Catching Prospects and Implications of a New Position
A couple of highly touted catching prospects in the minors, William Myers (Royals) and Jesus Montero (Yankees), had a great 2010 season hitting. There have been some concerns with both players regarding their ability to handle the various aspects of catching (e.g. handling pitchers, throwing out runners, blocking pitches, etc). With talk of the Royals and Yankees possibly moving them off of catcher to another position, I decided to look at few items that teams must consider when moving a catcher to another position.
Positional Value
A good-hitting catcher is rare to find. After Joe Mauer, Brian McCann, Victor Martinez and Mike Napoli, the ability for current catchers to hit this season drops off considerably.
A catcher’s value is best seen when looking at the differences in WAR adjustments given for various positions. Generally, a catcher is moved to one of three positions in the field if he can’t catch: first base or one of the two corner outfield positions. So a team usually only has one of the following six options to a get a good-hitting catcher in the lineup (I ignored third base, as over 75% of the games were from one player, Brandon Inge):
Catching only (does’t play in field on days off – assume 1/6th of days will be off)
Catch and DH on days off (Joe Mauer clone)
Catch and 1B on days off (Victor Martinez clone)
First Base
Corner Outfield
Using positional adjustments, here is how much difference there is in value (WAR) for each of the preceding positions considering the ability of the catcher to hit (assuming league-average fielder):
Being a catcher, compared to the other position choices, adds anywhere from 1 to 2 WAR contributed by the player. This difference could be nice advantage for a team that has the catcher under team control for several seasons.
Defensive Value
In the previous example, I considered catchers to be league average in their defense. I decided to see how well catchers did when moved to a new defensive position.
One problem with moving catchers to another defensive position is seeing how the player’s defense translates to the new position. Defensive numbers for catchers would be tough to compare to other positions, so I decided to lump all catchers together and see how they did as fielders. I took all catchers that caught a minimum of 10 games in any season from 2002 to 2009 and started any other position in the field. Then, I combined the UZR for all these players. Finally, I calculated the UZR/150 for these players and regressed the values a bit depending on the total games played. Here are the results:
As a whole, catchers end up generally being fairly decent fielders, but seemed to take a little better to the outfield than to the infield. Looking at the numbers a little further, it can be seen that a catcher’s ability to throw translates well to the outfield. Here are the ARM components of UZR for the two corner outfield positions:
Most of the defensive value a catcher has in the outfield is in his arm.
Conclusions
Several outstanding hitting catcher prospects in the past had questionable defense and pitch calling skills while in the minors, but their bats were too good to keep them out of the majors. Carlos Delgado caught in 406 of the 524 games he played in the minors over five years, with games played at 1B coming only in the last two years. Once in the majors, he caught a total of two games, but went on to become a great-hitting first baseman. Victor Martinez on the other hand struggled a year or two behind the plate in the majors, but ended up becoming a passable catcher.
Teams understand the value of keeping a great hitter behind the plate. The usual positions that the catcher will eventually transition are considered to be positions known for good hitters (1B, DH, corner OF). In my opinion, a prospect will have to be pretty atrocious in his catching duties to move him away from catching considering the extra value a good-hitting catcher can bring to a team.
Jeff, one of the authors of the fantasy baseball guide,The Process, writes for RotoGraphs, The Hardball Times, Rotowire, Baseball America, and BaseballHQ. He has been nominated for two SABR Analytics Research Award for Contemporary Analysis and won it in 2013 in tandem with Bill Petti. He has won four FSWA Awards including on for his Mining the News series. He's won Tout Wars three times, LABR twice, and got his first NFBC Main Event win in 2021. Follow him on Twitter @jeffwzimmerman.
“A good-hitting catcher is rare to find. After Joe Mauer, Brian McCann, Victor Martinez and Mike Napoli, the ability for current catchers to hit this season drops off considerably. ”
If you go by WAR and remove the limitation of only counting those with enough PAs to qualify for the batting title you get quite a few more.
WAR includes defense and positional adjustment, though. If you look at that list, the only catcher with a wOBA over .300 is matt wieters at .313
I wrote that in a hurry and ment to say “go by the WAR leaderboard” to find the good hitting catchers, not necessarily take WAR to determine them.
Posey, Posada, Soto, are three I see at first glance with about 400 PAs who certainly count as good hitting catchers IMHO. All above .373 wOBA
Chooch is “okay” with a wOBA of .363. Sure, some bash his OBP skills but getting on-base at the rate he does (.397 OBP) is a legit skill.
I know you wrote it in a hurry, but on that list I’d take Posey over everyone not named Mauer, and I don’t think I’m alone. So that’s a pretty big omission. You might think about editing the column.
How about Ruiz?
