The morning after Colombia won its first Caribbean World Series, I sent a “Colombia!” text to a veteran of many of this unique tournament’s wars. Within seconds came the reply: “Sandy León.”
OK, so León and the texter won a World Series ring together, and so he may not be the most unbiased of observers. But a couple of hours later came another text from another voice, “another ring for Sandy León, who always puts down the right finger.” Then a longtime minor and major-league catching coach and instructor brought up León as an example of what trust, calm, and unselfishness from a catcher can do to create conviction in a pitcher.
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“Like,” he said, “Buster Posey and Yadier Molina. Look at the Marlins, with all that good young pitching. They were fine with León early last season. Then they turned to the analytics toolbox, now they’ve traded for Jacob Stallings, and Don Mattingly and Mel Stottlemyre will have those pitchers pointed back in the right direction.”
León is 32 years old, with a .212/277/.319 career slash line, and 1.6 career WAR. Yet the Red Sox know they probably wouldn’t have won the 2018 World Series without León imitating Ken Dryden in Game 1 of the ALDS against the Yankees, when Craig Kimbrel was bouncing breaking balls in the dirt in the ninth inning with runners in scoring position. It was a performance up there with the Dodgers’ Austin Barnes guiding seven pitchers through a 3-1 World Series-clinching Game Six in 2020 — yes, the Barnes who was a middle infielder when Dodgers exec Andrew Friedman snuck him out of Miami with Kiké Hernández.
These discussions about León and Barnes and Yan Gomes — whom the Cubs signed for two years, $13 million to help drive the turnover in their pitching — came up at a point when owners and players seemed locked in negotiations that seemed fixated on different facts, different truths, different languages, different purposes without even a common starting point. Baseball is an enormously profitable business that can lead players to creatively go off to mint NFTs and owners to buy hockey teams and dabble in the Premier League, not to mention develop a small city on the North Side of Chicago. It has been an untouched growth. And yet here we are, with the chances of a full season slipping further and further away by the day.
So, in lieu of the traditional February way of thinking about seeing Marcus Semien, Corey Seager and Jack Leiter in Rangers uniforms and walking across the complex to see Bobby Witt Jr., this year’s early buildup towards spring training was León in Colombia, and cross-checkers in Norman, Okla., getting a peek at a potential Mike LaValliere clone named Jimmy Crooks catching for the Sooners. You might remember that LaValliere wasn’t exactly what ballplayers are supposed to look like, but he played in the big leagues for 12 seasons, caught in four postseasons, won a Gold Glove, and one of his best college teammates and buddies was Kris Bryant’s father.
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“In today’s game,” said one scouting director, “that may be what we’re looking for. That someday may be the guy we get with the draft pick we receive for losing a free agent. Checked first-round catchers in the last dozen years?” Well, from Posey as the fifth pick in the 2008 draft (because Tampa Bay took Tim Beckham No. 1) until the Dodgers took Will Smith in 2016, there were 14 catchers taken in the first round, and the only ones catching in the majors at the end of the 2021 season were Tyler Stephenson, Mike Zunino and Yasmani Grandal.
But teams are picking them high, and valuing what they can bring, no matter the league-wide track records of draft success.
The Pirates took Louisville’s Henry Davis with last July’s first pick, with justifiable confidence in his tools, bat, and particularly in his makeup. There is an industry-wide hope that Adley Rutschman, the first overall pick in 2019 by the Orioles, Toronto’s Gabriel Moreno, the Dodgers’ Diego Cartaya and Mets’ Francisco Álvarez are all top-tier catching prospects. With Tucker Barnhart traded to Detroit, Stephenson becomes Cincinnati’s expected regular. “He’s 26, that isn’t so long a development,” said one veteran scout. “Draft a high school catcher, and a lot of things can happen.” In the 12 years preceding Oakland’s pick of Tyler Soderstrom in 2020, there were nine high school catchers taken in the first round; Stephenson was the only one in the majors in 2021.
