Backup Backstop Battle Royal?

If Stuart is returned to the Twins, does he have to be added to the 40 man?

I think you let this play out for another month or two (i.e. closer to the trade deadline).

- there could be an injury (C or MI)

- Escobar or Dozier are a prime trade chip for a MLB for MLB type trade (for a SP) if the right situation aligns. Don't be in a hurry to get rid of a good utility IF (Adrianza)

- Gimenez's 45 PA (vs Castro's 100+) are not exactly killing the team

- Garver shouldn't be relegated to a non-catching role (3rd catcher/PH/DH) this early in the season

At some point, the Twins do need to see what Mitch Garver and John Ryan Murphy can do in the MLB.

I think you let this play out for another month or two (i.e. closer to the trade deadline).

 

- there could be an injury (C or MI)

- Escobar or Dozier are a prime trade chip for a MLB for MLB type trade (for a SP) if the right situation aligns. Don't be in a hurry to get rid of a good utility IF (Adrianza)

- Gimenez's 45 PA (vs Castro's 100+) are not exactly killing the team

- Garver shouldn't be relegated to a non-catching role (3rd catcher/PH/DH) this early in the season

In that case, I'd bring up Murph, and let Garver get even more ABs and steady catching work- some of it with pitchers who may be Twins before long themselves.

I think any claims about the Twins pitching staff being elevated are a bit exaggerated.  Phil Hughes 5.23 ERA, Kyle Gibson 8.20, Meija 5.79.  Hector Santiago 3.80 ERA is a reasonable surprise, but is almost exactly his career 3.84 ERA.  Amongst the starting rotation only Ervin Santana who had a career start to the season is doing better than their career average.

In the pen, the pretty much the same story.

I will buy the anecdotal evidenence that the catchers are working well with the pitchers but I think most of that is the pitching coaches job and I also doubt it makes up for these two players hitting 200 or below.

I would like to see Garver come up.  We have had Ryan in enough games to diminish any hopes we might have.  The Yankee years are long gone and Garver has worked hard to earn a chance.  Garver is not young and more seasoning is not to the benefit of a catcher since we all know that most catchers regress in their 30s.  

I agree with mlhouse posting - the pitcher numbers are not showing that big Castro boost.  The pitch framing is not a cureall when the pitches are so far off that the people in the bleachers can call balls and strikes.

Let Garver sink or swim.  We all hope Rotverdt(?) will the the eventual answer, but by then it would be nice to see who can split time or back him up.

Nice piece, Tom.  I kind of like the your idea to go with three catchers, with the idea that it is an apprenticeship.  If Garver is going to be a part of the next winning Twins org, he needs to be up and participating.  Yeah, it would suck to have three, but the way you describe it kind of works for me, especially if Garver could DH a bit.  Didn't the Cubs roster 3 last year?  Anyway, this project wouldn't start quite yet anyway.

I like the idea of having Garver up with Castro to mentor him on the advance stats part of receiving while we still have Castro. My guess is that they (Falvey/Lavine) are trying to introduce the same systems in Rochester as we have recently heard about in the majors. My vote is to bring up Garver when he has learned some new things defensively so as to get mentored, get ready to take over and trade a catcher at the All Star Break...Just need one of the catchers to build enough value to get some value back...

"I know a lot of people hate the idea of having three catchers, but Castro is so vulnerable against lefties (career .192/.254/.289 hitter off southpaws) that having the ability to pinch hit for him late in games could be a big asset. You’re never going to see Paul Molitor do that when he’s only got two catchers on the roster because the very last thing he ever wants to do is put his emergency catcher, Escobar, behind the dish."

Man, I really hope this is still not an issue! As an actual risk, the numbers are so far from adding up to a legitimate concern that I would assume Falvey and Levine are way past this kind of Gardenhire era paranoia.

If you pinch hit for Castro in the 7th with Vargas and play Gimenez for two innings, what's the downside? The extremely low probability that Gimenze will get injured? And that Escobar -- or Mauer for that matter -- would catch a few innings?  That seems so far from catastrophic as a worst case scenario, and so unlikely to occur anyway, that it pales in comparison to the very high odds of losing a game by letting Castro bat with men on base. Shouldn't you be more worried about losing a game by a needless but oh so predictable out?

And it's not like letting Mauer or Escobar catch two innings automatically loses you the game, either. The odds of a catcher injury in any particular inning are pretty small. The odds of Castro or Gimenez stranding the potential winning run on base are close to 80%.

It's like Gardenhire's phobia of losing the DH. So what? On a team that regularly started Jason Tyner at DH, you're worried about the tiny, tiny chance a pitcher might have to bat, due to a very unlikely freak injury? Even though it it's a big at-bat you can just pinch hit anyway and replace the pitcher?

There's a statistical term called Loss Aversion that refers to exaggerated worries about a potential loss blinding you to the opportunity of a potential gain. If there are two men on base, you're down by a run, and you bat Gimenez instead of pinch-hitting, because you're afraid that if you put Castro in the following inning he might get hurt, that's a text book example. It's like refusing to go outside because you don't want to get hit by a meteorite. The loss aversion you should feel is to losing the game, by leaving the winning run on second base when you had Vargas or Grossman on the bench!

And that's true even if you only had Escobar as a third catcher. But you also have Mauer. I'm all for moving Mauer out from behind the plate because of his concussion history. But to me that doesn't mean he's not available as an emergency fill in. The risk of catching for a year is too high to consider. But the rosk of taking a ball to the mask in any given inning are very small -- probably about the same as getting a concussion diving for a grounder, like Morneau did. A couple innings are no big deal. Especially if the only scenario in which you play Mauer is that both Gimenez AND Escobar got injured in the same few innings!

Anyway if you're  worried about concussions, the real ticking bomb is letting Buxton keep smashing into walls. That's a huge, huge fear of mine. It's not much of an exaggeration to say that any hopes of a future Twins' dynasty rest on Buxton and Sano. As it stands, I can't see Buxton surviving, the way he plays. I love his attitude but to me it seems like a matter of time before he goes the way of Koskie, Morneau, and Mauer.

And for what? If you look at the cost-benefit ratio of running full speed into a wall, it's not pretty. On the one hand. you're adding a tiny increase to the chance of getting an out that has a tiny chance of affecting a game that has a tiny chance of affecting the season standings. On the other, you're running a major risk of torpedoing the team's chances of ever making the World Series in the next ten years.

We take out pitchers based solely on pitch counts to reduce the chance of injury. And we should. Injuries are bad! Yet we don't tell players not to concuss themselves against walls, or tear up their hands sliding head first. In a truly analytically based franchise, these things would all be subject to rigorous cost-benefit analyses. Pointless, major risks would not be tolerated. And tiny risks with potentially large payoffs, like pinch-hitting for your catcher with men on base, would.

I would like to see them wait a bit longer.

Maybe if they were to trade Escobar, then it could make sense to bring up Murphy as a 3rd catcher.

But if we're starting to characterize a .232 BA at AAA as a "strong start", then it suggests he can't do much better than that. And those numbers probably drop at the big league level (down to say Castro/Giminez level).

Either way, this seems a low impact decision whichever way they go.

In unrelated news: Chris Herrmann (.185) hit a walk-off HR for the D-backs a couple nights ago.

Folks, there just aren't many Buster Posey's out there. The 7th top hitting catcher in MLB is hitting a whopping .214

The idea that Castro and Giminez have had this magical benefit is folly. Neither can hit and the magic framing factor seems to have disappeared. I think we will eventually learn that a catchers ability to frame pitches is largely dependent on the pitcher throwing the pitch.