Catcher Defense in Question for the Brewers

Expand

Photo: hj_west via Wikimedia Commons

Jonathan Lucroy catching for the Brewers

Jonathan Lucroy catching for the Brewers

Catcher defense is one of the hardest things to quantify in professional sports, and, in a recurring theme for the franchise, it’s a question mark again for the Brewers in 2023.

While the full value of a catcher’s array of necessary defensive skills has always been impossible to determine, for several years in the early-to-mid 2010’s the Brewers had a backstop believed to be among the game’s elite in Jonathan Lucroy. Lucroy was above average to good at the traditionally valued catching skills, blocking balls in the dirt and throwing to bases, but arguably the biggest source of his value was a relatively newly quantifiable skill: Pitch framing. Lucroy was one of the best catchers in the modern history of the sport at getting “extra” called strikes for his pitchers based on the way he received a ball, which made seemed to make an umpire more likely to perceive a pitch as being in the strike zone.

It’s been seven years since the Brewers traded Lucroy to the Rangers during the 2016 season, however, and in those seven seasons the Brewers have had five different primary catchers. Those catchers have had an array of profiles: Manny Piña played the position more often than anyone else in the first two years after Lucroy’s departure and was a defense-first option at the position. For the three years after that the Brewers went with players whose offensive profile was expected to be their primary source of value and in two of those three years those players were All Stars: Yasmani Grandal in 2019 and Omar Narvaez in 2021. 

Narvaez was expected to be the Brewers’ primary catcher again in 2022, which would have made him the franchise’s first player to wear that mantle in three consecutive seasons since Lucroy, but instead late addition Victor Caratini ended up playing more often. Caratini had previously graded out as a below average defender but, like Grandal and Narvaez before him, he appeared to improve in that side of his game during his time with the Brewers.

Back for More

Caratini is back for a second season in Milwaukee but he’s joined by another newcomer, the Brewers’ top offseason acquisition, catcher William Contreras. The Brewers pulled off one of the most surprising transactions of the offseason when they became the third team in a trade between the Braves and Athletics and acquired Contreras in exchange for outfielder Esteury Ruiz, who in turn had been acquired in last year’s Josh Hader trade.

In acquiring Contreras, however, the Brewers committed to another catcher with an uncertain defensive profile. Contreras, who turned 25 in December, had a breakout season offensively in 2022 when he batted .278 with a .354 on-base and .506 slugging in 97 games. The Brewers’ new catcher, however, was also one of just 41 catchers to receive at least 8000 pitches last season and Baseball Prospectus ranked him 28th among them defensively (one spot ahead of his brother and new Cardinals catcher Willson).

As researchers continue to work on new ways to evaluate catchers, the question marks around Contreras’ defense continue to grow. Last week Baseball Savant unveiled a new metric using Statcast data to evaluate catchers’ skills at blocking pitches in the dirt and last season Contreras didn’t do all that well there either, ranking 53rd among the 66 catchers with at least 1000 blocking opportunities (and 17 spots behind Narvaez). The good news in that data, however, is that the difference between most catchers was relatively small: By Baseball Savant’s measure, the difference between Contreras and the average defensive catcher’s blocking skill was just three missed pitches in a sample of 2242.

Nonetheless, while the players behind the plate have turned over often, the Brewers face a question they’ve seen often in recent years: Can their catchers continue a trend of getting better defensively after coming to Milwaukee, or at least hit enough to make an offensive contribution that outweighs a defensive deficiency?