Go back to 1966, a year after Mike Scioscia was the first catcher drafted (by the Dodgers) in the very first draft. The Mets had the first pick and selected Steve Chilcott, a high school catcher from Lancaster, Calif. The Kansas City A’s picked second and took Reggie Jackson, Hall of Famer. Whitey Herzog was with the Mets at the time, and has always maintained Chilcott looked as if he were going to be a star, but he tore his throwing shoulder sliding into second base, then tore it even worse climbing through barbed wire doing drills in the military reserves. Boston drafted a 6-foot-8 catcher named Tom Maggard in the first round in 1968, who died while playing in the minors from a reaction to a bee sting, and in 2017 they paid $3.1 million for catcher Daniel Flores from Venezuela, who also died from illness after they believed he was the best prospect in that international signing period.
An uncertain development path
Sometimes top young catchers end up switching positions. Dale Murphy was the fourth pick in the 1974 draft by the Braves, but as he rushed towards Atlanta, he began having throwing issues; in spring training in 1977, he tried to throw out a base stealer at second base and the throw was caught in the air by center fielder Barry Bonnell. Murphy moved to first, where he played 209 games, then left for 101, right for 749 and center for 1,041, won two MVP awards, five Gold Gloves, shared the 1977 Sportsman of the Year from Sports Illustrated among “Athletes who Care” and for some unknown reason never received more than 23.2 percent of the vote for the Hall of Fame. Craig Biggio made the move from All-Star catcher to Hall of Fame second baseman. Joe Torre moved from catcher to third, as did Todd Zeile, with B.J. Surhoff and Brian Downing heading to the outfield. Kyle Schwarber was drafted as a catcher, but the last four years has played the outfield and first base. There’s a lot to it, and not everyone is suited for the spot.
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“To get the necessary pitching results, you have a catcher who thinks pitcher first, is calm and in control and understands what each pitcher needs to succeed,” said one National League general manager. “Unfortunately, there is no way to absolutely quantify catching.” Brad Ausmus, who has caught the eighth-most games in history, said, “The first job of the catcher is to create conviction in the pitcher.” A few Julys back, Johnny Bench got down on his haunches in the lobby of the Otesaga Hotel in Cooperstown to demonstrate how that is done, through a catcher’s presentation and other means.
Having asked eight of the 17 players who caught the most games (Pudge Rodriguez, Bob Boone, Molina, Jason Kendall, Ausmus, A.J. Pierzynski, Ted Simmons, Bench), knowing what Bill Freehan taught Mike Matheny at Michigan and knowing Jason Varitek, they all answer that their first responsibility is to the pitcher. Bench drove home the point that if the pitcher throws the ball to just the right place, the catcher doesn’t have to frame it; Curt Schilling in his 1998-2007 prime had such command of the six different fastballs he used that catching him was no problem, although one catcher once said, “Catching with Curt could be a trip.”
“A lot’s happened in our industry in the last decade that makes finding catching difficult,” said one GM. “Colleges are a problem. There is so much money in college coaching today the egos and the control freaks are themselves out of control. They want to call every pitch, so a lot of big programs don’t develop the mental part of catching. Increasingly high school kids are playing the showcase circuit, where it’s not important to build relationships and all that is important is the individual skills. First come exit velo and launch angles, then throwing pop times … winning is not part of the big money part of showcase baseball. Infield practice is important to show off an arm.”
I once covered a young catcher who was deemed a defensive master because of how he threw in infield practice, but he had trouble catching behind batters and seldom could throw anyone out.
“Let’s face it,” said that GM. “It’s a really tough position to play every day.” Still, some find a way, though they’re exceedingly rare. Yadier Molina is 39 now, and he caught more innings last year than any other National League catcher after Realmuto. Over the last four seasons, Molina and Martín Maldonaldo are second and third in innings caught.
Take the top nine in innings caught 2018-21: Not one was under the age of 30 by last Labor Day. It is interesting how many times Will Smith at the age of 26 last season was called the best catcher in the National League. He doesn’t turn 27 until the end of March, at which point he may or may not be in spring training. He’s caught 197 games, with 48 homers in 892 plate appearances.
Oh, yes. He was an infielder for much of his college career.
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Making catchers instead of finding them
Converting players from other positions to catcher is something the Dodgers do extraordinarily well. A while back, a scout working on a deal with the Dodgers returned from Bakersfield with glowing reports about a third baseman he put in as a “must get.”
