The Numbers on New Brewers Catcher Omar Narváez

Expand

Photo Credit: Keith Allison

White Sox at Orioles 5/5/17

The Brewers’ first major addition of the offseason answers one question, raises another and creates some new possibilities.

For the fourth time in five seasons, the Brewers are likely to have a new primary catcher in 2020 after acquiring former Mariners and White Sox backstop Omar Narváez last week. If fans have grown accustomed to receiving offensive contributions from the position then Narváez fits that bill: In 2019, he set career highs with 132 games played and 482 plate appearances, and he was a solid contributor at the plate, posting an .813 on-base plus slugging with 22 home runs. He was easily the Mariners’ best offensive weapon, and his numbers were likely depressed a bit by a home ballpark that limits run scoring, hits and home runs.

Narváez’s challenge, however, has been that he negates much of his offensive value on defense. Baseball Prospectus is widely viewed as leading the charge to include catchers’ defensive value in their overall ratings, and they’re very low on Narváez’s contributions in that aspect of his game. In 2019, they estimated his pitch framing, pitch blocking and throwing skills cost the Mariners about 13.7 runs as compared to an average catcher, a rating lower than any Brewer has received in the last 15 years.

There is perhaps a small silver lining in the fact that Narváez’s 2019 campaign was a significant improvement over his work behind the plate in 2018. In his last season with the White Sox, Narváez only played in 97 games but was rated as the worst defensive catcher in all of baseball, costing his team 15.7 runs as compared to an average backstop. For comparison purposes, in 2019, Yasmani Grandal was rated as baseball’s third best defensive catcher at 20.9 runs above average, and Manny Piña ranked 14th at 8.3 runs above average. Using the common assumption that 10 runs are roughly equal to one win, simply replacing Grandal with Narváez behind the plate in 2019 would have projected to cost the Brewers 3.5 wins on defense alone.

The Brewers still have Manny Piña, however, creating an opportunity to use their veteran defensive standout to reduce the impact of Narváez’s shortcomings a bit. Having two catchers with very distinct differences in skillset creates the possibility of an offense-defense platoon at the position. The Brewers could replace Narváez with Piña to project a lead in the late innings of a game or use Narváez as a pinch hitter and have him stay in the game behind the plate if they’re trailing and need an offensive boost.

Using both catchers in one game, however, flies in the face of traditional baseball thinking. Backup catchers are typically the last player off the bench, a reserve held to project against the unexpected. No manager wants to have to finish a game with a non-catcher behind the plate because his starter was removed and his backup was unable to continue.

The Brewers were willing to take that risk occasionally in 2019, however. There were 28 games this year where both Yasmani Grandal and Manny Piña spent time behind the plate. Some of them came in September, where expanded rosters gave Craig Counsell a safety net, but that wasn’t always the case.

Expanded rosters could be a factor in the Brewers’ decision making in 2020. Major League rosters are expected to expand from 25 to 26 players from Opening Day through August in the upcoming season, giving teams one more bench or bullpen spot to work with. If the Brewers opt to use that spot on an emergency catcher, it would allow them to swap Narváez and Piña at will without taking the risk of being left without a backstop.

The Brewers have strong incentives to maximize Omar Narváez’s value, both for the present and the future. He’s under team control through the 2022 season, so he has an opportunity to become a fixture on the MLB roster for years to come. Maximizing his value and overcoming his deficits, however, may take some creative thinking.