Sep 3, 2015; Kansas City, MO, USA; A general view of a catchers mitt prior to a game between the Detroit Tigers and the Kansas City Royals at Kauffman Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Peter G. Aiken-USA TODAY Sports
Sep 3, 2015; Kansas City, MO, USA; A general view of a catchers mitt prior to a game between the Detroit Tigers and the Kansas City Royals at Kauffman Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Peter G. Aiken-USA TODAY Sports /
The Atlanta Braves sent Joseph Odom to the Arizona Fall League last October and then saw him break out in Carolina this year. Was the breakout real or a mirage?
Who Is He?
Odom was the Atlanta Braves 13th round selection in 2013 out of Huntingdon College in Alabama. In his draft season, Odom split his time nearly even between the GCL and Danville. Combined, he hit .216/.310/.257 with a 10/23 BB/K ratio over 87 plate appearances, but he flashed high end defensive ability in spite of a low caught stealing percentage (9% on the year combined between the levels on 22 attempts).
The Braves skipped Odom over low-A Rome to high-A Lynchburg in 2014, and he flashed his power bat and defensive skills, but the bat stayed stagnant with the jump in levels, as he hit .205/.313/.341 with a 29/48 BB/K over 220 PA. He threw out 25% of runners, so there was some improvement there, but his excellence defensively is based in his framing and lateral movement behind the plate, not his arm.
He repeated high-A in 2015, but the Braves had moved their affiliate to Carolina. The results weren’t much different offensively, as Odom hit .222/.285/.403 with 16 doubles, 7 home runs, and a 20/53 BB/K ratio over 243 plate appearances. His defense remained solid for what it was. He was sent to the Arizona Fall League as the Braves were required to send a catcher, and he was on the taxi squad most of the AFL season, making only 30 plate appearances with very poor results, but the Braves had him working on his swing to be able to improve going forward.
The results of that work in the AFL were seen as Odom repeated Carolina one more time in 2016 and hit .292/.349/.500 with 8 home runs and 12 doubles over 213 plate appearances, sporting a 15/40 BB/K ratio, showing more power and actually having his best strikeout rate of his career. He was using a notably different swing path that put more balls into the air, using his strong swing, but also shortening the swing so he could make better contact in the zone as well. He was able to see a jump in his BABIP, but not to an unsustainable rate when you look at how it was happening (putting more balls in play at a higher rate of balls in the air).
Odom was promoted to Mississippi on June 23rd, but he went from a two-catcher split in Carolina with Tanner Murphy to a three-headed catching monster in Mississippi for the rest of the season, and it affected his ability to stay consistent, though his rate stats stayed consistent. He hit .259/.294/.333 with 8 extra base hits over 143 plate appearances with a 7/27 BB/K ratio.
Joseph Odom is listed at 6’2 and 225 pounds. He is a right-handed hitter and thrower.
Hitting
Odom has a cocked stance with his left leg bent in a sort-of pre-loaded manner. He has an opening stride as he approaches the ball and then gets his bat through the zone with good speed. He has some very notable leg strength, and his ability to drive the ball when he connects is obvious, but he also will drift into old habits frequently.
Odom does have a more compact swing than you’d think for a guy of his size, but it’s still not without loop when he goes into his “old” swing, so keeping his focus on that air-it-out swing is key.
Base Running/Fielding
Odom is a plodder on the base paths, so there’s not much there to evaluate. He’s going to be a guy that gets gif’s made of him when he ever gets a major league triple or stolen base, akin to the Chipper reaction on the Brian McCann triple of years ago.
Odom defensively will get dinged as he has below-average “pop” times to second base due to an average arm and average movements moving toward second base. He’s shown to be fairly accurate with his throws, for what that’s worth.
Odom does get high marks defensively in spite of his caught stealing rate, however, as his pitchers love working with him. He sets a very good target due to his size, moves very well laterally, and displays good framing. Odom’s most surprising ability to me is his “speed” in his lateral movement behind the plate, especially to his arm side. For a guy with his lack of speed on the base paths, he shows surprising quickness in movement when he needs to adjust to a pitch needing to be blocked.
Video
Next: Future outlook
Future Outlook
Let’s put this out there. I have weird baseball affinities. One of those was a guy that really reminds me of Odom, Mike Stanley. Stanley was a guy who came up in the Texas Rangers system in the late 1980s. In spite of being a guy who threw out a whole 24% of base runners in his career, he caught for 11 of his 15 year career!
Some things about Stanley that I find intriguing in his comparison to Odom. Stanley was always known for his defense, but he had a poor arm, to say the least, which is why he was 30 before he totaled 300 plate appearances in a single season in the majors. By that point, he’d played 520 games with the Rangers and New York Yankees, hitting .251/.352/.363, a 99 OPS+ for his first 1371 plate appearances in the major leagues. He always had power and the ability to block the plate, but it wasn’t until he got into the tutelage of Buck Showalter with the Yankees that he really took his big steps forward in his career.
Showalter put Stanley in positions to best use his power and relied on him as the primary catcher for the Yankees from 1993-1995, including 1995 when he was an All-Star and 1993 when he won a Silver Slugger. In those three seasons, he hit .290/.377/.518 with 61 home runs in his age 30-32 seasons. He went on to have a number of seasons of solid power, eventually moving to first base, but that was by far his best stretch of his career.
Like Stanley, I could see Odom being a guy who makes the major leagues, maybe not with the Braves, but he’s a guy who has a swing that could produce some very solid offensive seasons if he keeps making the progress that he’s started at this point.
Odom will likely go to Mississippi to start 2017 and move to Gwinnett at some point in the season. He will turn 25 over the offseason, so he’s certainly not a spring chicken, and the Braves likely aren’t looking to Odom for their long-term catching solution, but he could be a guy who plays well enough behind the plate to be there long enough to let his bat catch up and be a bench bat for someone for a fairly long career. He may need some work still, but the progress from 2014 to where he’s at now is tremendous, so he certainly has already shown the willingness and ability to put in the effort when asked by the team.
