I was one of the most vociferous people on this blog arguing against trading William Contreras for Sean Murphy. Well, we did it anyway, and we’re projected to have the fourth-best catching in baseball, way ahead of William Contreras’s new club, the Brewers.
The Fangraphs Depth Charts like our guys to produce 5.2 WAR behind the plate:
- Sean Murphy, 3.8 WAR
- Travis d’Arnaud, 1.3 WAR
- Chadwick Tromp, 0.1 WAR
(William himself is projected for just 1.8 WAR next year, splitting time with Victor Caratini, another former Braves farmhand. We traded him for Emilio Bonifacio nine years ago. The Brew Crew is projected for 20th place. Anyway.)
Of course, predicting the Braves to have a highly effective catching platoon is hardly surprising: we got the third-most WAR at catcher last year, and swapped for the catcher with the third-most WAR in baseball. And all the other top teams are equally obvious:
- The Blue Jays, with their extraordinary tandem of Danny Jansen and Alejandro Kirk (who was discovered by the Braves’ newest front office hire)
- The Dodgers, led by Will Smith, who’s maybe the best catcher in baseball
- The Orioles, led by Adley Rutschman, who’s maybe the best catcher in baseball
- Us
- The Phillies, led by J.T. Realmuto, who’s maybe the best catcher in baseball
So, Sean Murphy is a top-five catcher in the majors, and AA viewed him as both a significant upgrade over Bill and as relatively cheap at the price. Certainly, if Murphy really is a 4-5 win player over the next half-decade, and a true two-win upgrade over Contreras, then the prospect and dollar cost may well have been worth it. Obviously, I was a fan of the bird in the hand, but there’s no doubt that Murphy has been great over the last three years, worth roughly 10 WAR in 1200 PA.
The Braves have one of the best catcher tandems in baseball, which is clearly where they like to be. The team has generally had very strong production at catcher in recent years. But not always. As recently as 2021, the Braves were 29th in baseball and we can remember just how dire it was, the team spending much of the season stumbling through the below-replacement level production of Stephen Vogt, Alex Jackson, Kevan Smith, and the remains of Jonathan Lucroy and Jeff Mathis.
Things were pretty bad right after Brian McCann left in free agency, but the team righted the ship with the above-average Flowzuki platoon, and struck gold with d’Arnaud, but clearly Anthopoulos feared another cliff.
(It does bear mentioning that the team has authored much of its own uncertainty with its propensity for trading away many of its higher-profile catching prospects, including Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Max Ramirez, Victor Caratini, Christian Bethancourt, Brett Cumberland, Shea Langeliers, William Contreras, and counting.)
Per FG, here’s where we’ve ranked at catcher, over the past several years:
- 2023 (projected): 4th
- 2022: 3rd
- 2021: 29th
- 2020: 5th
- 2019: 11th
- 2018: 8th
- 2017: 2nd
- 2016: 21st
- 2015: 24th
- 2014: 25th
- 2013: 5th
- 2012: 4th
- 2011: 1st
- 2010: 1st
- 2009: 1st
- 2008: 2nd
It’s a truism: the best teams are the ones who are strong up the middle. With Sean Murphy, Ozzie Albies, and Michael Harris II, the Braves have a very strong core. I may not have agreed with the Murphy trade, but it’s hard to argue with the roster.
I think AA was trying to get in front of a probable surge in base stealing. In Braves offense, let’s see if that is true. For our opponents, AA made it a little more difficult than it would have been.
Good call. DOB makes the same point here: https://theathletic.com/4183102/2023/02/13/braves-mlb-spring-training-preview/
I do wonder how much all the increased basestealing will actually affect overall offense. I can imagine a few extra runs per game here and there, but will there really be a serious number of extra wins in play?
Delenda est in peace.
https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/sports/washington-nationals-owner-ted-lerner-dies-at-97/?utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=socialflow
@1 If he’s trying to limit it on defense, then he’s targeting it on offense. White and Sierra definitely have more value if there is a more rich stolen base environment.
“Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good too.” –Yogi Berra
Go Braves!
Obviously, this series is about Fangraphs rankings, but just about every assessment I’ve seen regarding Murphy references Fangraphs instead of Baseball Reference. BRef values him quite a bit lower, 3.5 WAR last year, and a bit over 7 over the last 3 years.
Why do we ignore BRef and is anyone concerned BRef might be right? In either case, we’ve got some pretty good catching, but exactly how good is hard to quantify.
As far as I can make out, the difference is catcher framing?
Basically, if there’s a substantial difference between Fangraphs WAR and B-Ref WAR on a position player, 99% of the time it comes down to their differing defensive evaluations.
