The Master Framer Is Out of the Picture

Jose Trevino’s second season in the Bronx has taken a turn from bad to worse. After earning an All-Star selection in his first year with the Yankees, Trevino struggled to provide even serviceable offense in 2023. Then, on Friday, the 30-year-old catcher revealed he would undergo surgery on a torn wrist ligament he’s been dealing with since spring training. The injury might explain his sharp offensive downturn, but it also means he’ll miss the remainder of the season. It’s yet another tough blow for a Yankees squad that has dealt with more than its fair share of injuries.

On Opening Day, 26 of 27 FanGraphs staffers picked the Yankees to reach the playoffs. It wasn’t a bad prediction, by any means; they had the highest preseason playoff odds in the American League and more projected WAR than any team in baseball. Yet the roster we’ve seen this season is a sad facsimile of the one we imagined before the year began. According to the Injured List Ledger at Baseball Prospectus, the Yankees rank first by a mile in cumulative value lost to injury. Of the seven players on the roster who were All-Stars in 2022, five have spent significant time on the shelf: Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Nestor Cortes, Carlos Rodón, and now Trevino. Other players who have missed time include Frankie Montas, Harrison Bader, Josh Donaldson, and Luis Severino.

Judge’s absence looms largest, but a long list of injuries to the starting rotation has hurt the team most of all. The Yankees had the number one rotation on our positional power rankings this offseason, but their starters currently rank 22nd in WAR. Rodón missed the first 14 weeks of the season with forearm problems and Cortes will miss at least two months with a strained rotator cuff. Meanwhile, Severino missed the first eight weeks with a lat strain and Montas has been out all year after shoulder surgery. Trevino is no pitcher (be careful you don’t confuse him with his teammate Lou Trivino), but he is one of the best defensive catchers in the game, and pitchers are better when he’s behind the dish. Over the last two years, Yankees pitchers have a 3.28 ERA when they’re working with Trevino, compared to a 3.79 ERA with any other catcher. To use a more meaningful statistic than catcher ERA, Trevino led the league in framing runs last season and ranks fourth this year. On a rate basis, he’s just a smidge behind league leaders Austin Hedges and William Contreras. Thus, his injury is yet another punch in the gut wrist for the pitching staff.

Trevino’s remarkable defense, and in particular his elite pitch framing, is his calling card. However, he broke out last season by complementing his top-notch defensive skills with average offense for a catcher. This year, unfortunately, his offensive numbers plummeted across the board. He slashed .210/.257/.312 in 55 games, and his 58 wRC+ ranks in the bottom 5% of the league (min. 150 PA). Yankees manager Aaron Boone made it clear he thought the injury had affected Trevino’s swing, but the catcher himself refused to blame his poor performance on his wrist.

On the one hand, Trevino’s 168 PA this season hardly provide enough data to conclude that he is actually any worse. After all, he slashed .229/.253/.340 with a 67 wRC+ over his final 48 games of 2022, and as far as we know, he was perfectly healthy at that point. Simply put, every hitter goes through peaks and valleys in a season. When you have a guy who’s only a mediocre hitter at the best of times, he’s bound to have some truly dreadful stretches. To that end, Trevino’s BABIP this year was .221, which is low even for a soft-hitting, slow-moving catcher. Meanwhile, his .282 xwOBA was almost identical to his .281 xwOBA from 2022.

Then again, if you dig a little deeper, you’ll see that Trevino reached those two similar xwOBAs in very different ways. His quality of contact metrics were down across the board this year: average exit velocity, barrel rate, sweet spot rate, you name it. However, he cut his strikeout rate from 17.6% to 13.1%, and he didn’t sacrifice any walks in the process. Thus, he saw a 50% increase in his year-over-year walk-to-strikeout ratio. He was making worse contact, but he was also making so much more of it that the two canceled each other out, at least as far as xwOBA is concerned. This suggests that perhaps his wrist was a problem after all, but Trevino found a way to compensate with plate discipline.

