Evaluating Baseball’s Most Volatile Position

Evaluating Baseball’s Most Volatile Position

Omar Narváez was a pretty good player in 2019. He was also a pretty good player in 2020. It stands to reason that the same player would be consistently valuable year-to-year, but the way he provided that value in each season makes no sense at all.

Playing for the Mariners in 2019, he was one of the best hitting backstops in the American League. He combined robust on-base skills with decent power, hitting 22 home runs and slashing .278/.353/.460. That’s outstanding offensive production for a catcher, but awful defense weighed down his WAR numbers. According to Baseball Prospectus’ catcher defensive adjustment (CDA), his glove was worth -13.7 runs— 120th best out of 123 MLB catchers. Still, with a potent bat, he proved to be a solid enough starter.

The bat completely abandoned him in 2020, now with the Brewers. He slashed just .176/.294/.269 with only a pair of home runs. If he was still a pretty good player, where did his value come from? His glove! He metamorphosed from one of the worst to defensive catchers in the game to the absolute best, leading MLB with 4.5 CDA.

Looking towards 2021, Narváez may be the most unpredictable player in baseball. If he hits like 2019 and defends like 2020, he’s an MVP candidate. If vice versa, he could be designated for assignment by June. This makes him the perfect representative for the position group on the whole. With just two exceptions, we have no idea who will actually be a good catcher next season.

The Great

Only two players in baseball combine consistently elite defense and offense from the catcher position year after year, and we probably don’t appreciate them enough. We may well be witnessing two future Hall of Famers in their primes— one of whom is currently a free agent.

The White Sox’ Yasmani Grandal hits better than the good version of Narváez at his best. Even at his worst, he’s never produced a wRC+ lower than 101. While he strikes out a lot— which lowers his batting average— he draws tons of walks and smashed 101 home runs from 2016-2019. He has also finished no lower than fourth best in MLB in CDA every year since 2015.

In 2019, Ex-Phillie J.T. Realmuto became one of only five catchers ever to win the NL Gold Glove and Silver Slugger in the same season (Gary Carter, Benito Santiago, Russell Martin, and Yadier Molina). In 2020, he tied Salvador Perez for the most homers by a catcher in MLB (11). He even provided substantial value on the basepaths,as Devan Fink illustrated at Beyond the Box Score, which no other catcher in baseball can legitimately claim. Every GM in the game should beg their owner to back up a truckload of cash for him this winter (possibly excepting the White Sox).

The Probably Good

A small handful of catchers have been good in the past two years or so, and probably will be again, but do we really know for certain? Any of them feels like they could absolutely tank offensively or defensively in any given year.

Boston’s Christian Vázquez was your classic glove-first, no-bat backup catcher through his age-27 season. They made him the full-time starter in 2019 and, out of nowhere, he belted 23 home runs. In 2020, his walk rate climbed from 6.3 percent to 8.5 percent, further cementing his hitting skills.

Willson Contreras learned two new tricks for the Cubs in 2020. He made almost Narváez-esque improvements to his pitch framing and defense. He also learned to get on base the hard way. His 14 hit-by-pitches led all of MLB. His previous career high was 13 in 2018 when he had about 2.5 times as many plate appearances.

After missing all of 2019 with an injury suffered in Spring Training, Royals stalwart Salvador Perez picked up right where he left off. His .333 batting average and .633 slugging percentage are clearly unsustainable, but he’s been a reliable starter when healthy throughout his career. His lifetime .300 on-base percentage indicates he’ll probably never learn to walk much though.

It feels weird putting Travis d’Arnaud in this category. The oft-injured former top prospect finally broke out in Tampa Bay in 2019, then signed with the Braves as a free agent. He posted his best numbers ever in 2020, hitting .321 with nine homers, and winning the Silver Slugger. Anything is possible going forward, but “probably good” is the most accurate way to describe him these days.

