The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Starring Alex Avila

We’ll divide Avila into three segments because…well, it’s in the title. We’re generally optimistic here at Twins Daily so I’ll start with the good.

The Good

Avila hits the ball really hard. Pretty solid analysis, now let’s move on to the bad. Oh, you want a bit more? Avila’s exit velocity in 2019 was an elite 91.4 mph. He wOBAed .323, which is pretty solid for a backup catcher who also excels in pitch framing. However, his .357 expected wOBA and .506 xwOBAcon (expected results based on quality of contact) imply that Avila’s results should have been even better.

Way back in 2011 Avila had a career year, slashing .295/.389/.506 with a 140 wRC+ in 140 games. As Mitch Garver’s backup, he’s not coming anywhere close to that 140 games played plateau, but based on his xwOBA could we see a significant uptick in his offensive output this year?

The Bad

Unfortunately, if we dig a little deeper there seems to be a pretty straight-forward explanation for why Avila underperforms his expected statistics: the shift! Back in Avila’s heyday teams weren’t shifting much (it was a simpler time) but with the analytics movement that has changed. As someone who both hits a lot of ground balls (52.1 GB% in 2019) and pulls the ball (46.9% in 2019) Avila is an ideal candidate for teams to utilize the shift against, and that’s exactly what teams have done. According to Baseball Savant, Avila saw some version of the shift in 88.7% of plate appearances last season, putting up a .310 wOBA against the shift compared to a very good .427 wOBA with no shift. I think it’s safe to assume teams will continue to shift Avila.

The Ugly

Although Avila can draw a walk with the best of them, he also whiffs a lot. His strikeout rate was 33.8% last year and 38.5% in 2018. At age-33 Avila’s at dangerous crossroad where a dip in his quality of contact combined with diminishing non-contact skills could quickly diminish his offensive output. Avila does bat left-handed and the Twins have the luxury of protecting him from facing lefty pitchers, but 2019 might already point to Avila’s downslide. In the first half Avila hit .236/.409 /.500 with a 21.5% walk rate and 25.8% K-rate. Really nice, but his second half tells a completely different story. Avila hit just .185/.306/.359 while walking 14.8% of the time but striking out at a ghastly 40.7% clip. Could Avila’s second half be a blip in the radar? Maybe, but catchers don’t tend to age well, so concern seems warranted.

In the grand scheme of things, Avila is just a backup catcher (with good pitch framing numbers) who will cede the lion’s share of catching duties to starter Mitch Garver, so we probably shouldn’t lose sleep over this (after all, we might not even have a season!). However, a large part of Avila’s appeal was his ability to hit righties and pair perfectly with Garver, which a continuation of his 2019 second half into 2020 would diminish.

Fortunately, the Twins have options. Willians Astudillo is still around, and if the turtle power fails, Twins Daily’s #7 prospect Ryan Jeffers and Ben Rortvedt are a great first half and a 40-man roster spot away. Now we just need a baseball season to see how it all shakes out.

MORE FROM TWINS DAILY

— Latest Twins coverage from our writers

— Recent Twins discussion in our forums

— Follow Twins Daily via Twitter, Facebook or email