What Twins Can Learn From Each Division Winner, Pt. 1: Catcher Defense

Though much happens behind the scenes in the modern game, baseball is fundamentally transparent. We see every move, read about every trade, and dissect how each prosperous team accomplished its wins. Beyond the hidden nuances of coaching and each team's R&D department, everything is laid bare for the league to see. When the Dodgers and Yankees start throwing a specific type of slider, teams quickly copy them and usher in the “sweeper” into our shared baseball lexicon. So it goes.

Minnesota, then, would be prudent to observe its peers and attempt to glean lessons from them. In this series, I’ll closely examine MLB’s division winners and attempt to reverse-engineer them, to find paths the Twins may take back to the top of the standings. 

Before we get into the meat of this piece, it’s important to note that none of these lessons are gospel, There’s more than one way to skin a cat (or build a successful baseball team), so my suggestions are just that. The Twins could follow the blueprint other teams created, but it’s not a necessity. That said, let’s look at how each division winner in the AL reached their success. 

Guardians and Yankees: This Catcher Defense Stuff Seems Important
If you go to Baseball Prospectus and sort by catcher framing, you’ll see that four of the top seven framers in baseball belong to the ball clubs based in Cleveland and The Bronx. That’s no coincidence. Both franchises have been notorious for years for employing backstops like Roberto Pérez and José Trevino, who were tepid hitters even for a catcher but who could frame Mr. Rogers for murder.

The logic for utilizing these players is simple: an excellent framer affects every pitch their pitching staff throws, while—as a hitter—they only account for one-ninth of their team’s hitting in any given game. That’s a worthy tradeoff, even if you have to suffer through some truly putrid Austin Hedges at-bats.

The Twins do employ a worthy framer in Christian Vázquez. He currently sits as the 9th-best framer in MLB, saving nine runs this year with his receiving. Ryan Jeffers is a different story. He has cost the team 3.8 runs with his glovework, good for 86th place among all catchers. The tradeoff with him has always been that his bat buoys his profile, but is a 104 wRC+ enough to make up for poor defense?

If the team is looking to scrape over every detail for every morsel of wins—which it seems they must do, with a dearth of financial support coming from ownership—doubling down on defense and moving Jeffers to replace him with a framer as good as Vázquez might be the play. Yasmani Grandal, whom the Twins were interested in a few years back, is set to be a free agent this offseason and shouldn’t cost more than a few million dollars. It would be an old and lethargic catching tandem, but they would also be one of the most stout defensive groups in the league. 

If not Grandal, Alejandro Kirk is also an above-average framer, and he could be had, given Toronto’s likely retreat into a rebuild. Reese McGuire and Elias Díaz are other cheap defense-first options, but they do not represent a meaningful upgrade over the shape of Jeffers’s production. 

Dodgers, Astros, and Phillies: Framing is for Suckers
These are the three teams you could point to in an argument against catching defense. Will Smith grades out as the second-worst framer in the league, with J.T. Realmuto in sixth-worst and Yainer Diaz 14th from the bottom, in the spot next to Jeffers. They’ve received more production through the power of their bats. All three players claim a wRC+ above 100. Smith and Diaz are squarely into “good for any position” territory, with marks north of 110.

They would be the case studies supporting the argument to keep Jeffers around. He flashed tremendous offensive prowess with a 137 wRC+ in 2023, which helped fuel Minnesota’s ninth-ranked catching fWAR that season.

That year appears to be a fluke, though, as Jeffers fell back to an average realm in 2024, which—in combination with his below-average glove—makes him a perfectly cromulent backstop, rather than a genuinely helpful one. Maybe it’s fitting that the team is now 15th in catcher fWAR this year. Banking on his bat being as powerful as those of Smith or Diaz would be foolish.

Minnesota’s mandate is clear: they need to lean into an extreme in order to find better play from those who don the tools of ignorance. Someone in the mold of Vázquez would be perfect, but those players don’t grow on trees—and given the dearth of catching talent in the farm system, they may have to dig into the bargain bin to find such a player. But they exist. And they can be acquired. The Twins front office just needs to be clever.