Collette Calls: Catching On?

We may hear 2025 described as the year of the catcher in the coming months with Cal Raleigh trying to capture a Most Valuable Player award with his amazing season for Seattle. He is not alone in his surprising season, as we are almost a certain lock to have have three catcher-eligible players with at least 30 homers in Raleigh, Shea Langeliers and Hunter Goodman, for the first time since Mike Lieberthal, Mike Piazza and Ivan Rodriguez did so in 1999. Salvador Perez has an outside chance to get there with 23 homers now, but if he were to make it to 30, it would be the first time since 1996that four catchers pulled off the feat, when Todd Hundley, Piazza, Benito Santiago and Terry Steinbach did so. 

Did anyone really see this coming, though? The catcher position has long been a hot topic of debate by fantasy managers over the years. I know some prefer to double-tap the catching position in the first 12 rounds and have seen some take advantage of drafting on the turn to make that decision easier. I have also been in NFBC leagues where managers have taken their catchers with their 29th and 30th round selections because they view catchers like kickers in fantasy football. I myself have been all over the map throughout my fantasy career, winning leagues with either approach while losing many more with the same approaches. The industry itself feels like it has shifted toward giving some credence to catching, even in shallower leagues. I looked back at my own 12-team RotoWire Online Championship draft and found seven catchers taken in the first 83 picks. Ironically, of those seven, the three lowest returns on investment were all taken inside the top 70, with one going as high as 56:

Raleigh should end up on several league-winning teams because getting that type of return on investment from a single-digit round, and from the catching position, is what dreams are made of. Conversely, exercising a fifth-round pitck on Rutschman only to see him perform like someone taken 100 rounds later at the position is an absolute nightmare. Would you believe, in this league, the same fantasy manager drafed both guys? He has $29 of value on the aggregate at the catching position, but his team is in sixth place because of what was lost by taking Rutschman as highly as he did. It was a defensible move when the decision was made, but thankfully Raleigh's season saved the aggressive catcher play two rounds later.

That fantasy manager was not the only one who got things wrong, because there were two other double-digit profitable earners taken later in the draft, with Langeliers going 116th in the 10th round, and Hunter Goodman, who has earned $16, going undrafted in our mid-March draft. Otherwise, those who waited on catchers — such as me who took Sean Murphy in the 16th round and Ryan Jeffers in the 19th — have suffered the consequences:

16 catchers have returned positive dollar values this season according to our Earned Auction Value calculator; five of those catchers went undrafted, with Goodman earning the second-most of any catcher, trailing only the demi-god Raleigh. Just three catchers — Austin Wells, Ivan Herrera and Alejandro Kirk — delivered positive dollar values as catchers taken after the 15th round:

2026 will be interesting, because on one hand, we see that early investment in catching mostly plays out well for those willing to invest in the position and ignore the difference in counting stats that catcher provides compared to other positions available at that spot in the draft. Conversely, the fact that five undrafted catchers have thus far returned positve dollar value (Carson Kelly could become the sixth) might provide some with the courage to punt the position in at least one of the two spots and try to find next year's Goodman, Rice, Baldwin, Ramirez or Dingler.

The depth of the pool is mostly going to remain the same, as managers are losing one of the Contreras brothers from the catching position but are now gaining Rice, Baldwin and Ramirez, who were undraftable in most leagues by mid-March last season. The one area to watch is in Baltimore, where Basallo is currently sitting at nine games at catcher. He needs 11 more games in September to become catcher-eligible in most league formats for 2026. He has caught in nine of the 13 games he's played, so the situation looks good, but should Basallo fall short, his draft-day value will be greatly impacted, because there's no guarantee he gains early-season catcher eligibility in 2026 until Baltimore decides how he and Rutschman can co-exist on the roster. 

As I look over which of my teams are performing best this season, it's the ones where I did not punt the catching position. I wasn't able to find a league where I took both catchers in the first half of the draft, nor did I find one where I waited until the very end to address the position. My most successful team this season is an OBP league where I worried about OBP at other positions and took Langeliers in the ninth round and Goodman in the 21st round. I would love to do something like that every season, but looking ahead to 2026, we do not have a clear option of a non-catcher player earning that eligibility as Goodman and Rice did. Those two players with their power indicators and home parks were the appealing factors in both cases, but whereas they were draftable in a 15-team OBP league, neither went in a mid-March, standard 12-team league. 

The influx of youth at the position this season will be interesting to watch, as we've seen 12 different catchers age 25 or younger garner at least 200 plate appearances this season. With great youth comes great volatility, which will make for an interesting draft season at a position where recency bias just showed us the risks of waiting until the later rounds. We may see more fantasy managers reaching up to take the risk on the young upside at this position and hope that the players take a step forward rather than the step back the likes of Bo Naylor, Connor Wong and, to a lesser extent, Austin Wells did this season.