His name? Russell Martin, who caught 1,579 games in 14 major-league seasons (27th all-time), won a Gold Glove, ranks eighth all-time in putouts and is 27th by Jay Jaffe’s JAWS rating of catchers. Will Smith was an infielder. Barnes was a middle infielder. Just as with relief pitcher usage, platooning and multi-positional catchers, Casey Stengel was ahead of his time in his 1949-61 Yankees tenure. In 1961, the Yankees were 113-54, including their five-game World Series win over Cincinnati, and Elston Howard caught 111 games, Yogi Berra 15, Johnny Blanchard 48. Berra played 81 games in left field and, like Howard, made the All-Star team.
Others have tried. Earl Weaver dreamed of a lefty-swinging, power-hitting platoon catcher and in 1980 got former infielder Dan Graham, who hit 14 homers platooning with Rick Dempsey. The Royals picked Jamie Quirk in the 1972 first round as an infielder, converted him to catcher, and he played in the majors from 1972 to 1992. Gomes was a third baseman at Tennessee because J.P. Arencibia was behind the plate. Kevin Cash converted from an outfielder to catcher playing for Falmouth in the Cape League; I remember the day Falmouth GM Chuck Sturdevant drove up with newly-bought catchers equipment; Toronto scout Tim Wilken — ever early — signed him and a career was born. Jorge Posada was an infielder.
Posey was a high school pitcher who wanted to play shortstop at Florida State and will probably go to the Hall of Fame as a catcher. “Buster could have been a first-rounder as a pitcher,” said one scout who knew him well. “But when he did go behind the plate, he knew how to get hitters out. Nothing in his life has ever been about himself, so he naturally could handle pitchers. He’s always been about team and winning and leadership.”
All these conversions come against a backdrop where catchers are increasingly hard to find in the amateur ranks, and with MLB cutting back on draft rounds and short-season leagues where players can learn, clubs are identifying young players who have the tools, want to catch and want to try and make the transition. Boston, for instance. has at least a half-dozen players who are trying the conversion route.
“The first thing is that the young player has to really buy in, he has to want to make the change,” said Chad Epperson, who for more than a decade has been Boston’s organizational catching instructor and worked closely with Jason Varitek before moving to manage Double-A Portland this season.
“He has to be very quiet when he goes back there,” Epperson said. “Selfless, like Jason. The mindset is really important. We look at Christian Vázquez. He was a second baseman-shortstop when he signed him and played some at third base in the low minors. He signed in 2008, he’s still here.”
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Vázquez is also a free agent after the end of next season, so the Red Sox are looking long-term. They acquired converted shortstop Connor Wong in the Mookie Betts trade, and there’s general agreement that he has the collaborative verbal and personal skills to work with pitchers, and Epperson and others think the bat will come. They picked up Ronaldo Hernández from Tampa, who has a power bat, power arm and has worked hard on changes to his body. They have three college bats — Jaxx Groshans (Kansas), Kole Cottam (Kentucky) and Stephen Scott (Vanderbilt) who are catching; Scott, with left-handed power and prized makeup, began his transition in the Instructional League and has opened eyes. They took Nathan Hickey from Florida last July, and while he had some defensive questions in college, he has adjusted with the hope his power will play. They also took a high school infielder from California named Daniel McElveny last summer and are converting him. “Right now, we’re optimistic,” said Epperson. “It’s worth a try.”
Epperson caught for nine years in the Mets and Red Sox systems as well as in independent ball. Along the way, he caught Robinson Checo, Bret Saberhagen, Tomo Ohka and Ramón Martínez, and as his career was winding down, Dan Duquette acquired Varitek and Derek Lowe from the Mariners. At the end of Varitek’s first half-season with the Boston organization, some of the minor-league people privately were “disappointed” in him defensively. When I got to Fort Myers the following spring, Jimy Williams said Varitek “will be our catcher. He’s special. I mean special.” Not with framing, which was hardly talked about at the time; just in the way he worked with pitchers, was ever accountable, modest. He now runs game preparation, and as the catchers’ guide, he translates the analytics for the catchers and pitchers.
It may be that Rutschman and Moreno are so gifted that their roads to Baltimore and Toronto are expressways. Other catchers will have to take in the complexity of the position, which Will Smith learned and maintained. It’s hard. They’re human. But their contributions are appreciated now more than perhaps ever.
(Photo of Sandy León: Kiel Maddox / USA TODAY)