Best Catcher

Is Jorge Posada going to be the best fantasy baseball catcher the remainder of 2007?

The following is the first installment of the "Best Fantasy Lineup" for the remainder of the 2007 season.

We will take this one position at a time. Today we have...

Catcher


The easy choice here, looking purely at total fantasy points, would be Russell Martin. Martin has three home runs and 32 RBI to go with an impressive eight steals. He ranks sixth amongst all starting catchers with a .314 batting average and is tied with first amongst catchers with 20 walks.

The risk with Martin is that this is only his second year in the league. He has a career 30 point drop off in his batting average in the second half of the season and he does not play in a hitter’s park. Additionally, he does not have the kind of lineup behind him as catchers like Jorge Posada and Victor Martinez have. Martin has also been the benefactor of eight steals. At some point, pitchers and opposing catchers are going to catch on to his stealing ability and begin to attempt to take this away from him. One also has to think his legs will not be up to stealing bases in late July, August and September.

The other choice here would be Martinez. Martinez is second in fantasy in points and leads major league catchers with 34 RBI. His six bombs rank him in a tie for fourth among catchers and his .319 batting average ranks him third among the same group.

Martinez has the additional benefit of playing first base as well catching. He also has the benefit of being able to DH if Travis Hafner needs a day off or gets hurt. Victor is a .323 second half hitter and hits for better power than Martin.

History also shows that Martinez will cancel out his strikeouts with his walks. Martinez has never struck out more than 78 times and has had a good amount of walks to go with his strikeouts (71 BB – 78 Ks in ’06, 63 BB – 78 Ks in ’05, 60 BB – 69 Ks in ’04).

Last, we have the CRAZY hot Jorge Posada. How hot is Posada? Let’s take a look at where he ranks in the major offensive categories amongst catchers:

BA - .367 (1st)
HR – 6 (tie for 4th)
RBI – 27 (4th)
Runs – 28 (2nd)
2B – 14 (tie for 1st)
SLG - .585 (2nd – behind John Buck…)
OBP - .427 (2nd)

His 121 fantasy points rank him third amongst catchers.

Here is the issue with Posada – he would be having a career year at the age of 59,682. He would be having to either set career highs or nearly matching career highs that he set in his prime. Here are some of his career highs and the pace he is setting for himself right now:

Cat. Car. High Car. Avg. Current Pace
Games – 151 (2000) 135 42 151
BA - .287 (2000) .273 .367 .366
HR - 30 (2003) 21 6 22
RBI - 101 (2003) 83 27 97
Hits - 145 (2000) 124 54 194
Runs - 92 (2000) 69 28 101
2B - 40 (2002) 28 14 50

As you can see, a lot is going to be asked of Posada to maintain this pace. But, as we have seen with several players, it is becoming less and less uncommon for players out of their prime to have crazy seasons. So here is what sold it for me – career versus division.

Martin Road Career tOPS+ 2007 Park Factor

SF .100 .237 93 100
SD .226 .281 96 93
ARI .300 .286 99 107
COL .359 .329 116 107

Martinez Road Career tOPS+ 2007 Park Factor

CHI .360 .323 125 103
DET .237 .253 60 99
KC .279 .290 86 107
MIN .230 .255 75 98

Posada Road Career tOPS+ 2007 Park Factor

BAL .230 .258 93 99
BOS .266 .260 100 102
TAM .255 .261 87 102
TOR .320 .309 122 103

The first thing I take from this is that Martinez is automatically eliminated. While Martinez has essentially OWNED the White Sox, Martinez still has to go up against Minnesota and Detroit who, for lack of a better word, have owned him. Even the Royals have had generally good success against Martinez.

In order to separate Posada and Martin, we need to look at the Park Factor. While Posada seems to be the more reliable hitter on the road in comparison to Martin’s dreadful numbers at San Diego and San Francisco, you can see that Martin has been able to take better advantage of the hitters parks he gets to play in as well as having general success at home against those same teams. Posada seems to have showed little success against any other team in his division except for Toronto – those numbers almost look out of place – thought they are not necessarily terrible.

These numbers would indicate to me that Martin would be the more valuable fantasy player over the course of 76 divisional games than Posada would.

The argument against this is the crazy differential in sample size between Posada and Martin and Posada’s 174 OPS+ to Martin’s 128 OPS+. But I feel that Martin’s youth along with his proven success against the majority of his division gives him the slight edge.



WINNER – Russell Martin