Atlanta Braves Catching: What Free Agent?
By Fred Owens
The Atlanta Braves are looking for catching but the free agent market is thin. Will a free agent fill the Atlanta Braves catching void?
GM John Coppolella took over Atlanta Braves Twitter for a Q&A a few weeks ago and said among other things that
- The Braves were going to spend money on free agents this off-season and
- Starting pitching and improving catching were priorities
Alan looked at starting pitching a few days ago so I’ll look at catching beginning with free agents
Note that Coppolella did not say – as some have interpreted it – he was going to spend money on free agent catchers. That’s a good thing because there aren’t many of note, Wilson Ramos. Jason Castro and Matt Wieters top the list-or did until two weeks ago.
Notes On Catcher Defense
Judging catcher defense is more difficult than any other position because there are so many facets to look at. There’s framing, pitch blocking, game calling, controlling the running game and being able to manager pitchers just to name a few.
Pitch blocking (wild pitches/passed balls) and controlling running are impacted by the pitchers on the staff and to some extent by the whims of the scorekeeper.
There’s a lot of emphasis on pitch framing but it isn’t a make or break item. Stat Corner ranks catcher framing skills and this year Salvador Perez ranked last while Tyler Flowers was third.
Fangraphs ‘Defense’ metric ranks Perez first (15.5) and Flowers 51st (-1,1) among catchers with 350 innings while the Inside Edge ranking at the same link has Perez 34th and Flowers 18th.
Is limiting the running game your thing? Perez threw out 37 of 77 (48%) base stealers, Matt Wieters 23 of 66 (34%) while Flowers. . .never mind.
You get the idea, there’s a case for most of the top catchers depending on where you put the priority. As I go through the catching options I’ll throw some statistics in and you get to choose which you pay attention to.
Stat Corner breaks out framing by team, I combined the numbers of those players so the ranking I give may not match the one on the page. Onward and upward for a look at free agents.