RADIO
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 (5/23) - I told you before last week started that injuries made it a brutal week:
- Mitch Garver (2 starts) 3-8, 1 HR, 1 RBI, 2 Runs (was injured mid-week) (WIN just not a lot of games)
- Yan Gomes (5 starts) 2-21, 1 Run, 1 RBI (LOSS - so many at-bats but jeez that bat went cold)
- Omar Narvaez (3 starts) 4-14, 1 RBI, 1 Run (WIN - nothing special, but works for a streamer)
- Jacob Stallings (3 starts) 3-12, 1 HR, 2 RBI, 1 Run (WIN - pretty much a floor week)
- William Contreras (4 starts) 2-15, 1 HR, 4 RBI, 2 Runs (LOSS - the HR and RBI are nice so it was close)
SEASON STREAMING RECORD: 20-16
All matchup projections are made in conjunction with Roster Resource and @Rotoquotes on Twitter
Week Nine Catcher Waiver Wire (5/24 - 5/30)
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, and Yadier Molina.
Omar Narvaez, Milwaukee Brewers
46% Rostered
Naravez doesn't have a great schedule with matchups against Blake Snell, Joe Musgrove, and Max Scherzer; however, this is simply about Narvaez no longer really being a streamer. He's hitting .348/.430/.500 on the season and .292 since coming off the IL, but people still seem slow to add him back to leagues.
While there is a lot of red on the chart above, there are also a lot of pitchers who are giving up hard contact, so Narvaez still has a chance to put together a few strong games while hitting at the top of a slowly improving Brewers' lineup in a seven-game week. I'd rather have him than play the streamer dancing game.
Mitch Garver, Minnesota Twins
36% Rostered
Garver is another repeat on the list. The Twins offense is waking up, and Garver is continuing to make really hard contact. He may only be hitting .217 over the last two weeks, but that is weirdly not far below the MLB average and he has elite power for the catcher position and a great schedule coming up, except for one outing against John Means, who also showed last game that he's not untouchable.
We love hitters in Baltimore as the weather starts to heat up, and we also love hitters facing Dean Kremer and Jorge Lopez. With some attackable Royals pitchers also in the cards for the second half of the week, I like Garver to have a strong performance as the Twins begin to show the talent level we all expected them to put on display.
Jacob Stallings, Pittsburgh Pirates
10 % Rostered
OK, so there are going to be a lot of repeats this week, but just look at all that green. Kyle Hendricks is a strong arm, but Jon Gray is the next best arm and we all know he pitches better at Coors than on the road. There really isn't one arm to fear in that entire schedule aside from Hendricks, and even he's had his struggles this year.
Stallings is hitting .273 with three home runs and eight RBI over the last two weeks, which is great production for the position. He also, as we've mentioned before, is one of the few catchers who has a 75% share of his team's starts, which means he'll get the plate appearances we want against these arms.
Tyler Stephenson, Cincinnati Reds
4% Rostered
No, it didn't finally happen. Tucker Barnhart hasn't been benched; however, with Nick Senzel (knee) and Mike Moustakas (heel) on the IL, the Reds have been getting Stephenson's bat in the lineup by giving him a few starts at 1B. That's good news for us. The rookie can certainly hit, even though he has only batted .233 over the last two weeks. On the season, he is hitting .296/.360/.420 and showed tremendous power throughout his minor league career, carrying a 65 raw power grade and 45 game power grade from Fangraphs.
He gets a couple of tough starts against Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg, but the rest of the week isn't too terrifying and you're actively excited about matchups against Joe Ross, Zach Davies, and Jake Arrieta. Considering Stephenson seems locked into regular at-bats for at least one more week, I think this is a decent gamble in deeper leagues and one that could be interesting if he's able to get C/1B eligibility long-term.
Deep League Waiver Options
Reese McGuire, Toronto Blue Jays, 0% Rostered
Tomas Nido, New York Mets, 1% Rostered
While the schedules this week aren't great for these two names, and I wouldn't be rushing to pick them up, I wanted to put them on your radar as potential options in deep two-catcher leagues. In small samples, both McGuire and Nido are hitting better than the starters (Danny Jansen and James McCann) and have begun to earn more playing time. If the playing time battles begin to flip, and these two start to see the majority of the action, I think they can be sneaky adds in those deepest leagues.
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