Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports
I love Carlos Santana. Wait, what do you mean he’s on my Fantasy Baseball roster?
Okay, okay. Yes, I do own Santana in a handful of my leagues, but I have a fantasy man crush on him and I don’t care who knows it. And after an awesome first month of the regular season, Santana is my personal number one ranked fantasy catcher, but is making the case to be the universal number one as well.
Through 21 games played this season, Santana is batting a whopping .395 (leads league) with five home runs, 13 RBI and 16 runs. The Cleveland Indians offense is firing on all cylinder, ranking fifth in the majors in batting average (.270) and a lot of that has to do with the stellar play of their awesome catcher. Now, Santana, a career .252 hitter, certainly won’t continue to hit at this pace for much longer, but that doesn’t mean he will tail off as an elite fantasy catcher. Santana has hit 18 and 27 home runs over the past two years respectively, making him a relatively safe bet to launch at least 20 long balls this season. The RBI will continue to climb as second baseman Jason Kipnis is likely to heat up sooner rather than later, plus lead off man Michael Bourn, a guy that is sporting a career .339 on base percentage, will be activated from the disabled list any day now. Santana, who has been flip-flopping between the fifth and sixth slot, should be a premiere source of runs batted in from the catcher position.
Also, batting average of balls in play (BABIP) is a highly regarded statistic in fantasy baseball. Then again, what isn’t? As of right now, Santana is leading the league in BABIP (.455), which basically means he is putting the ball in position where it will land safely for a hit a high percentage of the time. If he continues to either pull the ball towards the gaps or just drive it up the middle, the batting average will remain at least serviceable all season long. At 27-years old, perhaps Santana is emerging as more of a contact hitter during his prime year.
Personally, I think that with the high volume of five-tool catchers in the league right now, Santana often gets overlooked as an elite option. I mean, you have guys like Buster Posey, Joe Mauer, Yadier Molina and more that are in more of the spotlight than Santana is, but I believe he has the potential and skill to surpass all of these guys among fantasy points this season.
Yeah, he’s that good.
Adam Pfeifer is a featured fantasy sports columnist for Rant Sports.
You can follow him on Twitter @aPfeiferRS.
