Fantasy Baseball 2017 Positional Preview: Catchers

Check out my Top 250:
Fantasy Baseball 2017 Top 250

The 2017 Fantasy Baseball season is fast approaching. With that, I thought it would be helpful to break my top 250 down into positional rankings! In addition to giving you the top players to draft at each position, I’ll offer up a breakout player, a sleeper, a bust, and an overall strategy of how to go about drafting each position. Let’s start this series behind the plate with catchers!

*If Kyle Schwarber is eligible at catcher in your league he would fall at #3 for me
*PR stands for 'Player Rater' which is a measure of how good a player was in a standard 5x5 roto league

Breakout player – Wilson Contreras
Sleepers – Sandy Leon, Austin Hedges
Busts – Salvador Perez, Russell Martin

Position Overview

The catcher position is by far the weakest in fantasy baseball. So weak in fact, only 4 catchers finished inside the top 150 overall players and none were in the top 100. This makes having an elite option at catcher important to me. I have Jonathan Lucroy just behind Buster Posey because I feel a full healthy season with the Rangers gives Lucroy enough to be the top overall catcher (which he was in 2016). The next tier, Gary Sanchez, Willson Contreras, and J.T. Realmuto, round out the list of catchers I feel can achieve top 150 overall value. In leagues that only roster one catcher, if you miss out on the top 5, I’d suggest waiting until the last few rounds of your draft to fill that spot. I like grabbing Welington Castillo, Cameron Rupp, or Sandy Leon if I wait until the final rounds of my draft.

Tune in tomorrow for a rundown of first baseman! See you then and thanks for the read.

Other positional previews:
First Base
Second Base
Shortstop
Third Base
Outfield
Starting Pitcher
Relief Pitcher