citizenclone

Four Week Warning: Get yourself some real catchers

The party’s over for hiding bad defensive players behind the plate.

This has been mentioned multiple times on recent podcasts, but in four weeks, we’re making significant changes to how playing non-catchers out of position at catcher will impact stolen bases. If you’re accustomed to playing left fielders or first basemen at catcher, it’s time to consider some moves.

The Problem We’re Fixing

Right now, the penalties for playing someone out of position at catcher are minimal. You can stash your best hitter with terrible defense behind the plate and watch him still throw out baserunners at a reasonable rate. We believe actual catchers are important, and additional catchers were added to the draft a few years ago based on that belief.

Positions should matter in the game – they create more interesting strategic choices and roster construction decisions. This is one clear situation where positional penalties are weak, and that removes meaningful trade-offs and flattens the decision-making process.

What’s Changing

The success rate for stolen base attempts against out-of-position catchers is getting a major adjustment:

  • Teams will run twice as aggressively against non-catchers playing catcher
  • Caught stealing percentages should drop to around 10% against non-catchers
  • Translation: Speed becomes more valuable against teams that ignore the catcher position

Balancing Recent Changes

Our most recent game change adjusted the logic for taking extra bases, which may have slightly reduced the value of player speed in some situations. This catcher adjustment complements that change and adds value for speedy runners with more opportunities to capitalize on teams that don’t prioritize defense behind the plate.

Your Four-Week Warning

Get your catchers sorted out, or expect to give up a lot more steals. We’re confident this change improves a strategic element of the game, and we also know this change will require roster adjustments for many teams, so we want to give everyone a fair opportunity to adjust their approach – you have four full weeks to prepare (this change is expected the week of October 20th) which gives you:

  • Chance to evaluate your current roster construction across all teams
  • Chance to make trades for catchers and backup catchers where needed
  • Possible time to use the draft to address catcher needs
  • Opportunity to hit the free agent market for real catchers