Buster Olney's 2026 top 10 at every MLB position: Catchers - ESPN

Spring training camps are underway, which means it is time to look at the state of baseball. As part of our 2026 MLB season preview, ESPN's Buster Olney surveyed those around the industry to help him rank the top 10 players at every position as part of his annual positional ranking series.

Today, we rank the best of the best at catcher.

The objective of this exercise is to identify the best players for the 2026 season, not who might be best in five years or over their career. We will roll out a position per day over the next two weeks. Here's the schedule: starting pitchers (Monday), relief pitchers (Tuesday), first basemen (Thursday), second basemen (Friday), third basemen (Feb. 23), shortstops (Feb. 24), corner outfielders (Feb. 25), center fielders (Feb. 26) and designated hitters (Feb. 27).

Cal Raleigh played 159 games last season, when he generated arguably the greatest performance by a catcher, with 60 homers, 110 runs and a league-high 125 RBIs. This winter, then, the Seattle front office discussed Raleigh's workload, aiming for the best possible combination of games behind the plate and those at designated hitter.

He served as catcher in 121 games last season, and played another 38 at DH, and the Mariners' hope is he'll catch in the same range again. «I think using last year as a marker, for games caught, that's doable for Cal,» said Jerry Dipoto, who runs the Mariners' baseball operations. «Cal isn't interested in rest. He prefers to play.»

But this is not something they will simply dictate to Raleigh. They have learned to trust his feedback and self-assessments, because his habit is to precisely structure his work days. The Mariners' staff says there is nothing haphazard about the way he goes through his