An Analysis of 2025 Rankings

A look at preseason rankings across the fantasy baseball landscape

Feb 06, 2025

For the debut post of Runs Produced, we’re going to take a look at the preseason rankings for catchers in redraft leagues.

For these purposes, we’ve compiled the experts’ top 30 preseason rankings from four popular fantasy sites/platforms: CBS, ESPN, Yahoo, and Fantrax. In future posts, we’ll look at the post-30 deeper rankings and provide detailed player previews for the upcoming season.

Without further ado, here are the overall compiled rankings (the fifth column below is the average ranking across the four sites):

CBS|ESPN|Yahoo|Fantrax|Average

William Contreras 1 1 1 1 1
Adley Rutschman 2 2 2 2 2
Salvador Perez 3 4 3 4 3.5
Yainer Diaz 4 3 6 3 4
Cal Raleigh 6 6 4 6 5.5
Will Smith 7 5 7 5 6
Willson Contreras 5 7 5 9 6.5
J.T. Realmuto 9 8 9 7 8.25
Logan O’Hoppe 10 9 8 8 8.75
Shea Langeliers 8 10 10 9 9.25

There are few surprises in the 1-10 rankings. William Contreras unanimously takes the top spot, and Adley Rutschman comes in at second.

Contreras was named an All-Star for the second time in 2024 and finished fifth in NL MVP voting last season after slashing .281/.365/.466, a near mirror image of his 2023 line of .289/.367/.457. He appeared in a career-high 155 games last season for the Brewers, hitting 23 home runs and 92 RBI. He also boosted his fantasy value by stealing nine bases.

Rutschman failed to replicate his excellent 2023 season but still managed a .250 average and 19 home runs with 79 RBI, still pretty good for a “down year.”

The ageless Salvador Perez is ranked third by CBS and Yahoo, and fourth by ESPN and Fantrax, for a composite average of 3.5. The nine-time All-Star broke the 100 RBI mark for the second time of his career in 2024, finishing the season with 104. He hit .271 with 27 home runs.

J.T. Realmuto is entering his 12th year in the majors and will be 34 when the season begins. As the years have piled up, he’s down a few spots from his peak, coming in at #8. In 2023, Realmuto hit 20 home runs and stole 16 steals - his speed adding huge value at the catcher position. He only swiped two bags and hit 14 homes in 99 games last year. However, if he gets through the season healthy, he could again finish as a top-five catcher once again.

Francisco Alvarez 11 11 11 12 11.25
Tyler Stephenson 12 12 12 11 11.75
Austin Wells 13 13 14 14 13.5
Sean Murphy 15 17 13 13 14.5
Gabriel Moreno 14 14 15 18 15.25
Keibert Ruiz 16 15 18 16 16.25
Ryan Jeffers 18 18 17 15 17
Connor Wong 19 16 16 17 17
Jonah Heim 25 19 23 20 21.75
Joey Bart 20 28 22 19 22.25

The bolded numbers in italics above highlight the biggest ranking discrepancies in the 11-20 rankings, which are Jonah Heim and Joey Bart.

Heim comes in at #19 overall on the list, which equals his #19 ranking by ESPN. His overall average of 21.75 was lowered a bit by the CBS ranking of #25. Heim had a career year in 2023 with 18 home runs and 95 RBI while hitting .258 in 131 games. In the same exact number of games last season, those numbers fell to 13 home runs and 59 RBI. His batting average also dropped almost 40 points to .220. If Heim struggles in 2025, the newly acquired Kyle Higashioka could press him for playing time.

Bart ranked right around #20 in three places, but in ESPN’s rankings he fell to #28, giving him an average of 22.25. In Bart’s first year with the Pirates in 2024, he hit .265 with a career high in home runs (13) and (45) RBI. These numbers were accumulated in only 80 games and 282 plate appearances. Behind Bart are former highly regarded Pirates prospects Henry Davis and Endy Rodriguez.

Patrick Bailey 23 25 24 23 23.75
Alejandro Kirk 21 37 21 21 25
Bo Naylor 22 33 20 25 25
Hunter Goodman 26 22 25 27 25
Travis d'Arnaud 28 27 28 24 26.75
Mitch Garver 33 20 31 28 28
Freddy Fermin 29 29 29 29 29
Kyle Higashioka 37 23 34 22 29
David Fry 31 34 26 26 29.25
Miguel Amaya 30 35 33 30 32

As the rankings get deeper, it’s not surprising to see bigger discrepancies. However, it’s interesting to look closer at whom the outliers are. The biggest anomaly between #21 and #30 is Alejandro Kirk. Kirk is ranked identically at #21 in three spots, but ESPN has him much lower at the 37th spot.

Kirk is still only 26 years old and may not be quite as good as his 2022 season suggested, but #37 seems too low to me.

In 2022, he hit .285/.372/.415 with 14 home runs and 63 RBI. He followed that up with eight home runs and 43 RBI with averages of .250/.334/.358 in 2023, and five home runs and 54 RBI with averages of .253/.319/.359 in 2024. He also only played in 103 games last season, so I would expect his counting stats to be higher in 2025. You’d still like to see more power out of Kirk, but he did hit a solid .269 after the All-Star break.

Bo Naylor finds himself in the same boat as ESPN has him at a rank of #33 but he peaks at #20 in Yahoo’s rankings. Naylor had some momentum as a prospect coming into the 2024 season as he hit 11 home runs and 32 RBI in 67 games during his rookie season in 2023. Unfortunately, in nearly double the games played last season (123), he managed only 13 home runs and 39 RBI, and his batting average dropped from .237 to .201. Naylor does have some speed and swiped six bags last year. He’s still young and has potential upside - he’s for sure not worse than 32 other catchers.

Mitch Garver has a total range of 13 spots as he finds himself at #33 on CBS but #20 on ESPN. There’s no question that Garver is a talented offensive player. He has two seasons of .270+ batting average and hit 31 home runs with the Twins back in 2019. The wide range for Garver is likely a reflection of his lengthy injury history and the question mark over how many games he will play in 2025.

For further reference, here are the full top 30 lists from each site: