Mets Need a Catcher

[Parfigliano]

1 hour ago, bean5302 said:

Worse than a team with a catcher who OPS'd .575 with average defense except for the instable "catcher framing" metric? As has been pointed out, Twins pitchers have gotten better results with Jeffers behind the plate in terms of runs prevented than the framing genius which is Vazquez.

I'd be fine giving the backup catcher role to Gasper or Cartaya or Camargo or Winkel because there are plenty of other options if the backup catcher looks bad at this point. At least one of those guys will be a 0 WAR player this year, Vazquez will be a negative WAR guy.

Or heck, Grandal is still on the FA market. Get him on a cheap deal.

The world of catchers is not Christian Vazquez or a plywood cutout painted to look like a catcher.

"Framing" is agent created BS to make guys that can't hit (.575 OPS) seem valuable to the market.

[Squirrel]

46 minutes ago, ashbury said:

If we'd be just as well off to trade Vazquez to the Mets and go sign someone still on the free agent market, then the Mets would be just as well off to go sign that other guy in the first place.  Catch-22, it seems.

Good summation. That and Chief’s comment way back in the beginning … if we trade Vázquez then the forum topic becomes ‘The Twins need a catcher’

[ashbury]

12 minutes ago, Squirrel said:

Good summation. That Chief’s comment … if we trade Vázquez then the forum topic becomes ‘The Twins need a catcher’

People seem to assume that ".575" represents some sort of lower bound on what a catcher might OPS as a backup.  That's not true.  Last year Tampa put up with Alex Jackson's .439 in 46 starts, and Cleveland suffered with .422 in Austin Hedges's 46 starts.  And this reflects selection bias in that the team does have some say in whom they stick with - if you do a Stathead search with a lower criterion on games played, you get some pretty ghastly offensive numbers to weed through.

Maybe if given the chance, one of Cartaya/Camargo comes through.  What's the plan when both lay eggs at the plate, though? 

[Riverbrian]

2 minutes ago, ashbury said:

People seem to assume that ".575" represents some sort of lower bound on what a catcher might OPS as a backup.  That's not true.  Last year Tampa put up with Alex Jackson's .439 in 46 starts, and Cleveland suffered with .422 in Austin Hedges's 46 starts.  And this reflects some selection bias in that the team does have some say in whom they stick with - if you do a Stathead search with a lower criterion on games played, you get some pretty ghastly offensive numbers to weed through.

Maybe if given the chance, one of Cartaya/Camargo comes through.  What's the plan when both lay eggs at the plate, though? 

You are correct. You can add Martin Maldanado with the White Sox to your Jackson and Hedges group. 

When you advance the playing time to around 300 AB's in 2024. There is a group of catchers that are in the Vazquez OPS ball park like Fortes, Lee, Heim and Rogers. I still contend that the 8 catchers identified by name by you and I are still "Lower bound". 

You are correct, there are a lot of catchers with MLB jobs with painful offensive production. Catchers have other responsibilities... I get that. It's a unique position in comparison to other positions on the field. I get that.  

I'll even recognize that Cleveland won the AL Central and made it to the ALCS championship game with two catchers that didn't hit very well. The Tigers traded their best hitting catcher Carson Kelly at the deadline and gave Rogers who was Vazquez like hitting the main job and they came on like a freight train to knock us out of the playoffs. I'll also recognize that Dusty Baker hung on to Maldonado like the Astros couldn't win without him. 

I recognize all of this. Yet my questions, concerns remain. How much do you want to pay for this particular package of catching ability? And how big of a drop off is it between this light hitting defensive catcher and the Option B who might OPS .500 if actually given the chance. What is the difference in the egg laid by the younger option and the egg laid by the experienced, older vet option. 

And the final question would be. When do you start the transition between experienced light hitting vet and younger catcher in need of that valuable experience? 

Actually one more question. Can you be trusted to initiate the transition in-house or must you rely upon another organization to break them in for you?    

The Next Guy up! Cartaya and Camargo. They are the next guys up. Ready or not... they will be necessary at a moment's notice. Ready or not... They best get them ready. 

I just can't shake my feelings toward the self created need to place an irreplaceable label on light hitting specialists. Innings eaters on the mound, specialists like the light hitting defensive catcher, the short side platoon bat.

The Twins have done nothing to prepare for life beyond Vazquez other than work with coaches behind the scenes. So... yeah they must sleep in the Vazquez bed they made and I doubt the Mets want him anyway.

I get what Jorgenswest is posing with his question. A part of me says... force it. Cut the security blanket and sink or swim with the pre-arb guys with full understanding of the potential eggs laid.  

 

 

[bean5302]

50 minutes ago, ashbury said:

People seem to assume that ".575" represents some sort of lower bound on what a catcher might OPS as a backup.  That's not true.  Last year Tampa put up with Alex Jackson's .439 in 46 starts, and Cleveland suffered with .422 in Austin Hedges's 46 starts.  And this reflects selection bias in that the team does have some say in whom they stick with - if you do a Stathead search with a lower criterion on games played, you get some pretty ghastly offensive numbers to weed through.

Maybe if given the chance, one of Cartaya/Camargo comes through.  What's the plan when both lay eggs at the plate, though? 

AAA+ Twins catcher depth: Ryan Jeffers, Christian Vazquez, Jair Camargo, Diego Cartaya, Mickey Gasper, Patrick Winkel.

Here are the ZiPS projections for the catchers
.748 OPS
.744 OPS
.667 OPS
.615 OPS
.599 OPS <--- Vazquez
.586 OPS

Here are the Steamer projections for the catchers
.741
.717
.636 <--- Vazquez
.608
.607
.602

So yeah, based on the Twins' catching depth and projection models, it would be reasonable to conclude .575 would be a fair worst case scenario, and it would also be fair to expect any or all of the catching options the Twins could choose out of AAA or MLB would be at least comparable to Vazquez at the plate.

Hedges is not on the Twins' roster.

[ashbury]

On 3/9/2025 at 3:12 PM, Linus said:

At this point I would say no because the salary savings won’t be reinvested.  6 weeks ago? Yes in a minute.

Took me several days to go back and review the early comments, but this is exactly how I feel.

There was a similar issue over in the Vikings thread a few days ago, concerning whether to place a Franchise tag on Sam Darnold and then trade him.  Weighing against was that maybe no one would trade for him at that salary (a fear that looks borne out with the contract he actually signed).  But the bigger issue was the salary cap.  While Darnold was on their books, they could miss out on signing about $40M worth of other talent.  Those were crucial days, in the NFL version of free agency, and the Vikings look like they did well to not put the tag on Darnold.

MLB payrolls and free agency and everything else work differently than the NFL.  But I still can't help seeing the parallel with Vazquez.  His relatively piddling $10M stood in the way of some different use of those funds, during the off-season.  Now in Spring Training, rosters are much more locked in.  Getting salary relief from the Mets wouldn't have the same effect.  We already paid the price, in terms of roster construction, by hanging on to Vazquez all off-season.

Now, the one exception could be this: they save $10M for the coming season, and apply that to a real star at the trade deadline, paying the remainder of someone's expiring $30M contract.  I could support that, if the FO would promise to actually do it when the time came.  "Ugh, nothing quite fit for us" - that would be my expectation come August, unfortunately.

[Riverbrian]

13 minutes ago, ashbury said:

Now, the one exception could be this: they save $10M for the coming season, and apply that to a real star at the trade deadline, paying the remainder of someone's expiring $30M contract.  I could support that, if the FO would promise to actually do it when the time came.  "Ugh, nothing quite fit for us" - that would be my expectation come August, unfortunately.

This would be the only possible use of any cost savings in a Vazquez trade. And I believe that we are both correct in believing that there is next to no chance that all 10M would be moved and therefore available for such use at the deadline, unless a significant hurts to give up prospect was included in the deal. 

[ashbury]

36 minutes ago, bean5302 said:

AAA+ Twins catcher depth: Ryan Jeffers, Christian Vazquez, Jair Camargo, Diego Cartaya, Mickey Gasper, Patrick Winkel.

Here are the ZiPS projections for the catchers
.748 OPS
.744 OPS
.667 OPS
.615 OPS
.599 OPS <--- Vazquez
.586 OPS

Here are the Steamer projections for the catchers
.741
.717
.636 <--- Vazquez
.608
.607
.602

So yeah, based on the Twins' catching depth and projection models, it would be reasonable to conclude .575 would be a fair worst case scenario, and it would also be fair to expect any or all of the catching options the Twins could choose out of AAA or MLB would be at least comparable to Vazquez at the plate.

Hedges is not on the Twins' roster.

Calling Gasper a catcher reminds me of the riddle Abraham Lincoln was said to like: "How many legs does a dog have if you call a tail a leg?"  (I'm sure most here know the answer.  Four.  Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.)

You didn't provide a link, but I think one of them is this: FanGraphs .  There, I see also their projection for Aaron Sabato as an OPS of .269+.325 = .594.  Considering that his AA OPS last season was .653, it makes me question their methodology - maybe that's what they think he'll do if given a chance at AAA.  Mind you, I'm an old-time Bill James acolyte (I was in attendance at the committee meeting where he launched Project Scoresheet) and I do believe that minor league numbers have a lot of predictive value.  But I don't worship at the altar of FanGraphs and I'm not at all persuaded by this table that it's likely for multiple catching prospects to out-hit Vazquez at this time, and the ones who might are not in Vazquez's category for defense even at his advanced age. 

And this isn't the place for a deep-dive into projection systems so I'm going to leave it at that.

[nicksaviking]

To be clear, I don’t trade Vazquez because I think it improves the club; I think any improvement is negligible to negative, but not impactful to the team record.

I trade him to force Baldelli out of his zero-ceiling comfort zone, which I do think can impact the record. He has to start being more concerned with winning games as opposed to being concerned with losing games.

[ashbury]

1 hour ago, nicksaviking said:

He has to start being more concerned with winning games as opposed to being concerned with losing games.

Was it Gene Mauch who said, "most close games are lost, not won"?  Or Casey Stengel, or John Wooden.  Anyway it's a common philosophy.

[nicksaviking]

57 minutes ago, ashbury said:

Was it Gene Mauch who said, "most close games are lost, not won"?  Or Casey Stengel, or John Wooden.  Anyway it's a common philosophy.

Mauch sounds most likely. I doubt John Wooden ever played a close game in his life.

Sorry, playing not to lose instead of to win is passive and cowardly in my book. Take a chance and script every one of your games to win.

[ashbury]

23 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

Mauch sounds most likely. I doubt John Wooden ever played a close game in his life.

Sorry, playing not to lose instead of to win is passive and cowardly in my book. Take a chance and script every one of your games to win.

I found the quote attributed variously, but if it's indeed Mauch, he certainly had plenty of experience losing. 😀

[nicksaviking]

17 minutes ago, ashbury said:

I found the quote attributed variously, but if it's indeed Mauch, he certainly had plenty of experience losing. 😀

Lol. Yeah, and overall, he was probably a good manager who continually got stuck with subpar talent. I'm sure playing not to lose ends up being a self preservation tactic at some point. I'll bet outside of his expansion Expos, his teams probably rarely finished in LAST place.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

11 hours ago, Riverbrian said:

I had to scroll through a couple of pages of Mr. Bean just to find him standing in a field of something yellow. Normal people would have just taken an image off the first page... I want you to know that you are worth that type of effort. 

Can't or Won't? There are many who honestly believe they can't. I fear it's won't. I feel that because .575 is such a tremendously low bar to clear. Your farm doesn't have to produce Adley Rutschman... your farm just had to produce Jose Trevino. 

The market hasn't snuck up on anyone. The catching price tag has been inflated for many years now. I've been talking about it on Twinsdaily before covid. I've said... don't over pay for catching... grow your own. They play 100 games a year at most, they get hurt often and most of them don't hit much anyway. 

I get that there must be a difficulty in production across the league driving those prices up. But, other organizations are producing extra while the Twins front office has produced two major leaguers. Jeffers and Rortvedt. 

Better coaching? Sharper Draft Focus on the position? What is going on with development? Are expectations too high in regards to the handling of staff. 

Is defense the most important thing at the position? So important that a bat like Vazquez is not replaceable. If So... Work on defense... if working on defense isn''t working... Work harder. Develop that defensive guy who can't hit. Draft that defensive guy who can't hit. It will save you millions. You don't have to develop Will Smith... You can develop your own Fortes and it will save you millions. 

I don't blame them for signing Vazquez for 30 million at the time. It was an over pay but they put themselves in that position. Jeffers just had back to back years of .670 and .648 OPS with defensive questions and the defensive wizard Gary Sanchez was going away. 

It's ok to make a mistake in free agency just like it's OK to buy a boat with a hole in it if you didn't know about the hole.  It's not OK to double down on it, take it to the lake and not try to swim to shore and here we are again. Staring at another free agent purchase in the off-season because we can't or won't. 

 

 

Vazquez, just like Sweet Destiny, is frozen into the river.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-beached-boat-death-threats-a-lounge-singer-how-a-boat-remains-stranded-on-the-st-croix-river/ar-AA1y8aVc

[Riverbrian]

9 minutes ago, Richie the Rally Goat said:

Vazquez, just like Sweet Destiny, is frozen into the river.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-beached-boat-death-threats-a-lounge-singer-how-a-boat-remains-stranded-on-the-st-croix-river/ar-AA1y8aVc

Sweet Destiny can be his new nickname. I wonder if he would mind. 

