We’re going position-by-position from now until the All Star Break looking at the surprises and busts and foreshadowing the rest of the season.

Today, let’s tackle CATCHERS

Living up to draft-day value: Mike Napoli, Geovany Soto, Kurt Suzuki, Ryan Doumit, Carlos Santana, Buster Posey

Best production for draft investment: Miguel Olivo, John Buck

Falling short: Joe Mauer, Victor Martinez, Brian McCann, Matt Wieters, Miguel Montero, Yadier Molina

This has been an interesting year for catchers in fantasy baseball leagues.

On one hand, only one catcher, Miguel Olivo, is a top 100 fantasy player this season based on stats accrued to date. And only barely.

Last year, Joe Mauer was a Top 10 player and both Victor Martinez and Brian McCann ended up in the top 100. This year, the Big Three are disappointing, not to mention injuries to Miguel Montero and Jorge Posada and a very sub-par campaign by Matt Wieters.

Production at catcher hasn’t been as top-heavy as in past years but there’s been a bit more depth. That’s largely thanks to the call-ups of Posey and Santana, who have been offering star production and might have cracked the top 100 if they had been given the opportunity to be at the big-league level from the get-go.

Additionally, seven catchers have 10 HRs at the All Star Break, including hardly drafted players John Buck, Rod Barajas, and Chris Snyder.

Catchers unexpectedly contributing positively to batting average include Ivan Rodriguez, Yorvit Torreabla, Ryan Hanigan, and Ronny Paulino.

So far, this seems to have been a year where paid to wait for catchers in late rounds of fantasy drafts.

Going forward, a good case can be made that the best catchers are the rookies. We’d still take the long track record of Joe Mauer and Brian McCann, but we have to acknowledge that the gap between the haves and have-nots has diminished at the catching position.