Thanks everyone for the informed and supportive posts. It feels like enough information for anyone who reads this to make a confident draft selection around the topic of an out of position player at catcher.

I tried two good defensive 3B at C in a spring league: 2011 Tejada (A+/A+) and 2004 Rolen (A/A+).  I chose Coors and bat pitching to give them as many chances (errors, SB, PB) as possible.  Both played only at 100%.

Tejada: 6 games, 1 error, 10 SB -- 1 CS, 24 PB
Rolen: 4 games, 0 errors, 8 SB -- 0 CS, 16 PB

Tiny sample size, but interestingly both allowed exactly 4 PB per game. 

The player Tejada threw out was 1907 Honus Wagner (61/99 real life) trying to steal second base.

I recently tried 80 Brett:
                                    

80 Brett:
9 games
no errors
Fld %-1.000
11-PB
12-SBA
4-CS
CS-33%
C-ERA was 4.610 ( better than 86 K Kelly)

C-ERA=Team ERA with that catcher behind the plate.

86 Kelly
95 games
11 errors
Fld %- .981
14-PB
97-SBA
35-CS
CS-36%
C-ERA 5.376

PB hurt most with runners on base - and in scoring position. Brett might have been lucky over 9 games in this league. I'd like to try him for a whole season to see how bad it could get. It would probably make a difference depending on the league and stadium . . .  how full the bases are with runners.  Coors and Palace of the Fans with weak pitching and any non-catcher might be a disaster

In the "how bad can it get" category, in the No Whining Progressive we had an owner play 1984 Andy Thornton at catcher for 162 games.

Thornton is primarily a DH, but did play a little 1B in 1984 and so has a D/D- rating there. 

In 162 games as a catcher, he posted these stats:
.965 Fielding Percentage (this was actually much better than I expected)
31 errors
374 passed balls (2.31 per game)
11 CS in 202 SB attempts (5.4% CS)

Basically, a complete disaster.  Thornton hit pretty well (.317/.401/.478) but in my estimation his defensive performance more than completely erased everything he did on offense.  On net, he was the worst player in the league, way way way below replacement level.

In case anyone is interested, the NWP does not reward tanking in any way - our draft order is determined completely randomly and there is no advantage to having a bad record - so this was just a case of an owner who did not have a regular catcher, and opted to use his best remaining hitter as his catcher.

My conclusion - there is no player in all of WIS, not even 1920-21 Babe Ruth, who hits well enough to justify playing him out of position at catcher.  Unless you are playing in a theme that requires it, it's a disastrous strategy.

Outside of C, it appears SSs that play out of position always seem to do well; perhaps even better than their natural position.

Posted by clackumus on 11/7/2011 5:13:00 PM (view original):

Just wondering, but why would you want to do this?  For any other reason in games that do not matter. For resting your real catcher?

I've played players out of position at catcher a lot playing progressives.  

For example, in a 1969 league, I once played Carl Yastzremski at C for the entire season.  I don't remember his past balls (I am sure they were frequent) - but I do remember him hitting .330+, with 180+RBI, and 60+ HR - winning the NL MVP award, and leading my team to the WS.  I played him there because I had 3 other stud OF's, and I optioned to play the WORST fielding OF at catcher...I figured having one BAD fielder was better than having two (if I had played my best OF defender there). 

I assume you had a stud at 1B as well?

Posted by pinotfan on 6/21/2014 1:42:00 PM (view original):
I assume you had a stud at 1B as well?

well...I'd like to think so!  


this was back in 2005 so the details are a little fuzzy haha