2017 Fantasy Baseball Deep Sleeper: Matt Wieters

Player: Matt Wieters

Team: Washington Nationals

Position:  Catcher

Current ADP: 226

Positional Rank: 14

2016 was quite the rebound season for Matt Wieters as he fully recovered from the Tommy John surgery that had limited him to just 111 games over the two years prior.  In 2016 Wieters hit .243 with 48 runs, 17 home runs and 66 RBI over 124 games for the Orioels.  Baltimore decided to let Wieters walk in free agency this offseason where he ultimately signed with the Nationals right as spring training was kicking into gear.  The Nationals had already acquired Derek Norris over the winter which lead many wondering why exactly they went ahead and signed Wieters but with the recent release of Norris the starting gig is fully in the hands of Wieters and now he finds himself as one of the better late round value plays on draft day.

For Wieters, when healthy, he has been one of the better offensive catchers in baseball.  As you can see from the chart below, excluding his injury plagued 2014 and 2015 seasons, he has averaged nearly 20 home runs and 70+ RBI a with a batting average that will sit around .250.

For the catcher position I find that unless you are snagging one of the top 3 guys the overall average production is relatively the same.  Most catchers offer a mediocre average with home run power in the teens with a few players consistently offering 20+ home run ability.   For example, let’s look at the five catchers that are currently going ahead of Wieters and compare their production to what Wieters can provide.

So, as you can see, aside from Yadier Molina who offers the least amount of power but the best batting average, the overall production from Salvador Perez to Russell Martin is something around .240 with 60 runs, 20 home runs and 65 RBI.  Those players are all going anywhere from 3-to-6 rounds ahead of Wieters despite similar overall production.

Per usual let’s examine the FanGraphs projections for Wieters for this upcoming season.

The first thing worth noticing is the games played.  The projections show that Wieters is likely going to be in a platoon or miss time due to injury.  The release of Derek Norris should take away any chance of a straight platoon so it is much more likely that we see Wieters playing something similar to what he had last year in the 130-game range.  Even with an average of 100 games played you can see that his projections of .251, 41 runs, 13 home runs and 50 RBI are still comparable with the catchers ranked ahead of him.  I have long been a proponent of waiting to draft a catcher in fantasy and Wieters is somebody I have been targeting late in drafts.