It’s also possible that opposing pitchers just adjusted their approach against Trevino, which often happens after a totally unexpected player has a big season at the plate. And wouldn’t you know it, Trevino saw sinkers 23% of the time this year, up from 14% last season. He also saw a higher percentage of all other pitches in the bottom third of the strike zone and down low beneath the zone. This suggests pitchers were trying to induce more groundballs from Trevino, a plan of action that makes perfect sense. He’s good at making contact, and he can occasionally do some damage when he hits one in the air. The best way to attack Trevino is to throw him pitches he can’t elevate. If this was indeed the plan, it worked quite well. His groundball rate rose from 39.9% last year to 51.1% this year, which goes a long way to explain why his quality of contact numbers deteriorated. To further support this theory, Trevino’s xwOBAcon on fly balls and line drives actually improved this season. In other words, when he did elevate the baseball, he was still capable of doing damage.

As is often the case, the most likely explanation for Trevino’s slump is a mix of all of the above. He was unlucky, he was hurting, and opposing pitchers figured him out. Ultimately, the Yankees will just have to wait and see how he performs upon his return.

In the meantime, long-time backup Kyle Higashioka is still around, and he should be able to take over full-time catching duties. He’s having a similar season to Trevino, with a 68 wRC+ and 0.9 WAR in 62 games. However, the quality of his defense, and therefore the amount of value he provides, differs depending on where you look. Our calculations suggest he’s a consistently excellent pitch framer, and the numbers at Baseball Prospectus are even more positive about his framing. However, the numbers at Baseball Savant indicate his framing skills have been deteriorating for several years, and he’s now closer to average than excellent. Baseball Savant also suggests he’s been a dreadful blocker this year with a mediocre arm. Regardless, it’s clear the Yankees value his defensive skills. They drafted him out of high school in 2008, and he’s been with the organization ever since. On more than one occasion, he’s earned praise for his game-calling and work ethic from his coaches and teammates.

One problem, however, is that Higashioka has always been a backup, and he’s never caught a full season. To get through 62 more games (and hopefully a postseason run), the Yankees will need another catcher to share the load. Currently, the only other backstop on the 40-man roster is Ben Rortvedt, who doesn’t have much upside and has even less big league experience. One would have to imagine the Yankees will at least be shopping around for a veteran catcher before the deadline.

Catchers who could be available include Yasmani Grandal, Yan Gomes, and Elias Díaz. None is a difference-making player on either side of the ball, but all are capable veterans. Díaz might be the least appealing because he’s under contract through 2024, and the Yankees are hoping to have Trevino back next spring. Grandal is a free agent after the season, while Gomes has a club option for 2024. Grandal, being a switch-hitter, might be the best fit. He hits right-handed pitching better than Gomes, Díaz, or Higashioka, and the Yankees, who have a 93 wRC+ against right-handed pitching this season, could use all the help they can get in that department.

Hedges and Tucker Barnhart could be available too, but you have to presume the Yankees would target someone who could provide at least a little offensive spark. There’s also Mike Zunino, formerly of the Guardians. As a free agent, he wouldn’t cost the Yankees any prospects, but again, he won’t provide any offensive upside.

With the stretch run on the horizon, the Yankees find themselves in an unusual position: the bottom of the AL East. That says just as much about the steep competition in the division as it does the Yankees themselves, but it’s alarming nonetheless. This team hasn’t finished a season in last place since 1990, a year that only one player on the payroll, Donaldson, is old enough to remember. The Yankees are only two games back of a Wild Card berth, but their playoff odds have fallen to 35.5%. They rank 10th in the league in run differential, and they have a losing record since the start of June. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

Still, the Yankees’ playoff odds are low but hardly insurmountable. They had almost identical odds on this date in 2021, and they went on to edge out the Blue Jays for the final Wild Card spot. The season is over for Trevino, but it isn’t over for the Yankees just yet.