin May in the Dodgers rotation, this might not turn out to be an awful week for Stassi.
Dom Nunez, Colorado Rockies (4% Rostered)
Colorado has three games this week at home against league-average pitchers, so you know you're going to find a Rockie on this list. Even though Elias Diaz was the trendy name coming into the season, Nunez seems to have ripped the starting catcher job from him (well, the "majority timeshare job"). Nunez has played in 10 games over the last two weeks, registering the 14th most plate appearances at the catcher position and, as we mention every week, plate appearances is one of the primary goals of finding the right streamer. In that time, Nunez is also hitting .250 with 2 HR, 6 Runs, and 9 RBI. He has 5 HR, a .611 SLG, and a 17.2% barrel rate this year, so I like the idea of taking a shot at him with have his games at home and this slate of opposing pitching.
Mitch Garver, Minnesota Twins (38% Rostered)
Garver finds himself back on this list primarily because of this slate of pitching. There really isn't one arm on here who scares you. Kyle Gibson is pitching the best of any of them, but we also know that he is liable to get rocked at any time and he's certainly due to give up his first home run of the season sometime soon. Garver still has concerning plate discipline metrics for the season, but his biggest issue has been chasing pitches outside of the zone. When I look at the pitchers listed above, I don't see a lot of guys with the type of offspeed stuff to really get Garver chasing off the plate. If he can just contain that one flaw in his approach right now, I really think a mini-breakout is around the corner. He has an 18.8% barrel rate and 53.1% HardHit rate on the young season, and we saw in his two-HR game the other day that he has the power to drastically improve your fantasy team's week with just one swing of the bat.
Pedro Severino, Baltimore Orioles (6% Rostered)
Severino has been in the lead of the Orioles' catching timeshare all year, so we know we'll see four starts in this six-game week. He's also hit .310 over the last two weeks, but it's come with basically no counting stats. He isn't hitting the ball particularly hard or driving it around the park; however, he hits near the middle of the Orioles' order and faces a relatively favorable schedule in the upcoming week. Yusei Kikuchi and Eduardo Rodriguez are the two best pitchers on the slate, but both are left-handed which helps the right-handed Severino out. There are a few matchups in here where I think the Baltimore offense will wake-up and Severino should be a part of that.
Andrew Knizner, St. Louis Cardinals (3% Rostered)
Knizner finds himself on this list after replacing the injured Yadier Molina. He's been playing the lion's share of the games since Molina found himself on the IL, so we like the consistent playing time and we love the plate discipline. In his 14 games this year, Knizner has a 9.5% walk rate and only a 7.1% strikeout rate. He also has a minuscule 4.6% swinging-strike rate (SwStr) and a tremendous 90.7% contact rate on pitches in the zone. So even though he doesn't hit for tremendous power and will hit near the bottom of the lineup, I'm willing to bank on a player who has this solid of an approach at the plate and will say one bullpen game and a few other opportunities against below-average starters. At the end of the week, we're hoping for a solid average and perhaps some runs and RBIs to tack onto our team total.
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