How Does the Twins Catching Tandem Stack Up Defensively?

Although we have just a small sample of the new season, it appears the acquisition of Vazques has pushed Jeffers game to another level, both at bat and behind the plate. 

Vázquez looks so confident and competent behind the plate. Haven’t seen this level of catching defense on the team for a while now.

Great article! I really think Jeffers has the ability to improve upon these numbers. Handing him the starting position last year may have been a tad too soon in his development. Next week... How did Garver stack up on these metrics?

10 minutes ago, The Mad King said:

Great article! I really think Jeffers has the ability to improve upon these numbers. Handing him the starting position last year may have been a tad too soon in his development. Next week... How did Garver stack up on these metrics?

Who cares about Garver? He's long gone, and seems likely to play at least half his games at DH now, assuming he can stay on the field at all. (people rip Buxton all the time for struggling to stay healthy, but Garver has played only 368 games since coming up in 2017 and Buxton has played 453)

I'm liking the tandem of Vazquez and Jeffers quite a bit. If Jeffers has found his power stroke again it adds a nice dimension to the pair, and Vazquez all-around skill on defense is fun to watch. I agree, it seems to have pushed Jeffers a little. They've certainly worked with the pitchers very well so far and the starters sure look comfortable throwing to them both.

Vazquez is expected to be a pretty good defensive catcher but his hitting hasn't been shabby either. Jeffers' CS% is very low 18% while Vazquez is 34% that is almost 2X as much. Yet you say Jeffers' arm is stronger than Vazquez (I've always heard that Jeffers had a weak arm). That tells me either the way they measure arm strength is off or  arm strength isn't as important as the experts say. If arm strength isn't as important than pop up time, quick release & accuracy and that's what the Twins need to focus on throughout the system.

Blocking still needs to be improved. Those are 2 very important traits that need be improved on. 

Framing is important but not as important as blocking pitches or throwing out runners (though much depends on the pitcher as well). If we ever go to automated balls/strikes calling (a possibility soon with all the home plate umps have to do now), framing may not mean much. I wonder how umpire's calls are actually influenced by framing since they are supposed to call balls and strikes as the pitches cross home plate. We had a former umpire give a speech here a couple of years ago and he said framing may have influenced about 10% of his calls.

A good deal of a catchers success throwing out base runners is on the pitcher. How well he holds runners and how fast he delivers the ball is crucial in stopping steal attempts.

Last year game calling was absolutely horrible. Vazquez is vital to our pitching staff, the way he handles the pitchers. He's a big reason why the rotation is doing soooooooo well.

2 hours ago, stringer bell said:

Boy, I didn't think there was any problem with game-calling in '22. I thought Twins' pitchers overall overachieved considering the talent level.

The difference between Vazquez & last season core is like night & day. Vazquez is constant dialogue with his pitchers because he has a sense of what needs to pitched & last season I did not see that. The whole rotation underacheived last season & one reason was the game calling. It's very rare that a SP will critize his receiver & some SPs will praise him even if they are not that good but Gray came out & said he did not want Sanchez. It was not because Jeffers as that good it was Sanchez was that bad.

I didn't follow each & every pitcher but I did follow Archer. He basically didn't have a ST, so he mainly went with his FB/ slider which are his main pitches (which he had very good success) & gradually worked his CU back in, Eventually hitters started to be on his FB/ slider (although they didn't make good contact on them they kept fouling them off), yet by this time he got his CU working. Even though his CU wasn't his primary or even secondary pitch he was getting swings & misses w/ it. A good catcher would see Archer getting whiffs w/ his CU they'd use it as their SO pitch to get them off of his FB/ slider, therefore getting many more SOs & not drive up those fouls. pitch count and allow him to go deeper in the games. But they never used his CU as his SO pitch, they used his CU only to try to set up his FB/ slider. So hitters continued to look for Archer's FB/ slider and they continued to keep fouling them off driving up his pitch count & prevented him from going deeper.

Since they grossly mishandled Archer, I presumed they grossly mishandled the entire rotation.