By my eyes I believed Jeffers is better at handling pitchers than Caratini. I would even said the difference is significant.

I went to Fangraphs and Jeffers is a -1 for his cERA and Caratini is a +1. Yikes! My eyes must be way off. Sure enough Jeffers has a catcher ERA of 4.59 with Caratini at 3.88. Will the staff be in better hands with Caratini taking more of the load? Not satisfied I looked deeper to see if anything was skewing the data. Could it be one bad game? In my mind I trust Jeffers much more than Caratini. I looked at the four starters that have pitched the most. Their batters faced is much more than any other pitcher. Here is what I found.

Abel, Prielipp , Matthews and Rojas were not included. Caratini has been his only catcher with an OPS against of .726. Jeffers has almost all of Prielipp's PAs with an OPS against of .592. Jeffers was the catcher for Matthews' start (.408) and the catcher for the vast majority of Rojas (.631) and his one start.

Caratini has the edge on Joe Ryan. Ryan is the pitcher coming into the season that needs the least help from a veteran catcher. Jeffers has the advantage with the three others and the advantage is a significant one. Jeffers cERA is tremendously skewed. Look at SWR and PAs. While SWR has been better with Jeffers those 159 PAS completely distort the cERA and Jeffers' resulting Fangraphs defense grade. It would not be hard for Fangraphs to calculate this skew in and give a more accurate number. They need to do better. Alternatively they might throw cERA out of the calculation completely. In this case it gives the completely wrong picture of Jeffers behind the plate.

I don't think my eyes are mistaken. Jeffers has done a great job of handling our young staff. I hope his work with them these two months will have a lasting impact on their development.

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