In the lab: A new look at the backup catcher battle

As Patrick ably reported to you yesterday, the Houston Astros have agreed to a minor league contract with Christian Vazquez with an invitation to spring training. Luckily, he’s been training with the Puerto Rican team, so he won’t be completely out cold and can probably reasonably rack up enough appearances to keep the team out of the running. Of course, this raises a glaring question: Should he take the team out of training camp?

I’d like to point out that Vazquez may have been on their radar and Dana Brown just had a price he wanted to hold on to. We don’t know the exact parameters, but the wild suggestion that he could sign for four or six million dollars always seemed ridiculous to them. Vazquez was always in the vicinity of Jonah Haim, Gary Sanchez and Elias Diaz.

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Some of you may remember that we covered Vazquez and Catcher in the current series. However, I’m looking at Cesar Salazar based on his major league numbers, and we’re not looking at Carlos Perez at all. In this installment, we’ll look at Vazquez’s major league numbers from 2023 and compare them to Perez and Salazar’s AAA numbers. I should point out that Perez’s 2023 numbers come from Oakland, which is nominally a major league team.

This is just a gentle reminder that we’re looking at five different offensive statistics. These include chase percentage, slugging percentage, BABIP, contact rate and home runs per fly ball. We’ve been working on these metrics fairly consistently, but if you’re joining us for the first time, I’ll list the league standards for these metrics below.

• Chase rate: league average 30%

• Critical hit rate: league average 35%

• BABIP: League average 0.300

• Contact rate: league average 75%

• HR/FB: league average 10%

Carlos Perez

There is one significant difference between Perez and the other two. The home run rate was significantly higher, as he hit 27 home runs for the club in two consecutive seasons at the AAA level. He has hit 20 or more homers multiple times since the 2021 minor league season. Even the 2023 ratio (from Auckland) is significantly better than the other two countries’ performance. So, if we assume he plays 40 games, how many extra games does that ultimately translate into?

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Catcher BABIP is an interesting conversation in itself. If the league average is .300, then this would include all positions as well as certain positions where the BABIP is naturally above .300. Generally speaking, catchers don’t beat infield singles, so it makes perfect sense for their BABIP to naturally drop into the .270 or .280 range. Otherwise, Perez looks like an average major league hitter. Maybe it’s not exciting, but having an average major league hitter on the bench might be.

Perez, on the other hand, spent five seasons as a catcher in the majors. In 2015, he was significantly above average defensively. Unfortunately, he was below average in both 2018 and 2023 (his last two tenures) based on defensive runs scored and fielding run value. A vote for Perez is a vote for the bat. Considering what’s going on with the other two guys, it’s probably not the craziest bet.

Cesar Salazar

It’s hard not to like a guy like Salazar. He may get from everything he has all that any man has a right to do. When you factor in the fact that there are 780 players in the major leagues, we can multiply that number by 5 to get the total number of players affiliated with baseball. You can then multiply that number two or three times to include Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Australia and Cuba. Then, you have the independent leagues. It’s a fair guess that there are somewhere between five and six thousand players around the world who are paid to play baseball. This is probably a conservative estimate.

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Maybe Salazar is one of the top 1000 players in the world. Even if he never stayed in the majors, that would actually be an accomplishment. He doesn’t chase. He doesn’t swing and miss a lot. He just doesn’t hit the ball well and has no power. If you add in the fact that he doesn’t have speed as a catcher, then you understand what we’re facing. A jogger’s soft touch is not the secret to a good BABIP. Add very little additional base power and I’m not sure where the offense is going to come from.

He was more or less a neutral defender in minimal innings at the major league level but had a reputation as a good catcher. You did have issues with Flamber Valdez last season, so there were questions about his ability to work with veteran pitchers. In short, you have to be ecstatic about his defense to accept the lack of offensive prowess.

Christian Vazquez

I might repeat what I said the last time I profiled Vazquez, but the ultimate question is whether he will bounce back to overall level or continue to rot. Overall, I like the choices he made to deal with aging. He took fewer swings out of the zone and made more contact. I have to believe this was a conscious choice and could mask some of the decline in slugging and home run rates.

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The good news is that even with a low slugging percentage, BABIP was ridiculously low last season. I think the BABIP total is actually a decent target, and if he hits 35, he’ll be hitting around .225. No one will confuse this with Josh Gibson, Johnny Bench or even Joe Mauer, but it would be very reasonable for a backup catcher who can also produce good fielding numbers.

The question for backup catcher has never been whether Perez or Vazquez (or anyone else) is better than Salazar. This may have been taken for granted. The question is always, how much more do you have to pay for marginal improvements? I wrote an article before about preferring to sit back and do nothing because the cost of littering sounds ridiculous. Christian Vazquez at or near the veteran minimum seems like a reasonable cost for a marginal upgrade. Assuming he’s in good form, he seems to be the first choice, but we’ll have to see how that plays out.