Greetings fantasy baseballers! It has been a while since The Backwards K has had any new content, and I apologize as the season starting coincided with a real hectic time in my own life as I was swamped with things at my job and began the process of a career change, and I also spent over a week moving! But that is all over now, and I hope to provide you all with some more regular content, news, and posts. And I’ll be posting much more regularly to Twitter, so please follow @TheBackwardsK on Twitter!
So let’s get down to it and go over some things over the first month of the 2015 MLB season. We’ll break it down by surprise players and busts and what their rest of season outlook might be, and we’ll also talk about some injured players at each position and players to keep an eye on. For now we will focus on catchers.
CATCHERS
Surprises: Stephen Vogt, A.J. Pierzynski
Vogt is definitely the top catcher so far and he has received my “Vogt” of confidence. Vogt is currently hitting .372 with 7 HR and 25 RBI in 25 games played and has established himself as a great option as the #3 hitter (at least vs. righties) for the A’s in the absence of Ben Zobrist. I definitely liked him as a late round catcher target coming into the season, as I dubbed him as “Posey lite-lite.” My main concern with Vogt was whether or not he could find himself in the lineup on close to an everyday basis to maintain relevance, but I am pretty sure that he will no longer have that to worry about. If you own Vogt then I would not necessarily be looking to sell him because you likely got him very cheap and I think that he will continue to produce decently well in the power categories, which are going to be extremely valuable as a catcher. He won’t be hitting .370 for the rest of the season, but his line drive rate is up from 19.6% last year to 23.5% this year. So it’s not like the high AVG is just miraculously appearing. Last year, Vogt did not hit left-handed pitching very well, as he had just a .205 AVG, but considering what he accomplished as a Minor League hitter with a .305 career AVG, I am not too concerned about last year’s poor splits. Will he be as good versus lefties as righties? Doubtful. But he should be able to hold his own to maintain a good average as his plate approach appears to be rock solid.
The game’s most hated catcher, A.J. Pierzynski, is off to a torrid start. This guy just does not seem Continue reading