We were all wrong about Seattle Mariners catcher Mike Zunino

Mike Zunino of the Seattle Mariners went undrafted in the majority of fantasy baseball leagues, yet only six catchers have out-produced him this season.

When Mike Zunino went 0-for-3 in the Mariners’ first game of the season on April 3, few people watching could have predicted that he would finish the year as a top-10 catcher.

The 26-year-old had an ADP of 290 making him the 21st catcher off the board and only relevant in deep leagues or two-catcher formats.

In fact, four of the top-12 catchers according to the ESPN Player Rater were not drafted in standard mixed leagues this season. Fantasy baseball players also whiffed on Alex Avila, Robinson Chinos and Tyler Flowers.

If you stretch the list down to the top-20 catchers, then another six were undrafted. That’s 12 out of the top-20 catchers who were not drafted in standard leagues.

Obviously, some of the biggest names behind the plate have been major failures this season, with Jonathan Lucroy, the third catcher off the board, the biggest flop.

High picks invested in Evan Gattis, Russell Martin, Stephen Vogt and Matt Wieters were also wasted.

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Zunino is slashing .248/.328/.501 with 23 home runs, 48 runs, 59 RBI and one stolen base, and all this in only 367 at-bats.

In the three main hitting categories of runs, home runs and RBI, Zunino has outscored the more established (and drafted earlier) names of Yasmani Grandal, Wieters & Lucroy, despite seeing less time at the plate.

With 23 long balls, he is third in home runs behind Gary Sanchez (32) and Salvador Perez (26). He is also fourth in extra-base hits, seventh in RBI and 11th in iverlks.

We all knew that Zunino could hit for power, but we also knew that he was a one-trick pony who would drain your batting average. But we were wrong.

Over his previous 350 games in the major leagues, spanning back to 2013, Zunino hit just .195. No-one expected a leap of 50 points in batting average, but that is what happened. His .248 AVG will not help your team, but it is a higher batting average than Grandal, Vogt, Wieters, Martin or Brian McCann.

Zunino strikes out 37.6% of the time, with an 18.2% swinging strike rate. Only a small handful of players can sustain a Major League career with such poor plate discipline. With over 150 strikeouts this season, his best format is definitely roto and not points leagues.

We all know that the draft is the single most important part of the fantasy baseball season. Championships can be won or lost on those picks, but pre-season research and preparation are worthless if you are not proactive during the season. Amazingly, despite his career-year, Zunino is still available in 60% of leagues. Don’t blame us; we urged you to pick him up back in June when his ownership was just 10%.

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So what do we do about Zunino next season? The power and the strikeouts will remain, but surely he cannot sustain a BABIP of 100 points higher than usual. Expect to see his batting average drop closer to .200 than .250, and expect him to be undrafted again in standard mixed leagues, available to be claimed off waivers when your first-choice catcher disappoints you.