He’s got a 124 OPS+ and a .837 OPS on the year. He’s a pretty good hitter at this point.
3.7 WAR too…which places him 3rd in the Majors among all Catchers. A full Win higher than Napoli.
Correction, make that 4th (depending on whether you count Posey as a full-time catcher this year) Posey has a 3.9 WAR to Chooch’s 3.7
you forgot Chooch.
Geovany Soto is pretty good.
Perhaps things are (soon) to be changing at catcher?
Add in Carlos Santana in Cleveland, and Buster Posey in SF, and perhaps the hitting at catcher is better overall (or at least trending that way) than the current WAR calculations allow for?
Buster Posey…
He also ignores the Giants again by forgetting that Pablo Sandoval is a third baseman converted to third base.
Most catchers aren’t ironmen and a good number wont ever qualify for the batting title. Its just part of the difficulty of playing what is the most difficult position in baseball to master. Thus, guys are missed due to lack of PAs during a quick search.
Might be my Yankee homerism, but Posada is noticeably absent on that list. I understand he hasn’t been a full time catcher recently, but he’s caught more games this year than Napoli and his 100 G at C last year are more than Napoli’s ever caught in his career.
And he’s still a pretty good hitter despite all the injuries. Yeah, his defense is subpar at this point but he can still hit.
Have the defensive scouting reports on Montero changed at all? I’ve never read one that thinks he can be a catcher (even a mediocre one) at the MLB level. All of them have him moving to 1B or DH.
I’m not sure of scouting reports, but I saw Montero play about a dozen times this year. He looks pretty good, making strong throws to both 2nd and 3rd. Also doing a good job of blocking pitches in the dirt. Only saw him have a couple of bunts/squibbers that were in his area, and he did fine on those too.
Only thing I thought he needed to work on was throws from the OF for plays at the plate. I didn’t think his positioning was very good on them, and understanding he’s better off letting the ball come to him instead of going and getting it.
Not that I ever thought I was watching the next coming of Johnny Bench, but in my amateur opinion, I thought he looked capable.
Yeah, the premise of this article MIGHT still be solid, but the two sentences to start off the “Positional Value” section really undermines anything else that may follow. Mauer and McCann are legitimately awesome-hitting CATCHERS. See also: Geo Soto and Buster Posey (higher wOBA than either Mauer or McCann this year, albeit in less playing time for reasons for which they can’t be blamed). They’re not on this list. Martinez and Napoli have significantly lower wOBAs than all four, AND Napoli hasn’t really been close to being a full-time catcher this season. I think this piece needed a little bit more intense review before posting. Only using facts that support a narrative is unbecoming.
This!
Fangraphs is an excellent site for stats, but the articles are often poorly researched or narratives based on opinion over fact (see #6 org).
there are rarely any facts in the baseball world.
“A good-hitting catcher is rare to find. After Joe Mauer, Brian McCann, Victor Martinez and Mike Napoli, the ability for current catchers to hit this season drops off considerably. ”
No mention of Posey. Sure, the author will blame the fact that he did some search or looked on some leaderboard and Posey hadn’t been shown b/c of a lack of PA’s, which is a lame and completely amateur excuse. That comment said nothing about stats, it said “the ability….”. When it comes to ability, Posey is right up there if not higher than most of the names mentioned. Lame.
No mention of Soto and Carlos Santana is a joke as well. I’m beginning to think a bot is writing these articles. The quality of articles on Hardball has severly declined as well. What the heck do good writers write about nowadays? It’s not like there are other interesting things to read about, minus the war, the economy, the social revolution, the technological revolution, the climate, etc.
Soto is especially important to consider because of the Cubs’ current positional situations heading into 2011. They have the four OF (Soriano, Byrd, Fukudome, Colvin) who likely aren’t moving; Aramis Ramirez at 3B; Soto and a few high-minor prospects at C (plus Koyie Hill still being arbitration eligible); and no true prospect for 1B.
Given the amount of money committed to the team’s payroll already – not counting the massive raises Soto, Marmol, and Marshall are due to receive in pre-arbitration negotiations – the Cubs might be wise to try shifting Soto to 1B at least part-time, like V-Mart, and using Welington Castillo as the Miguel Olivo-esque backup. It’s a cost-effective solution wherein Soto and Colvin platoon at 1B, Soto and Castillo platoon behind the plate, and Colvin and Fukudome platoon in RF. 500-550 PA for each of the three “vets” and 300 for Castillo.
The big problem with Soto this year was his health, especially in the shoulder. With the arthroscopy to clean out the AC joint completed, he should be fine in 2011 to catch. But it’s a repetitive use/wear-and-tear injury that simply can happen to pitchers and catchers more than once.