Atlanta Braves Scouting Report on Catcher Joseph Odom
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.
Next: Braves Minor League Database
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.