Jamie Cameron

Thanks for reading! I think something you speak to which is impossible to measure is Castro's impact on the staff. Established catcher with solid D gives him cred with veterans like Santana and confidence in him from up and comers like Berrios.

Great point, I would agree.

Thanks for sharing, great stories!

Thanks, Brock! Really appreciate it!

Let's try and get 'Jason Castro out of 10' to stick! Outstanding!

I think when the Twins went with Castro, they were in a pretty difficult position, due to: 1) Having Suzuki - who is terrible defensively 2) Not having an in-house option who was major league ready 3) The catcher FA market is always going to be pretty thin. I think Castro just ended up being really good timing for MN Agree that organizations should work hard to develop in-house options.

Thanks for taking the time to read it!

Thanks for reading!

Yeah this is interesting. I don't think it's a crazy question at all. Garver simply hasn't played a ton at the MLB level. While I think he will, time will tell if his bat will play with the big league team. Additionally, he's not known as a strong defender, although there's always room to develop there. Finally, Castro is in the second year of a 3 year $24.5 million contract so he'll be the guy for the foreseeable future. If Garver can rake though, there's no reason to not get his bat in the lineup more. Tons of MLB clubs split catcher time more equitably than the Twins currently do (Dodgers are a good example).

Yeah....I guess I felt like the 3 paragraphs I spent explaining my analogy would be enough for folks to differentiate between the two.

LOL!

I was sitting down the third base line at Target Field on April 5th, giving me an excellent view of Mitch Garver’s timely first big league home run. This got me to thinking about Jason Castro, and catching in general. OK. Let’s get weird.When I first moved to the US, I worked in an upscale deli. I had just been given permission to work, and I needed money badly, a stable income for a few months to get up and running and on my feet. At said upscale deli, ownership (I like to pretend I’m part of a baseball franchise at all times), made us do regular tastings and scorings of the deli’s offerings. Folks would bring around a tray with samples and we would all score a given sample out of ten, with some brief words of explanation. I knew I wasn’t long for the food industry when others reeled off complex descriptions of how samples affected their palette, while I typically landed into two categories; ‘delicious’ or ‘not my thing’. What does this have to do with catching? I promise I’m going somewhere with this. Invariably, scores on samples were really high because the deli only sold delicious food. The one exception to this was coffee. Folks typically scored coffees in the 5-7 range, instead of the typical 8-10 range of other samples? Why? Because most (including myself) didn’t know what they were looking for. What differentiates a great coffee from a good coffee? Darned if I know. So what does this have to do with baseball? My contention is, tasting fancy coffee and evaluating catchers are the same. We don’t know what we don’t know, and we can’t always account for the subtle nuances that differentiate good from great. So I set out to try to gain a better understanding of the question; what goes into making a good catcher? Where does Jason Castro fall in these criteria? Hitting Let’s start with some general numbers on Castro. The reason I wanted to acknowledge hitting is it seems to me that there is generally a poor understanding of what an average offensive catcher looks like in MLB. Catchers like Gary Sanchez, Buster Posey and J.T. Realmuto tend to skew overall perception of what typical catcher offensive production looks like. Firstly, it’s important to acknowledge how useful it is to have a catcher who plays as much as Castro. In 2017, only 14 catchers made at least 400 PA. Of these 14, Castro finished 10th in fWAR (1.6). Again, of these 14, Castro finished 6th in OBP (behind only Posey, Contreras, Barnhart, Lucroy and Sanchez) and first in BB% (11.1%). While Castro isn’t a plus hitter, he gets on base enough to be a solid offensive contributor in a small group of elite catchers who play as much as he does throughout the course of the