The Dynasty Baseball Positional Rankings have arrived, and we kick off the festivities on Patreon with catchers (top 5 free here on the Brick Wall). Nobody wants to pay up for one, but when you are getting terrible production during the season, you start to maybe question that strategy a bit (I know I have in my 18 teamer). I’ll run through everyone from the elite studs, to the diamonds in the rough, to even just down to the rough in the rough at the very back of the rankings. Even 30 teamers need some love. Here is the 2025 Positional Dynasty Baseball Rankings: Top 78 Catchers:
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Tier 1
1) William Contreras – MIL, C, 27.3 – Contreras is coming off back to back seasons finishing as the #1 catcher in fantasy. He’s smack dab in the middle of his prime at 27 years old. There isn’t much of an argument for anybody else to hold down the #1 dynasty catcher in the game spot. He smashes the ball with a career high 92.8 MPH EV that is in the top 6% of the league, and his 118.1 MPH Max EV was the 4th hardest hit ball all season. He has a good feel to hit and a plus plate approach (20.5/11.5 K%/BB%). And he also nabbed 9 bags this year, which is a really, really nice little bonus to get from your catcher. The only quibble with his profile is that he hits it on the ground a lot with a 54.5% GB%, which definitely limits his homer upside, but he hits the ball hard enough where he can still hit plenty of dingers, as evidenced by him knocking out 23 this year. – 2025 Projection: 88/22/84/.279/.360/.460/6
2) Adley Rutschman – BAL, C, 27.2 – It was announced that Baltimore is moving the left field fences back in after moving them out and making them taller before the 2022 season. Gotta love baseball where teams can just be like, yea, we are going to make our field smaller, or bigger, or whatever they hell they want. How fun if in football teams can just be like, so we’re going to make out homefield 150 yards next year. Or 75 yards. Or if in basketball they can just make the rim 11 feet high. It’s genuinely a cool thing that everything isn’t so cookie cutter. And I respect Baltimore for realizing they overcorrected their fences originally and figuring out a happy medium. The Orioles had the 9th worst park for righty homers in 2024, so hopefully that number rises closer to the middle of the pack or higher. And with Adley Rutschman being a switch hitter who put up an 18.8 degree launch with a 42.1% Pull%, this is only going to help his lackluster homer totals. This is a nice bump for his fantasy value, which was starting to get quite boring. He hit .250 with 19 homers and 1 steal in 148 games. His OBP league owners were upset too with his 9.1% BB% (13.4% in 2023) and .318 OBP. He makes a ton of contact (17.1% whiff%), but he does it with a slow swing (69 MPH which is well below average), so he really hasn’t done a ton of damage with an almost dead average Barrel% in his career. Moving the fences in is perfect for him, and while it might not be an explosion, 23 homers would be better than 19, along with the added BA, RBI and Runs that come with it. Everything seems setup for him to have a relatively big age 27 year old season. 2025 Projection: 76/23/83/.265/.341/.445/2
3) Yainer Diaz – HOU, C, 26.7 – Diaz’ launch went in the wrong direction in 2024, dropping from 11.5 to 8.5 degrees, and it tanked his Barrel% from 12.2% to 7.6%. He went from hitting 23 homers with a .538 SLG to 16 homers with a .441 SLG. He still hit the ball tremendously hard with a 90.2/94.5 MPH AVG/FB EV, and his contact rates hit a career best with a 17.3% K%, so he was still an excellent offense player, finishing as the 4th best catcher in fantasy. Lowering the launch and improving the contact rates also resulted in a career best .299 BA with a .295 xBA to back it up. He’s a really good offensive catcher no matter where the launch lands, but for fantasy, it would be nice if he could bring that back up to 2023 levels, or even higher. He has a terrible plate approach with a 3.9% BB% and 42.6% Chase%, so certainly take a star away here for OBP leagues, but he’s clearly proven he can make the profile work while he’s in his physical prime. 2025 Projection: 71/19/85/.287/.319/.461/1
Tier 2
4) Samuel Basallo – BAL, C/1B, 20.7 – Basallo didn’t quite obliterate the upper minors like he did the lower minors, slashing .278/.341/.449 with 19 homers, 10 steals, and a 21.1/8.6 K%/BB% in 127 games, but when you take into account that he was 19 years old for the vast majority of the season, it gets a lot more impressive. He was also much better at Double-A with a 134 wRC+ in 106 games than he was at Triple-A (62 wRC+ with a 31.4% K% in 21 games), so I think we can give him a pass for an adjustment period with a new team, coaches, teammates, league, home park etc … Even at Triple-A, the sweet lefty swinging, 6’4” Basallo put up a 91.1 MPH EV. He’s always put up solid contact rates in the minors, but the spike at Triple-A could also be an indicator that we shouldn’t expect the highest BA at least early in his career. He puts the ball on the ground a decent amount, but with his type of double plus power, he’s launch proof. I don’t know where he fits in defensively with Adley behind the plate, and plenty of competition at 1B (Mayo and Mountcastle), but long term there seems to be plenty of room for all of them. He’s a special power bat. – 2025 Projection: 28/9/35/.241/.300/.430/2 Prime Projection: 84/30/97/.268/.337/.505/6
5) Francisco Alvarez – NYM, C, 23.4 – Alvarez just went through an almost textbook sophomore slump season. He followed up his 25 homer rookie year in 123 games with a disappointing sophomore campaign, jacking out only 11 in 113 games, including the playoffs. The underlying stats back up the mediocre numbers with a 12.8% Barrel% in 2023 vs. a 6.7% in 2024, but the sophomore slump isn’t about getting unlucky, it’s about the game of adjustments. And even with the down power year, he actually put up a better wRC+ this year (102) than he did last year (97), so it was also about Alvarez working on becoming a more complete hitter himself. This is just the normal ebb and flow of a young player’s career, and with Alvarez going through those growing pains as a 21-22 year old on the major league level, I’m not even the slightest bit concerned. His power can’t be held down for long with a 114.8 MPH Max EV which was in the top 5% of the league, and his 88.8/94.2 MPH AVG/FB EV was still really good. He also made some incremental improvements to the contact rates, bringing the whiff% under 30% to 29.6%, to go along with a his solid 28.9% Chase%. Alvarez is still right on track to be one of the top hitting catchers in the game for the next decade. I’m smelling a big year 3 where he really puts it all together. – 2025 Projection: 68/25/82/.246/.323/.458/2
By Michael Halpern (@MichaelCHalpern)
Email: michaelhalpern@imaginarybrickwall.com
Twitter: Imaginary Brick Wall (@DynastyHalp)
Blue Sky: Dynasty Halp (@ImaginaryBrickWall)