From your link... OMG... This quote struck me real hard. 

"If you go down the Mississippi River ... the river is littered with abandoned boats and jet skis," O'Connor said. "Somebody needs to do something about it." 

I could never imagine an abandoned boat and jet ski problem. Just another issue to add to the growing list of world problems that must be solved. 

World Hunger

Abandoned Jet Ski's

Finding a pillow that doesn't change from fantastic to uncomfortable on a given night. 

 

[tony&rodney]

The Twins kept both Jeffers and Vazquez because they believe they are the best options. The salary of Vazquez was meaningless to any offseason strategies. There were other options to save if that was the plan. It never was and the payroll issue was never a thing for the front office. It existed only in the heads of some fans and writers. The Twins have the team they want. There were likely a pile of opportunities for change if that was a desire. I'm not sweating either Camargo or Cartaya, but guessing the decision to keep the current combo is based on who can best catch/block the ball for the pitchers. The Twins catchers are the least of their position player concerns.

As far as the Mets needing a catcher? I'm sorry if I don't care about the Mets. 

[bean5302]

6 hours ago, ashbury said:

Calling Gasper a catcher reminds me of the riddle Abraham Lincoln was said to like: "How many legs does a dog have if you call a tail a leg?"  (I'm sure most here know the answer.  Four.  Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.)

You didn't provide a link, but I think one of them is this: FanGraphs .  There, I see also their projection for Aaron Sabato as an OPS of .269+.325 = .594.  Considering that his AA OPS last season was .653, it makes me question their methodology - maybe that's what they think he'll do if given a chance at AAA.  Mind you, I'm an old-time Bill James acolyte (I was in attendance at the committee meeting where he launched Project Scoresheet) and I do believe that minor league numbers have a lot of predictive value.  But I don't worship at the altar of FanGraphs and I'm not at all persuaded by this table that it's likely for multiple catching prospects to out-hit Vazquez at this time, and the ones who might are not in Vazquez's category for defense even at his advanced age. 

And this isn't the place for a deep-dive into projection systems so I'm going to leave it at that.

Gasper is a catcher. He's played half his games in the minors as a catcher. You might not consider him as adept behind the plate as any of the other Twins' catchers, but if Gasper was incapable of covering the position, he would have been playing there for 50%+ of his games for the past 10 years through college and MiLB.

I'll trust projection models run by professional analysts over your personal opinion, but you're right, it's not the place to compare your personal opinion to data models when it comes to reliability. 

[USAFChief]

15 hours ago, bean5302 said:

Gasper is a catcher. He's played half his games in the minors as a catcher. You might not consider him as adept behind the plate as any of the other Twins' catchers, but if Gasper was incapable of covering the position, he would have been playing there for 50%+ of his games for the past 10 years through college and MiLB.

I'll trust projection models run by professional analysts over your personal opinion, but you're right, it's not the place to compare your personal opinion to data models when it comes to reliability. 

It's more like 1/3 of his MiLB games at C. 

114 of 324. 

I left out 3 pitcher appearances. 

You might have included his time in college, when he.was primarily a C. 

He actually hasn't been a regular at pretty much ANY position in MiLB. Mostly a 1st baseman, but not an every day player. Something of a spare part.

I'd be surprised if he gets any regular time at C for the Twins in 2025. I'd be surprised if he gets any extended time at all with the Twins. 

 

[bean5302]

1 hour ago, USAFChief said:

It's more like 1/3 of his MiLB games at C. 

114 of 324. 

I left out 3 pitcher appearances. 

You might have included his time in college, when he.was primarily a C. 

He actually hasn't been a regular at pretty much ANY position in MiLB. Mostly a 1st baseman, but not an every day player. Something of a spare part.

I'd be surprised if he gets any regular time at C for the Twins in 2025. I'd be surprised if he gets any extended time at all with the Twins. 

 

Sure, if it makes you feel better, Gasper only played 33% or whatever at catcher. I'd be surprised if he got regular time at catcher for the Twins, too. Not really the point.

The point is Vazquez isn't an MLB caliber catcher, he's likely going to provide negative value this year so replacing him with a AAA caliber player isn't a net loss, and we have 4 potential options to choose from. If the Twins can't get -0.5 to 0.5 WAR (the reasonable range for Vazquez) out of one of those 4 players at catcher then that's a totally different issue.

I was on board with the Twins can't trade Vazquez when it was only Winkour and Camargo as AAA depth. Now that the Twins have added Gasper and Cartaya, it's a non issue.