Vazquez

[Doctor Gast]

To tell you the truth I was more in favor of signing a cheaper (LH hitting) Omar Narvaez, they probably thought Vazquez was a better defender & someone that CC could better work with. But no matter, Vazquez is the one that the Twins chose to sign for $30mm, so we are stuck with him. If we choose to DFA him next year it'll be expensive to replace him besides picking up his bill. 

[DJL44]

1 minute ago, Doctor Gast said:

To tell you the truth I was more in favor of signing a cheaper (LH hitting) Omar Narvaez, they probably thought Vazquez was a better defender & someone that CC could better work with. But no matter, Vazquez is the one that the Twins chose to sign for $30mm, so we are stuck with him. If we choose to DFA him next year it'll be expensive to replace him besides picking up his bill. 

Narvaez has somehow been worse than Vazquez and only a little bit cheaper.

Vazquez is still worth the MLB minimum because most AAA catchers are worse at defense and just as bad at hitting which is why you don't just cut him. He's not worth $10M a season but there is no "undo" button to press.

[Craig Arko]

Here’s my take. There’s an old aphorism in sports that goes something like ‘the best ability is availability.’ The tandem of Jeffers and Vazquez has been available whenever the bell is rung. This has value. And not just in dollars. 

[Doctor Gast]

7 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

Narvaez has somehow been worse than Vazquez and only a little bit cheaper.

Vazquez is still worth the MLB minimum because most AAA catchers are worse at defense and just as bad at hitting which is why you don't just cut him. He's not worth $10M a season but there is no "undo" button to press.

The most lauded catching FAs we basically had the very expensive Contreras, Vazquez & Narvaez who had a pretty good season with MIL. STL hated Contreras & wanted to kick him off catcher. Narvaez didn't really pan out & Vazquez had a problem hitting. 

[Linus]

23 minutes ago, Craig Arko said:

Here’s my take. There’s an old aphorism in sports that goes something like ‘the best ability is availability.’ The tandem of Jeffers and Vazquez has been available whenever the bell is rung. This has value. And not just in dollars. 

Especially catchers. To basically not have either injured for a year and a half is unheard of. 

[cmoss84]

We're going to have to wait until a playoff team has a catcher get hurt...they get desperate...and...?

[RpR]

6 hours ago, Mike Sixel said:

What younger players? Julien? Miranda? Everyone else has 2+ years MLB experience. They also have Santana, Buxton, CC to mentor people. Really, how many leaders do you need?

All of them.

[Major League Ready]

22 hours ago, IndianaTwin said:

Jeffers has played in all but six games and is third on the team in plate appearances. Realistically, catching Jeffers more wouldn't get him the lineup more. He would just DH less. Said another way, Vazquez isn't costing Jeffers at bats; he's costing at bats to someone else in the lineup as the DH.

And frankly, the "someone else" crew hasn't hit well. The DH tOPS+ is 85, meaning that they have hit 15 percent worse than the team as a whole. For context, the only position that has been weaker is 2B (at 82). Then, consider that more than one-third of the DH at bats have gone to Jeffers, and it suggests that the remaining DHs have been significantly worse than that figure. Not Vazquez-level worse, but with not nearly as large of a discrepancy as one might think. 

In fact, given the toll that catching takes, one wonders if Jeffers might actually have fewer total at bats if a bigger percentage of them came at catcher.

It will be interesting to see if there is some shift in the catching ratio, with Larnach seeming to be coming on a bit as a DH and if Lewis (hoped for) leads to more DH time for Miranda. If those guys hit well as DH, maybe there's more reason to have Jeffers catch a bit more, since his DH at bats are needed quite as much.  

Rocco plays the long game during the regular season. If part of balancing the role and giving lots of DH time to Jeffers is to keep his legs a bit fresher so he can catch a little more down the stretch, that's helpful as well. 

Where do you find tOPS+ by position.  That's an interesting stat?

I like the idea of Miranda getting DH bats while Jeffers catches more but who is getting cut when Lewis comes back?  They would have to cut Margot or Farmer.  I wouldn't sweat losing either one but I don't see it happening.

[IndianaTwin]

2 hours ago, Major League Ready said:

Where do you find tOPS+ by position.  That's an interesting stat?

It's on the Splits page on baseball-reference.com. For example: 

https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/split.cgi?t=b&team=MIN&year=2024

In this chunk...

it's saying that short stops (i.e., mostly Correa) have an OPS+ of 132 in comparison to the rest of the team. The DHs are at 82 and the 2Bs at 81, etc. That the catchers are at 96 suggest that Vazquez's drag only slightly outweigh Jeffers' benefit in the context of the team.

The sOPS+ to the right of that is in comparison to the league as a whole. If you hover over the heading in each chart, it will give a fuller explanation, but if I'm understanding it correctly, it's saying that Jeffers and Vazquez combine to be a little below average in the context of the Twins lineup (the 96), they are a tiny bit above average (the 101) in the context of the league as a whole. I haven't spent gobs of time diving into this, but at least I think that's how the two relate to each other. From the descriptors, it says that sOPS+ is not park-adjusted. It doesn't have that note on tOPS+, so I assume that one is. 

 

An interesting tidbit, completely unrelated to the Vazquez discussion -- you'll see that the Twins have had one plate appearance from a pitcher this year. You may wonder where that's from, since none of the pitchers have hit. In the May 18 game, Willi Castro came in to pitch the bottom of the eighth and then hit in the top of the ninth, so that plate appearance was treated as a pitcher. 

(At least I thought it was interesting.)

 

 

 

 

 

[Linus]

3 hours ago, IndianaTwin said:

It's on the Splits page on baseball-reference.com. For example: 

https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/split.cgi?t=b&team=MIN&year=2024

In this chunk...

it's saying that short stops (i.e., mostly Correa) have an OPS+ of 132 in comparison to the rest of the team. The DHs are at 82 and the 2Bs at 81, etc. That the catchers are at 96 suggest that Vazquez's drag only slightly outweigh Jeffers' benefit in the context of the team.

The sOPS+ to the right of that is in comparison to the league as a whole. If you hover over the heading in each chart, it will give a fuller explanation, but if I'm understanding it correctly, it's saying that Jeffers and Vazquez combine to be a little below average in the context of the Twins lineup (the 96), they are a tiny bit above average (the 101) in the context of the league as a whole. I haven't spent gobs of time diving into this, but at least I think that's how the two relate to each other. From the descriptors, it says that sOPS+ is not park-adjusted. It doesn't have that note on tOPS+, so I assume that one is. 

 

An interesting tidbit, completely unrelated to the Vazquez discussion -- you'll see that the Twins have had one plate appearance from a pitcher this year. You may wonder where that's from, since none of the pitchers have hit. In the May 18 game, Willi Castro came in to pitch the bottom of the eighth and then hit in the top of the ninth, so that plate appearance was treated as a pitcher. 

(At least I thought it was interesting.)

 

 

 

 

 

Not that interesting but you could win a bar bet with that fact 😀