Player Projections: The Catchers

Murphy played half his games in Yankee Stadium, had a season BABIP in the high .350s, and ended up with an OPS in the .730s. I'm not sure he can sustain a .700 OPS at the MLB level away from a hitter's park and without a very high BABIP. His minor league OPS was only in the 730s.

But the BABIP is a concern.

At home he batted .302/.354/.407 BABIP over .410

Away he batted .246/.293/.406 BABIP under .290.

Ok

It is a hitters park (beyond just home runs)

Sure, a hitter might see a small bump in BABIP from Yankee Stadium (and many hitters might see a small BABIP bump from the friendly confines of a home park) but not to the tune of 120 points. Maybe 5, 10, even 20 points. Not 120. That's just noise. No hitter can do that on a regular basis.

Even David Ortiz, a guy who exploits the oddities of the Monster as well as anyone, has a BABIP only 60 points higher at home than the road.

And Yankee Stadium doesn't have a feature as obvious or as easy to exploit as the Monster. Nothing close to it. No other team has a home stadium with anything as weird as the Monster.

Park factors etc aside, the thing that stands out to me the most with JR is his 25% strikeout rate thus far in the majors and complete inability to hit the curve. I saw him play quite a bit with NYY last year, color me completely unimpressed. He looks like he will be a decent back up C, but nothing more at this stage. This would be fine if the Twins still had a guy like Mauer behind the dish or a good (or hell even average starting catcher behind the dish) but this hardly solves any issues as Suzuki is still going to play in 50%+ of the games. I just wish they actually went out and solved the starting catcher issue.

I definitely have concerns about Murphy and really, I'll be thrilled if he's league average. Bonus points for anything better than that.

The Twins gave up Aaron Hicks, an enigmatic but talented player to get this guy. If Murphy busts and Hicks flourishes in New York, that's a pretty damning indictment of the Twins' scouting and analytics system. If he succeeds, that's a pretty solid endorsement.

Murphy becoming league average isn't a solid endorsement when their are already a ton of other indictments of the Twins scouting and analytics when it comes to trades (and DFA and FA)

 

Garza and Bartlett for Delmon Young

Letting Liriano go

Letting David Ortiz go

Nolasco signing

Colabello

Most of those trades are ancient history and others didn't happen under the current GM's watch. Nolasco was a bust and Liriano was turned into Escobar before he walked into free agency. Those other deals were mostly bad but I'm more interested in what has happened the past 2-3 seasons, not what happened 8+ seasons ago. Ortiz and Young conversations are non-starters because they literally have nothing to do with the 2016 Twins.

Murphy has a long ways to be league average IMO, he can't keep up his .350+ BABIP, so he needs to get that K rate down or he is going to be screwed.

Hicks at least had his defense to fall back on (though he was flawed offensively), Murphy? Not sure about that.

By all accounts Murphy is supposed to be decent behind the dish. The most likely outcome for both Hicks and Murphy might be bench role players. At that point, can we really criticize the trade? It's a fair talent swap: backup catcher for backup outfielder. If Hicks can't figure out righties, his value is marginal, and that's being generous. A guy who hits 70% of MLB pitchers at a sub-.600 clip is a bad baseball player, it doesn't matter how good he looks in the outfield.

I'm not going to participate in another Terry Ryan thread. Keep the subject on catchers, shall we? You didn't even bother to quote the second half of my post. We've been on the Terry Ryan merry go-round plenty of times already.

fine. I will talk about this trade, you seemingly want to give the Twins the benefit of the doubt on it. While I give the GM who has beaten the Twins 9 straight playoff games (and has won World Series) the benefit of the doubt on it.

Ntm most everyone around baseball said the Yankees won that trade.

If the wild made a trade with the Blackhawks would everyone just give Fletcher the benefit of the doubt?

Nope.

Also, the Yankees seem to be pretty damn spot on when it comes to evaluating catchers.

1. I'm not giving anyone the benefit of the doubt, I'm merely saying "the proof is in the pudding". Results will dictate the success/failure of the trade.

2. You're still trying to make the conversation about Terry Ryan, not JR Murphy.

JR Murphy had a .350 BABIP+ in his time in the majors and his numbers still weren't that good. One glance at that and his 25% k rate shows that it's going to take a significant improvement across the board to become anything more than a backup (his D needs work as well)

 

More to the fact, by having JR Murphy on the roster, we are now forced to rush a guy in CF who clearly isn't ready at the plate and will struggle to hit .200 the first couple months more likely than not. Sort of reminds me on how the Twins rushed the guy who they traded for Murphy to begin with, it's sort of like deja vu all over again, no?

 

 

(note: I think Buxton ends up being a stud, I just don't see how giving him the starting role out of ST where he will struggle more than likely is a good decision)

I'm wishy-washy on Buxton. It's likely I'd send him to Rochester but I haven't seen enough plate appearances this spring to know for sure.

And the Twins don't *have* to start Buxton. They can slide Rosario to center and field a subpar defensive alignment for a month or two while he gets it together.

As for Murphy, I'm far from sold on the guy. I didn't particularly like the trade when it happened... But he filled a need. Now it's on the front office's shoulders to prove they picked the right guy.

It's apparent that Suzuki is still the starting catcher, you don't need to trade a young guy with upside to fill a "back up catcher" need. If Suzuki wasn't around, I understand it a bit more, but in this case, it just seemed like a trade to make a trade.

 

An OF defense of Sano-Rosario-Arcia is a little less than "sub par" it would be an unmitigated disaster.

Oh, that defensive alignment would be terrible, of that I have little doubt... But it might work in the short-term. It's not what I'd like to see but it might be in Buxton's best interest, which should be at the front of the team's mind.

And it also fixes the Arcia/Quentin problem in the short-term. The way Carlos is raking this spring, it's hard to leave him off the roster. I know, Spring Training SSS and all that but damn, the dude is flat-out raking.

And yeah, Suzuki is "starting" right now but I doubt the Twins traded for Murphy with the expectation Kurt would be squatting behind the dish four times a week in August.