Baseball writers often observe that the sport’s extended schedule more closely resembles a marathon than a sprint, but at least one position player on the field would be hard-pressed to compete in a race of any distance. Beginning in Little League, catchers are selected for their girth, arm strength, and tolerance for pain and discomfort, with little consideration to fleetness of foot or offensive ability. As a reward for their continued success, backstops gain the privilege of squatting in the path of an ever-accelerating base runner (somebody who gets bigger and stronger by the year), absorbing an array of major and minor collisions in the process while having the pressure of being the field captain both for the pitcher and defense.
Unsung heroes tend to increase value while never being recognized for their duties. In the case of back-up catchers, their heralded ventures tend to fly under-the-radar. The only time the back-up catcher gets his “moment in the sun” is when spotting the everyday catcher a day off twice a week or filling in for an injury. However, as we will see, their value is unmatched throughout the sport.
For Roberto Perez, those opportunities have come few and far between since his Major League debut in 2014. In 321 plate appearances, he’s amassed a .242/.338/.390 line with a .322 wOBA and a 105 RC+. The .322 leads all catchers with a minimum of 300 PA’s and a maximum of 350 PA’s in the past two seasons. The 105 RC+ rank second in the aforementioned categories thus making him a valuable back-up backstop.
Here’s the thing about catchers: Their offensive and defensive development is rarely linear, and it’s even less frequent that their skills on both sides of the ball develop in harmony. Long lauded as a solid glove behind the dish, Perez graded out as one of the best framers in AAA in 2014, things started clicking at the plate for Perez as well that season at age 25. He entered the year with a grand total of 14 home runs in about 1,750 career minor league plate appearances then proceeded to hit eight in just over 200 plate appearances with a .305/.405/.517 line. That outburst carried over to the majors last year, when he hit seven in 228 plate appearances while seeing increased opportunity in the wake of Yan Gomes’ injury.
There is one offensive skill he’s always had: the ability to draw a walk and get on base. He’s managed to bring a sizable chunk of his 15 percent career minor-league walk rate into big league games, thus far posting an OBP almost a hundred points better than his batting average. Coupled with the recently-developed power, he makes for a viable back-stop, one that obviously can provide above replacement level play.
Perez was a 33rd rounder in 2008 and has really flown under the radar, but fits the mold of the defensive-minded backup. He’s an above average defender with an above average arm that’s a favorite of pitchers. His 2013 was marred by a diagnosis of Bell’s Palsy shortly after getting to AAA. He played through it and really struggled, but came almost all the way back and tore the cover off the ball in AAA in 2014. Perez has always had feel for the bat head and the strike zone, but 2014 was the first flashes of getting to those skills in games.
With this mentioned, it should be noted that Perez’s value to the Indians is not be underestimated.
Tom Tango wrote an article for the 2009 Hardball Times Annual in which he compared catchers’ performances with and without rest, and found little difference between the two. However, Tango’s study incorporated older data, excluded catchers over 30 and divided plate appearances into those with “no rest” and those “with one or two days’ rest,” placing plate appearances on (for example) the second consecutive day of action in the same category as those that took place on any other subsequent day (and weighing the former more heavily since they occur far more frequently). Tango’s study showed that catching for eight consecutive days depresses production on the order of approximately 10 points of OPS+ (with the losses split almost equally between patience and power), with the steepest decline occurring between days five and six.
Over the last six seasons, the thirty teams’ primary catchers (defined by most innings caught) have posted a weighted-average OPS+ of 98, while their alternates (they of the second-most innings caught) have collectively recorded a paltry 81 OPS+. Only last year did the gap amount to little more than the 10 points of OPS+ that separate the typical weary starter from his rested self, which likely represents nothing more than a one-year quirk in the numbers. It should be pointed out that the backup catcher’s schedule of sporadic starts might not lend itself to success at the plate. Perhaps these backups would find more success in a more regular role, but it’s also possible that being a full-time player would only further expose their weaknesses. The current arrangement grants managers the freedom to pursue favorable match-ups for their weak hitting reserves, an advantage reflected in the fact that non-switch-hitting backup catchers faced pitchers of opposite handedness in 41 percent of PA last season, compared to 37 percent for non-switch-hitting starters.
Offensive performance tells only part of the story of a catcher’s overall production. In fact, defense often receives top billing in the enumeration of many backstops’ strengths. Ironically, catcher defense has also proven the most resistant to quantification, largely because of the difficulty of separating the catcher’s contributions from those of the pitchers with whom he works. One might expect backup catchers to recoup some of their shortfalls at the plate while crouching behind it, reflecting the non-scientific study of Nichols’ Law of Catcher Defense.
Perez provides above replacement-level production for the Indians while splitting playing time with their primary backstop Gomes. With both of them spotting each other and splitting time crouching behind the plate, the Indians are nearly assured that both will remain effective throughout the course of a 162 game schedule.
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