Early NFBC ADP Analysis - Catchers

Dave Shovein takes a deep dive into early NFBC average draft position data to give fantasy managers an overview of the landscape heading into next season.

Even for the most casual fantasy managers, entering a draft without any type of plan at all is a recipe for disaster. One of the most important tools at your disposal is average draft position (ADP). It’s the data that gives everyone insight into the typical going rate for each player in fantasy drafts.

ADP isn’t a static tool though, it evolves over time. It will show us trends, whether a player is moving up or down in the rankings. It also gives us insight into the maximum and minimum picks made for every player. Using this data should be absolutely critical in developing your plan of attack for your next fantasy draft.

Every Tuesday in this series I’ll take an early look at how ADP is shaping up at each position. I’ll attempt to highlight where the tiers fall at each position, areas of the draft that you may want to target the position and players that I may be avoiding at their current draft cost.

Full disclosure, nearly all of my fantasy endeavors are done at the NFBC where both their 12-team and 15-team formats utilize rosters that start 23 players (14 hitters, 9 pitchers). That includes two catchers. The analysis will be viewed primarily through that lens but there should be plenty of insights that can be taken away to other formats as well.

If you haven’t read much of my work over the years, you may not know my overall stance on the catcher position. I’m a firm believer that in two-catcher formats rostering two elite catchers is an absolutely massive advantage. Not only do those top options accumulate far more at-bats and counting stats than their counterparts near the bottom of the draft, but most of them do so while providing a quality batting average as well. Locking in elite production from one or two of your catcher spots just opens so many other possibilities on your roster and gives you a substantial head start on most of your competition.

While I understand that some people prefer to push catchers to the end of the draft and take more well-rounded players early on, that’s not the route that I choose to go. I’m in no way saying that way can’t succeed or that my way is better – it’s just the build that I’m most comfortable with and that I’ve had the most success with over the years.

With that, let’s get into the catcher position.

Here’s a look at how ADP is shaping up at the position as of now. For this exercise, I’m looking at the data from NFBC Draft Champions leagues (15-team, 50 rounds) from the last two weeks. This gives us a sample of 36 drafts to work with. As we get closer to the season and drafts become more prevalent, I’ll start to shrink that window a bit to make sure we’re looking at the most accurate and up-to-date information.

For this exercise I cut off the list at the top 40 backstops. As we progress throughout the off-season, I’ll likely dive even deeper than that in an attempt to uncover some late-round gems.

The first thing that jumps out to me when looking at the current market values, is the massive drop after the top 12 – going from 155.61 to 205.69. If you’re interested in securing one of those top-12 options, you’re going to need to attack the position early – by the 10th round in 15-teamers and by the 13th round in 12-team formats.

The market is saying that William Contreras is far and away the top option at the position, and if you want him you’re going to have to pay up to get him. I have no argument there, as Contreras is the top player on my board at the position as well.

After that, Yainer Diaz and Adley Rutschman are pretty closely bunched as the next two options at the position. Diaz is third on my board and Rutschman is fifth. Because of that, I won’t be drafting Rutschman at his current cost in most scenarios.

Next is a group of five players that are currently bunched between 80 and 112 in Salvador Perez, Cal Raleigh, Will Smith, Willson Contreras and Logan O’Hoppe. On my board, those players rank sixth, fourth, eighth, second and 14th at the position. That likely means that I’ll end up with a ton of Contreras when all is said and done and won’t have any O’Hoppe.

The last group of four in that top-12 at the position are Shea Langeliers, J.T. Realmuto, Tyler Stephenson and Francisco Alvarez between 133 and 155 according to recent ADP. If you’re playing in a one catcher league and can wait as long as possible and still wind up with one of these top 12 options, there’s no harm at all in doing so. In two-catcher leagues though, if you don’t get at least one of those top-12 options, you’re going to be digging a hole at the position.

