FanHouse JRTowles

It's been quite a first half for JR Towles. He opened the season with the Astros, billed as one of the best catching prospects in the majors. For all of April and May, he hit like a cheap version of Brad Ausmus and earned himself a demotion to AAA. In AAA, he mashed to a .278/.380/.574 line, with eight of his 17 hits going for extra bases. Now he's back in Houston after Humberto Quintero went on the DL with a concussion. From the Houston Chronicle:

"Reality is reality," he said. "I wasn't doing very well. Certainly, I was disappointed and frustrated. But I realized I wasn't helping the team. They felt the need to send me back down to get things back straight. I feel good. I'm here to take advantage of the opportunity."

[...]

"I've made some adjustments, and hopefully things will go well," he said.

With the Astros badly sliding right now and sitting 11 games out of first place, they're going to be better served playing Towles than Quintero, concussion or no concussion. Towles and Hunter Pence represent just about the only young talent that Ed Wade has to build around, so they might as well figure out if Towles is the real deal as soon as they can.

Starting this year, the age of no-hit, good-D catchers in Houston was supposed to come crashing to an end. After seven years of Brad Ausmus and his career OPS+ of 7, JR Towles was supposed to arrive and provide Houston with a bat to go with great defense behind the plate. Towles is instead hitting .145/.270/.282 (for an OPS+ of 46) and that's earned him a demotion back to AAA Round Rock. At least he's taking it in stride:

"Since I wasn't playing the last couple of days, I figured it was coming," Towles said. "I guess I wasn't too surprised. I'm not happy about it, but I'm going to work hard to get back up here."

[...]

"Maybe I was thinking too much," he said. "I was trying to get things figured out and people were saying, 'Do this; do that.' I was trying everything. I think I needed to go back to the basics and work things out."

Towles cruised through the minors with a .301/.389/.471 line, showing that he's got a good approach at the plate to go with his hitting talent. It seemed like he was just over his head as a 23-year old dealing with learning a pitching staff and hitting major league pitching at the same time. It shouldn't take him long to straighten himself out in AAA and be back in Houston, though.

Jay Bruce isn't the only major prospect playing in the National League Central this year. Before the season started, JR Towles was ranked by everyone as one of the best catching prospects in baseball, set to end the Astros' years of Brad Aumsus-induced offensive ineptitude at the position. Unfortunately, he's off to an Ausmus-like start, hitting only .149/.276/.289 before Sunday's game. Still, he says he's not that worried about his ugly start.

"Definitely, my hitting is struggling a little bit right now," Towles said. "There's no way of hiding that. But the one thing I can do is do well behind the plate and not let my hitting affect my defense.

"One thing I take pride in is doing well behind the plate. I'd rather, like I've said before, do extremely well behind the plate than go 4-for-4 at the plate. Any time I can help those pitchers out in any way, it makes me feel good. It makes me feel like I've had a job well done."

It's true that much of a catcher's work is behind the plate, rather than at it, but I think that most pitchers would like to see a 4-for-4 night from their catcher and the resulting run support and might even sacrifice some of the behind the plate stuff for that kind of offense.

There are a slew of new options at backstop that have emerged over the past two weeks, especially when you consider how often fantasy players will rely on someone old like Jason Varitek, and just stick him in there and move on. Catcher shouldn't be given that much attention, but you at least have know when to jump ship and hop onto a new option.

J.R. Towles, for instance, is totally legit. He might not have Brad Ausmus' defense just quite yet, but he doesn't have Ausmus' weak stick either. Geovany Soto is rapidly rising up the list of new catchers that fantasy players want to jump onto. Ryan Doumit is a K machine, but he's a masher too and has a ton of power in his bat; I'd be all over him if I didn't own an elite catcher or one of the two above. Ramon Hernandez is hot right now too, but I think he's more of a sell high if you can move catchers at all.

Player	Team	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun
McCann	ATL		at FLA	at FLA	at FLA	LAD	LAD	LAD
Vmart	CLE	BOS	BOS	DET	DET	at MIN	at MIN	at MIN
Martin	LAD	PIT	PIT	PIT		at ATL	at ATL	at ATL
Posada	NYY	at TB	at TB	BOS	BOS	at BAL	at BAL	at BAL
AJ Pierz.	CHW	OAK	OAK	at BAL	at BAL	at TB	at TB	at TB

Rather than hand you some cumbersome weekly lineup planner, we're just gonna bring you weekly rankings and schedules for each position. Besides, you're smart. And if you're not, we're here to help. Email the Fantasy FanHouse crew and we'll holler back with help.

Some notes on the Catcher Rankings:
- J.R. Towles is a younger guy you might not be onto yet, but you should; same with Geovany Soto. Both are great (and cheap!) options with a ton of upside.

- John Buck is a guy I'm a little higher on than our rankings (crazy mathematical formula, natch) indicate. Buck's got some power in his bat and got white hot at the beginning of 2007; could end up with high teens in homers but probably not a great batting average.

- Brian McCann, with a four game stand in Colorado this week, could easily be the number one guy on this list; it's Russell Martin's ability to swipe bags that puts him over the top (although I'd take McCann for the power and because I'm a homer).

Player		Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun
R. Martin	LAD	@ AR	@ ARI	@ARI		SD	SD	SD
McCann	ATL	@ COL	@ COL	@ COL	@ COL	@ WAS	@WAS	@WAS
Mauer	MIN	@ CHW		@ CHW	@CHW	@KC	@KC	@KC
Johjima	SEA	@BAL	@ TB	@ TB	@ TB	ANA	ANA	ANA
Soto	CHC	@ PIT		@ PIT	@ PIT	@ PHI	@ PHI	@ PHI