Braves’ Best Bet Lies With Bethancourt
mfw A.J is in the starting lineup.
A.J. Pierzynski’s hot start offensively has helped counter balance his abysmal defensive skills. But hey, the man is 38. I’m not blaming him for being in the lineup almost daily.
Bethancourt has always been a giant question mark at the plate, and this year has been no exception. It almost physically pains me to advocate more playing time for a guy with a 19 wRC+… but here it goes.
Since a surprisingly productive but obviously unsustainable April (.422/.442/.689), AJP has appeared in 18 games and collected only 10 hits. Only 3 of those were for extra bases. To put that into perspective, AJP walked just 2 times in all of May, and his slugging percentage was actually lower than his on base percentage.
It sounds pretty bad, and that’s because it is. He slashed .145/.197/.194 in May. His entire slash line combined just barely edges out Nick Markakis’ .385 on base percentage.
And I understood riding the hot hand… when he was the hot hand. But for the past 31 days now, AJP has been just as bad as offensive incumbent Christian Bethancourt. The difference is that Bethancourt is actually a good defender.
So I found myself being dumfounded when I saw AJP in the lineup once again last night. I’ve been over why I believe him to be hindering Alex Wood’s performance, especially in the strikeouts department. Although Woody has used strong defense and grounds balls to aid him to strong outings recently.
But this is just plain bad managing. Even though AJP has strong platoon splits (.284/.324/.432 with 8 of his 9 XBH, these are along the lines of his career numbers), his recent hitting performances have handicapped a team who is already 25th in the game in wRC+, and he’s a very bad pitch framer to boot. Bethancourt on the other hand, has a 4 DRS in 191 innings.
Should we talk about just how good that is? I think so.
Among catchers who have caught 175 innings or more this year, Christian Bethancourt is tied for second place in DRS in the entire game. Another offensively challenged catcher, Seattle’s Mike Zunino, leads the way with a 7 DRS in 374.2 innings. Buster Posey and Bethancourt are tied for second with 4, although Posey has caught 314 innings, or 122.2 more than Bethancourt. Betty is currently registering a better DRS than noted defensive wizards like Russell Martin (2), Yadier Molina (1), and Salvador Perez (3).
Of course, I’m only using one metric here in DRS, and it’s hard to measure a catcher’s overall defensive value as it is. So let’s use another metric.
rSB is defined by Fangraphs as “Stolen Base Runs Saved” measures how many “runs” a catcher contributes to their team by throwing out runners and preventing runners from attempting steals in the first place.” We all know Betty has an arm, but how does he stack up against the best in the game? Well, he’s tied with quite a few others with 1 rSB. Aforementioned defensive whiz’s Russell Martin and Salvador Perez lead the pack, coming in at 3 and 2 respectively, just to put the number in perspective.
What about AJP’s defense? Is it really that bad, you say? -5 DRS and a -2 rSB. His rSB is tied for worst in the majors. And as one major league scout has told me personally “Pitchers hate throwing to A.J. Always have. He wants more fastballs with runners on because he can’t throw.”
I can keep going on and on and on, but you get the point by now. Both players aren’t swinging the bat, but only one of them is 23, under contract past this season, and challenging for the title of best defensive catcher of 2015. It is on Fredi Gonzalez to see this very basic rhetoric I am laying down right now. Bethancourt is supposed to be the future, and the future should be starting right now.