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Fantasy baseball: Where to find value at catcher

Tom Murphy quietly batted .273 with 18 home runs for the Mariners in a limited role last season. Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports

Nobody likes paying up for catchers. They play fewer games than their counterparts around the diamond that get to stand upright. They put up worse rate stats in the games they do play. Their injury risk might be higher at a more physically demanding position. They're just generally unsexy picks. Some industry analysts even go as far as to compare the catcher position in fantasy MLB to the kicker position in fantasy NFL, and while that is very misguided for a bunch of reasons beyond the scope of this article, it goes to show just how much people hate drafting catchers.

And like kickers, people often put them last on their research list, thinking they'll just take whoever is out there at the end of the draft and that it doesn't really matter. And that, my friends, can be a major inefficiency for those of us who realize that catchers are just as viable a source of value as any other position. They accrue the same types of stats and in the same fundamental way as any other position. Or maybe you don't care about any of that and just want someone else to do the heavy lifting and tell you which catchers are best of the "whoever is out there at the end of the draft."