season. Framing This might seem like a weird place to go next. The reason I’m going here is that when Castro signed with the Twins, he came with a reputation as an excellent pitch framer. When Castro was brought in at the beginning of an otherwise quiet first off-season for Derrick Falvey and Thad Levine, his framing prowess was well established. In Castro’s final season in Houston, he got 96 more strikes called than expected, good for fifth in MLB. This, combined with the Twins transitioning from Kurt Suzuki, who got 38 less strikes than expected, had a significant positive swing for a Twins pitching staff expected to be mediocre at best in advance of the 2017 season. Several factors resulted in a slightly improved pitching performance in 2017, none more so than Byron Buxton. Castro certainly had an impact too, but what about the other aspects of catching we might be less familiar with? Regular Fielding ‘Regular fielding’ is an odd term. It simply doesn’t apply to catchers. While defensive metrics like UZR (ultimate zone rating) and DRS (defensive runs saved) give insight into most defensive positions, it’s too general to accurately appropriate to the catcher position. DRS, however, is a useful starting point for analyzing Castro’s fielding. DRS measures the runs saved or cost by a given player compared to a league average player at that position. In 2017 Castro finished ninth among catchers who caught at least 600 innings (34 catchers altogether), with a DRS of 10. Jonathan Lucroy was last at -15. Preventing Base Stealing Another important aspect is how catchers handle base runners. rSB is essentially DRS combined with stolen base runs above average. Castro is right around replacement level (20th in MLB among catchers who caught 600 innings) with a 0 rSB. Tucker Barnhart is first at 7. New Statcast data sheds light on Castro’s performance against base runners. Pop time measures the amount of time from the pitch hitting the catcher’s mitt to the moment the ball reaches the fielder’s receiving point at the center of the base. In 2017, Castro ranked 46th in MLB in pop time at 2.07 (MLB average 2.00). Castro ranked dead middle in MLB in his arm strength and second to last in exchange time. Essentially, he has an averagely strong arm, a slightly below average pop time but a far below average exchange of the ball from mitt to throwing hand. This resulted in Castro throwing out 26% of base runners, still good for a solid ninth in MLB, in a category where there is a large disparity between solid and great (Wellington Castillo, who ranked first, threw out almost 50% of base runners). Blocking Blocking is another element of catcher defensive performance that is difficult to measure. FanGraphs uses RPP (runs on passed pitches) which uses PITCHf/x data to attempt to measure how many runs a catcher saved based on the difficulty of corralling the pitch. PITCHf/x data may not be sufficient to inform this stat as it does not accurately measure whether a pitch should have been controlled by a catcher or not. Statcast may end up providing more accurate data to inform this measurement. FanGraphs’ last metric for Castro was 0.1 with the Astros in 2014, but a lack of data makes comparing him across MLB difficult. Game Management Finally, game management is the most difficult skill to evaluate in catcher performance. Catchers have a massive impact on how a pitcher navigates a lineup, where and what pitches they throw etc. Sports Info Solutions attempts to quantify game calling in its Catcher Pitch Calling Runs Above Average metric, or RerC, which is available at Baseball-Reference. Last season, Castro was seven runs above average per that stat. The only catcher to best that mark was Barnhart, who was 10 runs above average. When it’s all said and done, it’s extremely hard to comprehend how impactful Castro is for the Twins. At catcher, unlike any other position, there exists an intersection between offensive and defensive metrics which impact their contributions to their given team. Castro is a little below average offensively and above average defensively. If we were tasting a coffee named ‘Castro blend’ we might give it a 7 out of 10. That’s a score the Twins would gladly take over the next two years, as there are very few eights, nines and tens. Click here to view the article

