So over at Fantasy Baseball Cafe, they have a series of posts entitled "Two Up Two Down" where, for every postion, they take two players who are either unheralded or underrated and bring them to your attention and then two players who are either overrated or are being drafted too early and let you know why they should not be going as high. This is one of my favorite posts of theirs, so I decided to play this little game at work with Dave. Here are my picks for each position; I'm not sure if he'll pick his.
Catcher
Two Up:
J.R. Towles and Geovany Soto
After Towles' last month last year, a lot of hype has been put around him as a solid sleeper candidate. Let's not forget his eight RBI game against Looper and the Cardinals. Obviously you can't base his success this season off that one game, but with a much stronger Astros lineup in front of him, you can defnitely have confidence in Towles as a late round option for your starting catcher.
Soto is an unheralded young catcher with the Cubs who could end up having a huge year. He is facing off against mostly NL Central pitchers(who aren't that great) and has the Cubs pretty solid lineup in front of him. Baseball Think Factory has him projected at hitting 20 homeruns with 73 RBIs, which is pretty good from your catcher position. He's not a Victor, Russell, or Joe, but if you miss out on the big name catchers, you can pick up Soto late instead of reaching for Bengie Molina.
Two Down
Jorge Posada and Russell Martin
Posada, by most sites, is projected to have almost exactly the same stats as Towles. The only differences between the two are 13 years and about twenty rounds. Posada is routinely going in the eighth round or earlier whereas Towles in a lot of cases is undrafted. No justice in the world.
Martin is of course a controversial pick because of his huge year last year. I enjoyed Martin's success as much as the next guy. He was my starting catcher in both leagues last year. My hunch this year though is that his knees catch up to him. He sat out of a couple of games last year because of knee troubles and that could affect his speed on the basepaths. Obviously this is what sets him apart from other catchers as without the 20 stolen bases, he is exactly the same value as Soto or Towles. This is one where you really have to go with your instinct, but I am not completely sold on Martin to put up another 20 bags this year.
1 comment:
I agree that Posada won't come anywhere near what he did last year. I think that the reason people are drafting him so high is that he is much less of a question than Soto or Towles. Last year, everyone picked Chris Ianetta to be a huge success, but he struggled and lost the job. People will pick Posada because he "money in the bank" and isn't nearly as risky as an unproven rookie.
Post a Comment