Veterans With Question Marks

It may have been a short season, but a few MLB vets caught us by surprise in 2020— some in a good way and others in a bad way. We’ll put Narváez in this category as well since he may be the biggest question mark of all.

Let’s start with the bad. There’s no sugarcoating Gary Sánchez’s .147 batting average. Just a year after belting 34 home runs, the Yankees stripped him of his starting job late in the season and kept him benched during the playoffs. He visibly struggled to catch up to high velocity all season. A few months ago, the team thought they had the position locked up for the next few years,but now they don’t seem so certain.

Minnesota’s Mitch Garver followed a similar arc. His 31 home runs in 2019 trailed only Sánchez among catchers, and he received 87 fewer plate appearances. However, his collapse was just as epic, managing only two bombs in an injury-plagued 2020 season while hitting just .167. Which version of himself will shine through in 2021 is a total mystery.

Now for the good. A year ago, Austin Nola wasn’t even truly a catcher. As a 29-year-old rookie with the Mariners, he slashed .269/.342/.454 playing mostly first base and second base. Despite only starting four games behind the plate in the majors, Seattle made him their starting catcher for 2020. He rewarded their faith by hitting .306/.373/.531 before an August 31 trade to San Diego. His bat cooled a little over the final month, but he still posted one of the best seasons of any catcher in MLB. Can we fully buy-in on a guy who didn’t reach the majors until age 29, and didn’t become a regular MLB catcher until age 30?

Max Stassi’s career arc could only make sense for a catcher. From 2013-2017, he was Houston’s emergency third catcher, compiling no more than 31 plate appearances and no fewer than eight each year. He ascended to second string in 2018 and hit okay, but bottomed out in 2019, hitting .136 with only one home run in 147 trips to the plate— getting traded to the Angels along the way. Improbably, he won the starting job for the first time in 2020 and slashed an impressive .278/.352/.533.

Up-And-Comers

Be wary of young catchers. It’s an exceptionally difficult position, and many of them don’t learn to hit until closer to 30— such as d’Arnaud, Nola, and Stassi. It’s fun to dream on top prospects, but waiting for catchers to achieve their potential is a slower burn than their counterparts at other positions.

The Dodgers’ Will Smith arguably belongs in the “Probably Good” category. The former top-100 prospect has done little wrong since reaching the majors. He took the league by storm with a blistering two-month call-up in 2019, then hit even better in 2020. He still only has 91 games in the majors, but he looks like the next superstar at the position.

Smith’s great start coincided with— and partially obscured— another former top prospect who has made good so far: Sean Murphy in Oakland. Truth be told, he probably should’ve gotten more Rookie of the Year consideration. His .821 OPS surpassed that of winner Kyle Lewis while playing a more demanding position (albeit with less playing time).

Joey Bart is the heir apparent to Buster Posey in San Francisco. He was the second overall pick in 2018 out of Georgia Tech and impressed enough in the minors to be ranked the #14 overall prospect by MLB Pipeline heading into 2020. He struggled at the plate in his MLB debut, but the scouting reports indicate better days ahead.

Arizona has a pair of young catchers of note. Carson Kelly is the incumbent starter. After an impressive 2019 season, his bat regressed in 2020, but he’s still just 26 years old. Rookie Daulton Varsho has one of the most unique skill sets in baseball. The 24-year-old lefty swinger played 14 games in center field, 10 behind the plate, and five in left field. He only went 19-101 in his 2020 debut but was a consensus top-100 prospect before last season.

The Field

And then there’s everyone else. 102 players strapped on the tools of ignorance in MLB last season, and at least that many will do so in 2021. While Grandal and Realmuto are safe bets, anyone else could blast off or crash down without too much of a shock. Inevitably, there will be a few complete surprises like Nola and outright disasters like Sánchez, but if you want to predict which is which, you may as well use a dartboard. One way or another they’ll all compare to Narváez somehow— for better or worse.