If there is one thing we can all agree on regarding the 2018 Minnesota Twins, it’s that they have a higher floor than their 2017 counterparts. Still, established pieces are going to have to maintain or raise the level of their game in order to keep their jobs. Most notably; Taylor Rogers.Rogers was drafted by the Twins in the 11th round in 2012 out of the University of Kentucky. He exceeded rookie limits in the 2016 season and is not eligible for arbitration until 2020. With that amount of team control it's important the Twins know what they have, and what they don’t have, in the 27 year old left-hander. MLB Debut Rogers made his MLB debut in 2016, pitching 61 innings and excelled. He managed a 3.96 ERA on the back of a 9.39 K/9, 2.35 BB/9 and GB% of 51%, all really solid numbers. Rogers’ xFIP of 3.47 was indicative that he might be scratching the surface of being an excellent relief option for the Twins. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Rogers had pretty dramatic splits in 2016. Against lefties, he put together an excellent .202 BAA, .286 SLG and .281 BABIP. Conversely, Rogers struggled against righties, to the tune of a .291 BAA, .462 SLG and .348 BABIP. This led most to the conclusion that Rogers could be a viable long-term option as a LOOGY. The first half of Rogers 2017, however, would call that conclusion into question. 2017: A Tale of two Halves "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." Words from Charles Dickens which are applicable to Rogers’ 2017. First Half: 1.87 BB/9, 0.80 HR/9, .333 SLG Second Half: 5.73 BB/9, 1.23 HR/9, .434 SLG In the first half of the 2017 season, the Twins bullpen was in flux. Not only did the big league club use a record 16 starting pitchers over the course of the season, a slew of Quadruple-A types saw time in the pen. With a stable bullpen, Rogers would likely have faced predominantly LHH. The Twins were struggling, however, and Rogers began to see RHH with increasing frequency. Surprisingly, he delivered in a big way. Prior to the end of June, Rogers managed an incredible 1.35 ERA against RHH, with a stingy .257 SLG, and .227 BAA. For the Twins, this was a boon of Hildenbergian proportions. In the first half of 2017, Rogers threw to 33% more RHH than LHH. That split evened in the second half of the season, but not significantly enough to prevent a major regression against righties, evidenced by his 5.79 ERA, .355 BAA and .581 SLG the rest of the way against RHH. It’s almost a certainty that Rogers’ first half numbers against RHH were an aberration. A return to dominance against LHH (he had been solid but unspectacular against them in the first half) helped mitigate the damage of an awful second half. All in all Rogers finished the season with numbers which would lead most to consider him a left-handed specialist. Rogers offers more than Buddy Boshers, but not a ton more. Pitch Mix Overview Rogers’ pitch mix is important to understanding why he suddenly fell off a cliff against RHH in the second half of 2017. Rogers relies on a sinker, four seam fastball, and a curveball. Additionally, he mixes in a changeup pretty infrequently (only 4% of the time in 2017). Rogers has above average velocity on most of his pitches, his fastball generating a ton of fly balls, and his changeup generating a decent number of groundballs. Rogers decreased his chageup usage as the 2017 season progressed, ditching the pitch altogether in July. Coincidentally, that was his worst month of the year. He got it to the tune of an ERA of 8.18 and gave up a .614 SLG that month. This makes sense. The changeup is an equalizing pitch to throw to opposite handed hitters (that’s why Johan Santana was so dominant). Despite not having a great changeup to begin with, Rogers was continually being put in tough situations against RHH without a weapon to neutralize them. This, in addition to an uncharacteristically high walk rate, led Rogers to an awful second half. Waiting in the Wings On one hand, there is reason for optimism for Rogers in 2018. Despite having a pretty rough spring training, it’s likely that his elevated walk rate from the second half of the season is a mechanical issue which is now resolved (two walks in 11 IP in spring training suggest as much). On the other hand, his splits are real, Rogers might not be a true LOOGY, but he isn’t a pitcher the Twins should be relying on to get out RHH on a consistent basis. Additionally, the Twins have some interesting arms waiting in the wings. Gabriel Moya (owner of an excellent changeup) is a candidate much more likely to be successful against both LHH and RHH due to his pitch mix and deceptive mechanics. Tyler Jay is another candidate to be a back end bullpen option if he can stay healthy throughout the 2018 season. If either of those pitchers have strong seasons, they may challenge for Rogers’ spot. Zach Duke is already a better iteration of a LHP who can dominate LHH due to his ability to generate ground balls instead of fly-balls. With a minor league option remaining, don’t be surprised if Rogers ends up in Rochester if he doesn’t get off to a strong start. Click here to view the article

