Did you know that Jonathan Lucroy, the top fantasy catcher in 2016, ended up as the 115th overall player on ESPN’s Player Rater? Buster Posey was the only catcher to log over 600 plate appearances, 614 to be exact, and that was because he played 11 games at first base and five games at DH. For perspective, George Springer led all of baseball with 744 plate appearances.

Catcher is a physically grueling position fraught with risk, so I get the perspective of wanting to lock up the top tier players for stability and to gain an advantage over the other owners. The problem is cost.

According to our consensus ADP rankings, Buster Posey is going at pick 41.3, Gary Sanchez at 48, Jonathan Lucroy at 64 and Kyle Schwarber at 67. Did I mention that the top catcher last year ended as the 115th overall player?

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Enter Willson Contreras of the Chicago Cubs. He’s the fifth catcher off the board with an average ADP of 100.3. I usually punt the catcher position in one-catcher leagues, but I have to admit, I’m intrigued at this price.

Contreras is 24 years old, 6′ 1″, 210 pounds and bats from the right side of the plate. It could be the left side if you change the camera angle, but that’s a discussion for another day. He started out as a third baseman, but transitioned to catcher in 2012, so he’s not the prototypical “dad runner” (all honor and glory shall be bestowed upon J.J. Zachariason for that one).

He spent four years in Single-A, then rocketed through the Cubs’ minor league system. In his lone Double-A season, Contreras batted .333/.413/.478 with nine home runs and four stolen bases. He had a 10.9 BB% with a more impressive 11.9 K%.

The following year, he played 55 games in Triple-A before getting the call-up to The Show. He batted .353/.442/.593 with nine homers and four stolen bases while maintaining the great BB/K% (11.7/13.3) from the prior year.

June 19 was when he made his MLB debut and, wouldn’t you know it, spanked a pinch-hit two-run home run. Contreras logged 283 plate appearances with the big club and posted a .282/.357/.488 triple slash line with 12 home runs and two stolen bases.

Before I crown him and put him in the Hall of Fame, let’s break down his 76 MLB games in more detail. The walk rate ticked down to 9.2%, but the strikeout rate went up to 23.7%.

That’s a big jump from his minor league rates, but last year was his first experience against major league pitching, so that’s a decent number. He pulled the ball 42.5% of the time and had a decent 32.3% hard contact rate, which put him in the top 100 for that category.

Now, for some numbers that concern me. His swinging strike rate was 13.9%, which would have placed him in the top 15 if he had the minimum number of plate appearances…or is it the worst 15? His contact rate was 70.7%.

For perspective, Chris Carter had the worst contact rate with a 64.6% mark. The sixth-worst was Carlos Gonzalez with a 71.4 number.

He swung at 34.8% of pitches outside the strike zone. That would’ve been the 28th-worst number last season.

The batted ball profile also shows some red flags. He pounded the ball into the ground 54.3% of the time, and his fly ball rate was 27.7%. That GB/FB rate of 1.96 would have placed him at 15th in all of baseball.

So, the 12 home runs Contreras hit last year came at the expense of a 23.5% HR/FB rate, which would have placed him in the top 10. My initial thoughts on all these numbers were regression and small sample size, but then I came across the numbers of Wilson Ramos, a fellow catcher.

Since Ramos made his MLB debut in 2011, his GB/FB rate was above two in every year except for one. His HR/FB was above 15% in every year except one and above 20% in three of the years. So, it’s possible that Contreras could maintain the batted ball profiles that he exhibited last year.

Here’s the thing, though. Ramos never had a contact rate below 77% and a swinging strike rate above 12.5%. Ramos also only eclipsed the 20 home run threshold once in his entire 11-year career.

Steamer has Contreras projected for 441 plate appearances in 110 games. That’s on the low end of most of the projection systems, but I agree with it. Let’s not forget that Contreras is relatively new to playing catcher.

As a result, he is going to cede time to Miguel Montero, who is a much better pitch framer and receiver than Contreras is at this stage of his career. That could mean more days off or being replaced late in the game.

It’s not like the Cubs will be hurting for offense. In addition, RosterResource.com has Contreras batting seventh in the order.

I do like Contreras and think he has a ton of potential. I just see too many red flags and uncertainty to draft him in the eighth round. Maybe if he falls into the double-digit rounds, but that’s probably not happening.

Well, here’s to punting the position yet again.

Check out all of our 2017 fantasy baseball player profiles

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Stan Son is a featured writer at FantasyPros. To read more from Stan, check out his archive and follow him @Stan_Son.