The first thing that I like to do when trying to plan for my drafts is comparing my rankings to the ADP data to identify which players I’m much higher or lower on than the consensus. If you have perused my catcher rankings on the site here, you may have already noticed that I’m way above the market on both Willson Contreras and Joey Bart. I’m also above the market on Cal Raleigh, Tyler Stephenson and Gabriel Moreno to name a few. Conversely, I’m way under the market on Adley Rutschman and Logan O’Hoppe while also trailing on J.T. Realmuto and Sean Murphy to name a few.

If I trust in my projections, which I do, I’m going to actively target the players that I’m significantly higher on than the market. As of now, that would be the elder Contreras brother and Bart. This is where ADP becomes a useful tool. Let’s use Contreras as an example. He’s the second ranked catcher on my board at the moment. As of now, by ADP, Yainer Diaz is the second ranked catcher right around pick 60 overall.

That doesn’t mean that I need to grab Contreras around pick 60 though. It would all depend on where I was picking in the draft. For the sake of this exercise, let’s say I’m picking in the middle of the draft at pick eight. If that’s the case, my fifth round selection would be pick 68 overall while my sixth round pick would be pick 83 in a 15-team draft. Looking at the ADP data, the min pick on Contreras is pick 76 right now. If I wanted to jump him to the fifth round and set a new min pick at pick 68, my chances of getting him would be extremely high. If he’s a must-have player for me, that’s something that I would definitely consider, especially if there wasn’t anything else on the board that really jumped out to me at that pick. I would also have a very strong likelihood of getting him with my sixth round selection at pick 83. More than likely, that is where I would pull the trigger as it’s still early enough in the draft that I would have plenty of other fallback options if I missed out there.

The real target for me though, happens to be Joey Bart. Yes, Joey Bart. I know, I’m just as surprised by it as you are. He’s not a player that I’ve ever had much interest in before this year, but based on where my projections have him for 2025 it seems imperative that I make every possible effort to acquire him. We’ll get more into the why of that on Wednesday when George and I debate some of the differences in our rankings, so be sure to check back to gain that valuable insight. Instead, here we’ll see how we can use ADP to our advantage once again to land Bart in the majority of our drafts. As of now, he’s the 12^th ranked catcher on my board. We have already seen that the top-12 options (at least the top-12 consensus options) are being drafted by pick 155 on average. We don’t need to go anywhere near pick 155 to acquire Bart though, do we? His average draft position at the moment sits way down at pick 297. The earliest that he has gone in any draft over the past couple of weeks is pick 227.

That means, assuming once again that we have the eighth pick in the draft, that we could almost guarantee Bart by jumping the min pick and taking him in the 15th round at pick 218 overall. There’s still a strong likelihood that we could get him in the 16th (233) or even the 17th (248) if we felt like we had to push him because there were other options on the board that we liked better. That means that in theory, we would be getting a top-12 catcher at a discount of at least five rounds. Make enough savvy picks like that, and that’s how championships are won.

Normally heading into a draft I would identify maybe 6-8 players that I really liked at cost and do everything in my power to get both of my catchers from that group. As of now, my top target would be Contreras in round five or six depending on the other options that were on the board. If I missed on Contreras, I’d be into Cal Raleigh in the sixth or seventh round if he happened to be there around ADP.

If I missed on both of them, my sights would turn to Tyler Stephenson in the eighth or ninth round. If that didn’t go according to plan, I would be even more aggressive in jumping up the rest of my targets to ensure that I get two of my top-12 options. I’m way above the consensus on Gabriel Moreno still, so he would be the fallback if missing on Contreras, Raleigh and Stephenson – likely around the min pick in round 13.

Also, if missing on Contreras/Raleigh near the top, I would be increasingly likely to get Bart at the min pick in round 15 rather than attempting to push him an additional round or two.

If I was successful in landing one of my early catchers, but then missed on Bart as my second catcher and already missed the boat on Moreno, that would be the most unfortunate situation and I would simply have to make due with the best of what’s available.

Hopefully at some point in my ramblings here you were able to at least glean some valuable information that you can take with you when attempting to craft your draft plan for the upcoming season. If you perform the same types of exercises at every position, know the player pool forward and backwards and know in which pockets of the draft you’re more likely to target each position, then you’re already a few steps ahead of the competition and well on your way to competing for a league title.