Braves Sign Kurt Suzuki

Looks like Coppalella doesn't value framing the way Enscheff thinks he should.

Suzuki was the guy the Twins were blaming for their poor pitching. -5.0 on the Stat Corner listing on framing. So we got one who can't catch and the other can't throw.

One more (raises hand) who hopes that means we're going all-out for Lucroy next offseason.
 
Projection systems on Recker and Suzuki. About the same.

Recker
Steamer: 217 / 299 / 369; WAR per 600 PA: 1.6
ZIPS: 211 / 300 / 368; WAR per 600 PA: 1.0

Suzuki
Steamer: 254 / 307 / 369; WAR per 600 PA: 1.4
ZIPS: 255 / 305 / 359; WAR per 600 PA: 1.2
 
Looks like Coppalella doesn't value framing the way Enscheff thinks he should.

Suzuki was the guy the Twins were blaming for their poor pitching. -5.0 on the Stat Corner listing on framing. So we got one who can't catch and the other can't throw.

One more (raises hand) who hopes that means we're going all-out for Lucroy next offseason.

I think they value it just fine considering they haven't made any attempts to sign Wieters, were in on Castro, brought in Gosewich, and signed Suzuki to be the backup for peanuts. In Suzuki's defense, he has improved from dreadful to simply below average in pitch framing. All things considered, I bet Suzuki and Wieters end up producing very similarly rate-wise next year (Wieters slightly more offense, Suzuki slightly more defense).

I agree they will be in heavily for Lucroy. His contract starts at Martin's, then add 10%. I'm guessing the narrative around Lucroy will be that since he is a more athletic catcher he will age better than catchers typically do.
 
Looks like Coppalella doesn't value framing the way Enscheff thinks he should.

It couldn't have required that much foresight for him to have read an update at MLBTR, then regurgitate it here. Kind of like those who follow DOB Twitter feeds. "Lucroy, Lucroy, Lucroy!...and did I mention LUCROY???
 
I think they value it just fine considering they haven't made any attempts to sign Wieters, were in on Castro, brought in Gosewich, and signed Suzuki to be the backup for peanuts. In Suzuki's defense, he has improved from dreadful to simply below average in pitch framing. All things considered, I bet Suzuki and Wieters end up producing very similarly rate-wise next year (Wieters slightly more offense, Suzuki slightly more defense).

I agree they will be in heavily for Lucroy. His contract starts at Martin's, then add 10%. I'm guessing the narrative around Lucroy will be that since he is a more athletic catcher he will age better than catchers typically do.

If there's any improvement from Recker to Suzuki, it's incremental, particularly if you're a person who values framing. I suppose for $1.5m it's not a big deal.

Although R Martin is a pretty athletic catcher as well, I think you're about right on the price on Lucroy. And I'd be willing to go there. I think he's the best catcher in the game, bar none.
 
I don't get this.

There are no bad one year deals. This is cheap. It's not worth fighting about

I just don't get this unless they think they can trade Rickee for something they want.
 
Considering how the catching market played out this off-season I think our best options were

1) to have slightly topped the winning bid for Castro or

2) To have slightly topped what the Astros sent to the Yankees for McCann
 
One last nerdy post on catching metrics. Well . . . for today anyway. For my money, the most useful single catching metric is FRAA_ADJ from Baseball Prospectus. Includes framing, blocking throwing, fielding, etc. There are 24 catchers who had at least 4000 framing chances in both 2015 and 2016.

Here are the top 5 (order 1 - 5). No surprises at all here.
Yasmani Grandal
Buster Posey
Jason Castro
Tyler Flowers
Francisco Cervelli

Here are the bottom 5 (order 20 - 24). Only surprise for me here was Realmuto.
Kurt Suzuki
Welington Castillo
J.t. Realmuto
Stephen Vogt
Nick Hundley
 
Back
Top