2026 Catcher Preview
Rates & Barrels: A show about Baseball
The Athletic
4.7 • 874 Ratings
🗓️ 20 January 2026
⏱️ 85 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Eno and DVR continue their 2026 position preview series at catcher -- digging into early average draft position (ADP) to look for potentially overvalued and undervalued players at the position for the upcoming season -- and wonder what comes next for Cal Raleigh following one of the best yearly performances in baseball history.
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Rundown
1:00 ADP Tier 1 -- Cal Raleigh
10:04 ADP Tier 2a -- Ben Rice, William Contreras, Shea Langeliers & Hunter Goodman
27:47 ADP Tier 2b -- Agustin Ramírez, Drake Baldwin, Salvador Perez, Will Smith & Yainer Diaz
44:27 ADP Tier 3 -- Adley Rutschman, Alejandro Kirk, Gabriel Moreno, Francisco Alvarez, Samuel Basallo, Kyle Teel & Carter Jensen
58:37 ADP Tier 4 -- J.T. Realmuto, Dillon Dingler, Austin Wells, Tyler Stephenson & Logan O'Hoppe
1:11:34 ADP Tier 5 -- Ryan Jeffers, Carlos Narváez, Bo Naylor & Carson Kelly
1:15:44 (Beyond Pick 300) -- Deeper League Options, Prospects & Sleepers (Edgar Quero, Keibert Ruiz, Harry Ford, Patrick Bailey, Freddy Fermin, Danny Jansen).
Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.social
Follow DVR on Bluesky: @DVR.bsky.social
e-mail: ratesandbarrels@gmail.com
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Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris
Cal Raleigh Thumbnail Photo: Steph Chambers/Getty Images
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Rates and barrels. It's Tuesday, January 20th. |
| 0:18.3 | Derek Van Riper here with Enoseres. |
| 0:19.9 | On this episode, we preview the catcher position. |
| 0:22.8 | We dig into both two catcher leagues and single catcher formats, which are actually |
| 0:27.3 | more popular overall, even though most drafts this time of year are being drafted in two |
| 0:32.4 | catcher formats. |
| 0:33.4 | We'll break things down based on NFBC ADP. |
| 0:36.7 | If you're new to the series, we have a few of these episodes out already. |
| 0:40.0 | So check out third base, shortstop, and second base. |
| 0:42.8 | They are already in the feed and on our YouTube channel. |
| 0:45.7 | We go through top to bottom based on average draft position, |
| 0:49.2 | looking at where players are being drafted right now. |
| 0:51.4 | Talk about whether they are overvalued, undervalued, or appropriately valued for the upcoming season. And most weeks, we've got five full episodes a week on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts. So we're glad you're here. Welcome to the middle of our position preview series. There's some of the biggest episodes we put out all season long. If you want to continue the conversation after the show, join our Discord. |
| 1:11.7 | You can do that with the link in the show description. |
| 1:14.5 | Like this video if you're watching on YouTube and subscribe wherever you enjoy your podcast. |
| 1:18.7 | So all the preampling is aside, you know, we're going to go right to it because we tend to run pretty long in these episodes. |
| 1:25.8 | Tier 1 is a tier of 1 at the catcher position, and it is no surprise to anybody. |
| 1:31.1 | It's Cal Raleigh, all by himself, sitting up there right around that pick 15 mark. |
| 1:35.6 | So you're thinking late first rounder, early second rounder in a 15 team league. |
| 1:41.1 | I don't really know what to say about Cal Raleigh at this point because I thought I had |
| 1:45.2 | him figured out going into last season. He put the ball in the air more than ever. 25.1% ground |
| 1:51.4 | ball rate and that turned into a good thing. It was an MVP worthy campaign. 60 homers, 125 RBIs, |
... |
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