If there is one thing we can all agree on regarding the 2018 Minnesota Twins, it’s that they have a higher floor than their 2017 counterparts. With key additions in the rotation, bullpen, and at DH, Minnesota baseball fans are eagerly anticipating the start of a new season. With a higher floor, established pieces are going to have to maintain, or raise the level of their game in order to keep their jobs. Most notably; Taylor Rogers. Rogers was drafted by the Twins in the 11th round in 2012 out of the University of Kentucky. Rogers exceeded rookie limits in the 2016 season and is not eligible for arbitration until 2020. With that amount of team control its important the Twins what they have, and what they don’t have in the 27 year old left-hander. MLB Debut Rogers made his MLB debut in 2016, pitching 61 innings and excelled. Rogers managed a 3.96 ERA on the back of a 9.39 K/9, 2.35 BB/9, and GB% of 51%, all really solid numbers. Rogers’ xFIP of 3.47 was indicative that he might be scratching the surface of being an excellent relief option for the Twins. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Rogers had pretty dramatic splits in 2016. Against lefties, he put together an excellent .202 BAA, .286 SLG, and .281 BAbip. Conversely, Rogers struggled against righties, to the tune of a .291 BAA, .462 SLG, and .348 BAbip. This led most to the conclusion that Rogers could be a viable long term option as a LOOGY. The first half of Rogers 2017 however, would call that conclusion into question. 2017: A Tale of two Halves ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times’. Words from Charles Dickens which are applicable to Rogers’ 2017, which oscillated between impressive, and desolate. First Half: 1.87 BB/9, 0.80 HR/9, .333 SLG Second Half: 5.73 BB/9, 1.23 HR/9, .434 SLG In the first half of the 2017 season, the Twins bullpen was in flux. Not only did the big league club use a record 16 starting pitchers over the course of the season, a slew of quadruple A types saw time in the pen, long before an incredible second half surge propelled the team to the second wild card berth. With a stable bullpen, Rogers would likely faced predominantly LHH. The Twins however, were struggling, and Rogers began to see RHH with increasing frequency. Surprisingly, he delivered in a big way. Prior to the end of June, Rogers managed an incredible 1.35 ERA against RHH, with a stingy .257 SLG, and .227 BAA. For the Twins, this was a boon of Hildenbergian proportions. Overall, in the first half of 2017, Rogers threw to 33% more RHH than LHH, a statistic which evened in the second half of the season, but not significantly enough to prevent a major regression against righties, evidenced by his 5.79 ERA, .355 BAA, and .581 SLG the rest of the way against RHH. It’s almost a certainty that Rogers’ first half numbers against RHH were an aberration. A return to dominance against LHH (he had been solid but unspectacular against them in the first half) helped mitigate the damage of an awful second half. All in all Rogers finished the season with number which would lead most to consider him a left-handed specialist. Rogers offers more than Buddy Boshers, but not a ton more. Pitch Mix Overview Rogers’ pitch mix is important to understanding why he suddenly fell off a cliff against RHH in the second half of 2017. Rogers relies on a sinker, four seam fastball, and a curveball. Additionally, he mixes in a changeup pretty infrequently (only 4% of the time in 2017). Rogers has above average velocity on most of his pitches, his fastball generating a ton of fly balls, and his changeup generating a decent number of groundballs. Rogers threw his changeup minimally to begin with but decreasingly frequently as the 2017 season progressed, ditching the pitch altogether in July. Coincidentally, July was the worst month of the year for Rogers, who put together an ERA of 8.18 and gave up a .614 SLG that month. This makes sense. The changeup is an equalizing pitch to throw to opposite handed hitters (that’s why Johan Santana was so dominant). Despite not having a great changeup to begin with, Rogers was continually being put in tough situations against RHH without a weapon to neutralize them. This, in addition to an uncharacteristically high walk rate, led Rogers to an awful second half. Waiting in the Wings On one hand, there is reason for optimism for Rogers in 2018. Despite having a pretty rough spring training, it’s likely that his elevated walk rate from the second half of the season is a mechanical issue which is now resolved (2 walks in 11 IP in spring training would suggest as much). On the other hand, his splits are real, Rogers might not be a true LOOGY, but he isn’t a pitcher the Twins should be relying on to get out RHH on a consistent basis. Additionally, the Twins have some interesting arms waiting in the wings. Gabriel Moya (owner of an excellent changeup) is a candidate much more likely to be successful against both LHH and RHH due to his pitch mix and deceptive mechanics. Tyler Jay is another candidate to be a backend bullpen option if he can stay healthy throughout the 2018 season. If either of those pitchers have strong seasons, they may challenge for Rogers’ spot. Zach Duke is already a better iteration of a LHP who can dominate LHH due to his ability to generate ground balls instead of fly-balls. With a minor league option remaining, don’t be surprised if Rogers ends up in Rochester if he doesn’t get off to a strong start.

Thank you! I would agree. I think Pressly at his best has all the tools necessary to be a guy the Twins use in pretty high leverage situations. If he struggles with consistency, thankfully they have the bullpen depth to absorb that now.

Thanks for taking the time to read it!

Thank you! I definitely think he has the ability to be a good reliever, mid 3s ERA, lots of Ks.

Thank you for reading. The data is truly amazing. It's really fun looking for patterns and stories in it. That is much more work than the actual writing itself. This took me 1-2 hours, but it was fairly limited in its scope.

Thank you for reading!

They have everything we have access to, plus a factor of at least 10, I'd argue!

This is super interesting. I would offer that Pressly is probably spinning the ball as much as he can whilst containing some level of consistency in the rest of his mechanics. Would have to look at his spin rates on breaking pitches. Some folks just can't generate the same level of spin others can.

Here is 2016. I think the noticeable difference is as you follow the season long adjustments to his delivery, there is consistency (generally) i.e. when the release drops on one pitch, the rest follow suit. The difference in 2018 is that when one went down another went up, that's the type of difference that can result in tipped pitches. I actually don't think Pressly is very far from being a very good and consistent bullpen arm.

Thanks for the kind words!, much appreciated!