I mentioned in an email a few weeks ago that I wanted to finally put into writing some official guidelines for determining position eligibility within the DTBL. The rule has always been pretty clear cut: a player will be placed at the position in which he played the most games the previous season. But there is one small exception to this rule for which I'm looking to remove any confusion going forward. I have allowed players to remain at catcher despite playing more games at another position since it is hard to find enough decent catchers to fill the ranks. But I only make this exception when the number of games caught is relatively close to the games played at that other position. So from here on out, this will be the metric used:
A player can be designated as a catcher as long as they did actually catch in a game the previous year and the number of games caught was within at least 15 of the number of games played at their most frequently played position (not counting DH/PH/PR). Also, if a player catches at least 40 games, they can be designated as a catcher regardless of how many games they play at other positions.
How did I come up with these 15/40 numbers? Well, I wanted to set a rule that has historical precedent. So I used Baseball Reference's awesome Play Index tool to identify all of the instances in DTBL history where I have chosen to put a player at catcher despite playing more games somewhere else. Then I looked at each of those cases to find numbers that matched up with most of those decisions. Turns out, this has happened nine times, including twice last year (Victor Martinez and Evan Gattis). Here are the players, years and number of games played at each position for those nine instances:
2013 - Evan Gattis - 42 C, 48 OF, 4 1B -> C (DTBL rookie)
2013 - Victor Martinez - 3 C, 11 1B, 139 DH -> C
2010 - Mike Napoli - 66 C, 70 1B, 2 DH -> C
2007 - Ryan Doumit - 28 C, 38 OF, 3 1B, 1 DH -> C
2004 - Mike Piazza - 50 C, 68 1B, 8 DH -> C
2002 - Matt LeCroy - 6 C, 8 1B, 41 DH -> C (DTBL rookie)
1998 - Dave Nilsson - 7 C, 49 1B, 37 OF -> C
1998 - Todd Hundley - 2 C, 34 OF -> C
1993 - Mickey Tettleton - 56 C, 59 1B, 55 OF, 4 DH -> C
As it turns out, my new guideline would have caused a different result in 2 of these 9 cases. But I don't want to repeat whatever my reasoning was behind leaving Dave Nilsson and Todd Hundley at catcher in 1999 after both of them played another position far more frequently the previous year. Piazza's '04 season was the reason why I decided to add 40 games as an automatic qualifier. On the flip side, there was one instance where I found a player who could have been placed at catcher using these guidelines, but I chose a different position:
2008 - Pablo Sandoval - 11 C, 17 1B, 12 3B -> 1B (DTBL rookie)
But Sandoval was a DTBL rookie at the time. Which leads me to my next clarification. I can override these guidelines and place a player at the position he played most often, rather than catcher, if the player is in the draft pool and not on a DTBL roster. I might do this in cases like Sandoval where they are not expected to continue to catch. Also, if you are keeping a player who is eligible to play catcher based on these guidelines, but you would prefer them to move to their primary position for some inexplicable reason, just let me know and I will grant your wish.
So... this is Nick's second piece of bad news regarding Victor Martinez this week. Martinez will not remain at catcher since he only caught two games last year while played 35 at first base.
While I'm at it, I'd also like to remind you how I determine positions for pitchers who made appearances as both a starter and a reliever the previous year. Unlike offensive players, it isn't based on number of games started vs. relieved. As long as they had at least one of each, their position will be set based on their projected role for the upcoming season. I do this to try to keep to a minimum the number of RPs who are actually starters. Thus, a guy like Josh Collmenter will be a SP this year.
Official position changes for 2015 won't be posted for a little while since I haven't even started working on the player list yet, but you ought to be able to figure out where your guys will be positioned yourselves using these revised guidelines.