I play dynasty baseball with DSE and often see my opponents rostering only one catcher. These owners routinely take zero points when their catcher’s team has a travel day or the team sits that player for rest. After all, few catchers are offensive juggernauts and are really in there for their defense; at the end of the day, we are only talking about taking zero points one or two games per week, right?
In this article, I am suggesting a particular Game Theory option as a means to get a competitive edge on your opponent – by rostering three catchers. This idea may be radical to some. Hear me out, consider the stats and facts, and you just may be swayed.
Top tiered catchers will likely play about 145 games a year, more if they avoid the injury bug. This leaves about 50 game days left to fill. But just rostering a second catcher and hoping he is available for your primary starters off days will still have you miss out on what will likely be 24 (minimum) to 48 (maximum) game days (because your second rostered catcher might have same game/day off schedule as your primary catcher); this equates to one or two catcher starts missed per week.
Are you willing to take a zero one to two days a week for an active roster spot? Let’s take a look at how this affects your team overall. Moving forward we will assume 14 team leagues for clarity. On the surface, it seems a little off-putting to hold roster spots for three catchers, but missing out on points every week might be worse.
In 2019 (using DSE total points scoring and season-long totals rounded out), J.T. Realmuto led all catchers with 555 points and averaged 3.83 points per game. Fourteenth best at the position last year was Roberto Perez with 319 points and 2.68 pts/game. Perez becomes what I refer to as the Net Zero player (consider him the ‘Replacement’ player if you had the worse starter you could get). Assuming everyone rostered two catchers for the entirety of the year (which few fantasy owners do), the worst-case scenario second catcher you would have rostered would have been Victor Caratini with 217 points and a 2.29 pts/gm average. For our purposes, we will use Caratini as our third rostered catcher.
For the three players exampled, I ask you to pay particular attention to the points per game. Realmuto is an obvious Tier One catcher and the difference between #1 and #14 is 1.15 pts/gm. However, Perez and Caratini are separated by 14 ranks but are only separated by 0.39 pts/gm. The true difference between the latter two is the number of games played for each throughout the season. If you had all three on your team, the odds of you having an empty roster spot on any given day at catcher is greatly reduced. Statistically, by rostering the three catchers exampled, you are scoring about 5 more points per week than if you had just one catcher and about 2.5 points more than if you had just two catchers.
So why wouldn’t you roster true Utility players in those two spots? Most Utility players (IF or OF or both) do not usually play every day. Players like Marwin Gonzalez and David Fletcher are the exception and not the rule. Players you roster to fill those spots when your everyday starters have off days are going to be low tiered IFs or a 4th OF who are often in a platoon situation (and may or may not be available when you need them to fill an active roster spot on a given day). Two examples come to mind are Raimel Tapia and Yolmer Sanchez.
I’ve used these players as examples because they scored relatively the same as Perez and Caratini in 2019 concerning total points. Tapia had 311 points and averaged 2.26 pts/gm; Sanchez scored 280 points and averaged 1.88 pts/gm. For these players, we are truly concerned with what they produce per game when you need to insert them into your active lineup. Tapia averages nearly a half-point less per appearance than your reserve catcher in Perez. Sanchez scored more than Caratini in 2019 but averaged about half a point less per game and almost a full point less than Perez per game. Don’t you want the half to full point advantage in a spot start by using a catcher rather than a utility player?
Furthermore, you can have two active catchers if you utilize one in the UTL spot, resulting in an advantage of one to two points per game day. For myself, IF/OF/UTL slots in DSE are best used by players that are on hot streaks and are not good enough to unseat your primary position player. A player’s recent points per game output ought to be the deciding factor for spot starts. If these catchers are scoring more per game than your utility platoon players throughout the season, you can bet they are outperforming them in a shortened (one, two or four week) view.
When does this strategy not work out or become problematic? That third roster spot you are using for a catcher (using my strategy) becomes very attractive to use for a position player for myriad reasons: If you have a rookie that you have had stashed in a MiL spot for years and he is getting called up or you have a season-long or extended injury on your roster to contend with. But, if you carry three catchers and need to drop one, you still have two catchers to cover the majority of the games. Still better than your opponent who is only rostering one catcher in favor of a 4th OF in a platoon that rarely if ever contributes to your weekly point score.
At the end of the day, you want to score more points than your opponent. If you carry three catchers, there is a higher likelihood that you will have players in your active lineup scoring points than sitting a platoon player on your bench that never contributes while you wait and gamble his performance or MLB situation improves. Roster three catchers and outsmart your opponent.
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