2020 Positional Power Rankings: Catcher
After Dan Szymborski and Craig Edwards surveyed the state of second and third base yesterday, our positional power rankings continue with a look at catcher.
Catcher is a hard position to project even at the best of times — though we are getting better at it — and that difficulty is compounded this year by a short season and the availability of ever-more roster spots at which to stash a backup or two. Taking those complications together, I’d encourage you to take these rankings with a dollop of salt. There’s value in taking a close look at the particular mix of players each team is bringing into this campaign, but it’s probably best understood as an effort to document the catching situation league-wide, bucket teams into tiers, and sketch out the rough outlines of teams’ depth at this position. As such, try not to dwell overly long on the ordinal rankings or the team WAR figures that fuel them; the differences are quite small in some cases.
So what is the league-wide situation at catcher? Given the continued presence of true standouts like Yasmani Grandal and J.T. Realmuto it isn’t all bad, but I think it’s fair to characterize the overall situation as a bit of an ebb tide. As recently as a few years ago, we were treated to career seasons from the likes of Yan Gomes, Rene Rivera, Russell Martin, Buster Posey, and Jonathan Lucroy, with Salvador Perez and Yadier Molina not far off their peaks as well. Now, Martin is unsigned, Posey has opted out, and the rest of the players who were so recently putting up five-win seasons are shadows of their former selves. Catchers as a group generated just 54.3 WAR last year, which, while a five-win improvement over 2018’s figure, was lower than any other season in the last 12.
Meanwhile, the improvement in WAR last year wasn’t accompanied by any major shift in offensive performance (2019’s catchers posted an 85 wRC+ virtually indistinguishable from 2018’s 84), as teams have continued to double down on their strategy of running defense-first framers out for enough of their overall plate appearances to send you screaming to a few Mike Piazza YouTube highlights. That trend will likely change soon, when automatic strike calling comes to the league, but for now teams seem sufficiently convinced of the value of stealing strikes that they’re willing to put up with relatively anemic offensive performance from the position.
Still, squint at the next five years and you’ll find some hope. Adley Rutschman, Joey Bart, and Luis Campusano are all reasonably likely to make their debuts in 2021 (or 2022 at the latest) and a few somewhat lesser lights like Sean Murphy, Tyler Stephenson, and Keibert Ruiz could get time as soon as this year. Outside of Rutschman and Bart, there probably aren’t any big stars in the upcoming cohort, but that’s the kind of statement that only takes one developmental leap to disprove. 2020 will be remembered as an extraordinarily strange year in baseball for a lot of reasons, and as a transitional year for the league’s backstops.
Rian Watt is a contributor to FanGraphs based in Seattle. His work has appeared at Vice, Baseball Prospectus, The Athletic, FiveThirtyEight, and some other places too. By day, he works with communities around the world to end homelessness.
I like to catch up 😉 on these power rankings with my morning coffee.
I can’t disagree with *too* much of this but the entire sequence of 18-21 needs to be moved up like 5 places. I was aghast when the Cubs were that low, especially. I would put Narvaez ahead of a lot of others too based on offense alone. Yadi and Sal Perez are aging and the defensive excellence isn’t quite enough to boost the declining offense, I get it. But I’d still rather have them than anybody the Pirates or Mariners are rolling out, among others.
Carson Kelly is going to be interesting to watch for me. Rian noted his high walk rate. That was propped up a bit artificially by 10 intentional walks from hitting 8th in a lot of games. However, his BB rate was still pretty good even if you strip out the intentional walks, he didn’t swing much out of the zone and he made decent contact in the zone, so the underlying skills are certainly favorable.
He was terrible hitting anywhere other than 8th last year (except 9th). It’s a small sample at each of those other lineup spots, but I do think it shows that he was pitched around a ton.
I know I’m biased as a CLE fan, but spending the entire blurb complaining about the Perez/CLE spending when they are ranked 7th seems a little weird
Thank you so much for these rankings. I’m enjoying them and learning quite a lot.
I am a bit confused, however. In the section on J.T. Realmuto, you mentioned that “The shift to a new ballpark lowered his wRC+ to 108”.
I thought wRC+ was park-adjusted? How does a new ballpark impact his wRC+? Perhaps I’m overlooking something.
Yeah, this was a consequence of a few rewrites leaving pieces of the sentence in that shouldn’t have stayed! I’ve adjusted the language. Thanks!
Thanks again, Rian. Great content.
I disagree with this sentence: “A lot about this ranking, of course, depends on Garver being who he appeared to be in 2019. ” The projections have him down ~60 points of wOBA – nowhere close to what he was last year. I’m not saying they should be, but if they did, they would be #1 or 2.
The bigger question is how hard they ride him. Last year, he was rested a lot and his rate stats were insane. They’ve commented that they thought a big part of his success was being so fresh. Will be hard to rest at that pace during this sprint.
I know the projections are the projections, but I’d take 9 and 10 over 3-8 personally. Maybe that’s overvaluing offense and undervaluing defense, but the Angels/Castro at 3 and Red Sox/Vazquez at 4 are especially curious to me.
the rankings seemingly changed from when this article was originally posted fwiw
Yes. The chart doesn’t match the rankings. Orioles are 30 in the chart, for example, and 28 in the listing
Ramos has a zero degree launch angle last year, which is incredible in this day and age. If he’ll really try to hit the ball in the air more, he could get close enough to his 2018 numbers as he hits the ball pretty hard, He’s also working on his setup behind the plate to get more low strikes after struggling mightily defensively. If Ramos gets his numbers up and his defense improves I’d pick up his option rather than giving a 30 year old Realmuto a six year deal.
I’m very much biased, but projections systems never seem to like Contreras a whole lot. Three of his four seasons have been pretty similar and pretty good, but he’s projected to be closer to his bad 2018 than the rest of his career combined
Surprised that Joey Bart doesn’t at least have some MLB projection. I know the Giants said they aren’t expecting him, but I’ve heard a lot of teams say similar things that did not end up being true. My money is on Bart being the main catcher by the 30 game mark this year at least.
Anybody notice that the Cubs are both in 18th & 12th place?
These rankings seem to jump around depending on when you open the article. Earlier I saw Oakland ranked 17th (which I thought was way too low) and now they are ranked 13th. I think I saw the same thing happen with 2nd base (yesterday?). What’s happening?
They’re ranked 17th right now 2 hours after your post.
yea the twins were 9th and yankees 10th when i made my post about Garver and now they’re 3rd and 6th?
That’s an improvement. But the Cubs 12th?! I also disagree with Grandal at #1. Less than two years ago he was so bad the Dodgers benched him in the playoffs. He has one bounce-back season at the plate and then some nerds come up with a way to quantify pitch framing and now Grandal is the baseball media’s darling.
I remember the playoffs that year. Grandal was brutal behind the plate. I know pitch framing is the new hotness. And I know Grandal is the face of it. But to call him the best catcher in baseball for 2020 seems like a big stretch.
I would not be surprised if years from now we see a retrospective that makes the pitch framing fad look silly.
The new trend of catchers with their left knee on the ground to get lower is going to skew pitch framing stats. Catching is evolving quickly year to year. I think pitch framing numbers will be turned upside down in 2020. And before long, robot umpiring will make pitch framing moot.
Sanchez: “Meanwhile, an adjustment to his defensive stance has the potential to bring his fielding rating, long terrible, up to something approximating average.”
Lowest Def rating of his career to-date: -0.1.