Yainer Diaz burst onto the scene last year providing a huge fantasy boost in the most depleted position in the fantasy baseball realm. Those managers who did the due diligence spent the long hours and burned the midnight oil to go after an under-scouted, underrated catcher were rewarded more dividends than those who bought Bitcoin back in 2008.
The managers who let the Realmutos, the Perezs, and Contreras snag this diamond in the rough at ADP 100 found out just how much value they had. Now the question is, can this Catcher catch lightning in 2025 and return to production at his now higher cost? Let us dig in and find out together.
Yainer Diaz 2024 Production
Yainer Diaz was a no-name 25-year-old catcher looking for an opportunity to shine on an always good, yet always hated Houston Astros team. I think the most hated team in MLB now belongs to the Los Angeles Dodgers with their buying championships and not earning them and all, but I digress, this is Fantasy so let’s sift through just how good Diaz was last year and how he can match if not improve for 2025.
For reference, I am going off the superior Fantrax app for the rankings among catchers for last year. Starting off in the Hits category Diaz ranked First overall in catchers, Runs Diaz drops to Fourth, Singles he is First, Doubles he’s second, Triples he’s first, Homeruns he’s 12th (worst category), and RBI Diaz is back to Fourth.
If you are a fantasy manager in roto leagues, then this should be your number one catcher to target and go after, as he is a top offensive catcher in the most prudent categories, barring home runs, you will have to target a more power hitter in another position to make up for this. If you look at strikeouts, for those leagues where K’s matter to hitters, Diaz had just over 100, which is no Matt Olson number, but it’s on par with the higher ADP of Adley Rutschman, and far better than the number 1 ranked William Contreras.
For those managers that utilize the points system, depending on how certain scoring for the metrics of your league, Yainer Diaz should have been a top two to four catcher as far as points are concerned. But given his ADP position, the value that a team would have gotten in return, and that of comparative players in the same position, Diaz got the most return for draft value and given production.
All in all, Diaz was an absolute stud of a catcher last year, the question now is will he reproduce these same stats or will he rise above or drop below? Let us look at his underlying metrics to dissect this Houston Astros Catcher.
2025 Fantasy Outlook
For those first-time readers and a reminder to my treasured loyalist followers, I am a skill not stats fantasy guy. This means I don’t look at a tiny box on a magazine or website and base my draft selection on a random number for a future season. Rather I look at power as a whole, not just home runs, contact percentage, not just batting average, and so on and so forth.
For Diaz the biggest question you are asking yourself is, yeah he was good last year, hindsight is 20-20, what about this year? Should I draft him this year? The answer is yes, absolutely target, bid, draft, trade, do whatever you have to do to get Diaz on your team. Let us look at why.
We have to only look in the realm of catchers, and from that realm, there are only 14 options that are of any fantasy relevance, this is as shallow of a pool as one can find. Given that shallow pool, you have to act fast to get the good ones. The underlying metrics support a repeat of the worst season for Yainer Diaz, and the ceiling is something spectacular.
With continued improvement in reducing chasing (improvement in his eye ability) and improving launch angle, we can easily see Homeruns increase along with overall power. His contact percentage is looking repeatable, and his hard contact rate should increase given his full year of playing experience under his belt.
Given the fact that he will be on the Houston Astros, Diaz will be facing a weak Angels rotation, the always weak A’s rotation, Diaz should feast on these in division rotations. Given this the Slugging metric is going up, OPS+ going up, and the best metric is that his ADP is at 94. This is a 9th-rounder in a 10-team league and a 7th-rounder in a 12-team league. With Diaz’s fantastic metrics and great potential in a shallow Caters pool, I highly recommend going for this great player a round or two earlier than projected to make sure you lock up a scarce position.