I’m not really sure how much you should be trusting defensive statistics (especially not catcher defensive statistics) in the first place, as even after twenty-plus years of people hammering away at it it’s still a largely unsolved frontier, but that’s where the gaps are.
Murphy has consistently passed the eye test in his career, for whatever that’s worth. And I’m not sure how valuable framing will be in a few years anyway, if the robo-ump systems they’re testing in the minors make their way up the chain.
With how often Fangraphs WAR for catchers passes the eye test on how well that catcher frames pitches, I’m inclined to think that they are looking at it correctly.
It may even be higher. If you can steal the right five strikes every game, that’s worth a lot more than one win over 162 games. If you’re turning 1-0 into 0-1, 4-2 into 3-3 (walk to a strike out), 2-1 into 1-2, that has a massive impact on the entire game. The pitcher is more confident and doesn’t feel like he has to be perfect, the hitter feels like his strike zone is bigger, and you’re literally stealing outs. I can’t think of anything short of Ozzie Smith’s or Andruw Jones’ defense that is more valuable.
I agree, Rob. Please forgive me.
There is a difference between arguing the precision of defensive metrics as opposed to the direction and approximate magnitude. I forget which site had (maybe still has) a fan crowd sourcing defensive metric. However, I remember that if you averaged the various publicly available metrics, they were awfully similar to the crowd sourced number. These metrics don’t tell you that Matt Olson is a bad defender because of last year or is a spectacular defender because of previous years. They do tell you to watch out, he may (note “may”) be losing a step.
Yes, and directionally there’s a clear consensus. By BB-Ref catcher WAR, here are the only catchers with a total of more than 5 WAR since 2020:
Whereas here’s the list at Fangraphs:
1. J.T. Realmuto, 12.6
2. Sean Murphy, 10.0
3. Will Smith, 9.7
4. Willson Contreras, 7.2
5. Daulton Varsho, 7.1
6. Travis d’Arnaud, 6.1
7. Salvador Perez, 5.7
8. Adley Rutschman, 5.3
It’s pretty much the same guys. (Kirk is just a half-win away from the list, with 4.6 fWAR.)
For reasons I can’t quite grasp, FG likes Murphy’s defense about a win a year better than baseball-reference does. (And FG thinks that Salvy Perez’s defense is much worse than BB-ref does.) But there’s no doubt that Murphy’s among the best in the league, even if the jury’s still out about whether he’s truly in quite the same league as Realmuto, Smith, and Rutschman. And there’s no doubt that with Murphy and d’Arnaud, the Braves backstops are world-class.
Now we just need to win the next 162.
SPRING TRAINING! IT’S FINALLY HERE!!
@10 Good sir, I was only responding generally and certainly not directed at you. This conversation always fascinates me.
I have no idea how to quantify this, but I wonder how many additional games over 162 a team would win if they could pick which two balls became strikes throughout the course of the game. Because a catcher could be extremely selective on when they try to work the umpire, and when they really, really need a strike, he can pull a dipsy-do the way these catchers do all the time.
Just a random offseason thought as I stare out the window and wait for baseball to come back…
B-ref has long admitted they’re lagging on several advanced catching metrics, merely because they just don’t know how to measure them properly. While I like Fangraphs, I’d rather have this series coming from Statcast because I think its tech is far superior to both Bref and Fangraphs, but they only supply the info, not write about it.
Murphy is ranked in the 84th percentile in framing , 96th percentile in pop time, and rank 5th overall in cs%.
Combine that with his bat & he’s a top 3 catcher in the league, and could very well be the best in 2024.
Assuming by “top 3 catcher in the league” you mean the NL, Jim Bowden agrees with you — he ranks Murphy #4 and d’Arnaud #9, respectively, on his list of the top 45 catchers in baseball. Murphy is behind only Realmuto, Rutschman, and Smith.
(Lots of other old buddies on the list: William Contreras is #13, Christian Bethancourt is #22, Shea Langeliers is #23, and Victor Caratini is #42. I forgot all about Bethancourt, and just updated the text of my post to include him.)
https://theathletic.com/4172536/2023/02/16/mlb-catcher-rankings-realmuto-rutschman/
JonathanF, I’m curious — have the Braves done a better job of developing catchers than most other teams? It seems to me that that’s a fairly high number of catchers developed by a single organization, four out of the top 45. Is that an underacknowledged organizational strength? Any way you could check?
Brandon Gaudin is the voice of the Braves
Chip out – yeaaaaaaaahhhhh!!! Let‘s dance in the streets!!
What are the thoughts here on Gaudin??
From somewhere on the web:
“Did you have a favorite broadcaster when you were growing up?
Skip Caray, who is Harry Caray’s son, did Atlanta Braves broadcasting on TBS. In the early 90s, you couldn’t get all the games like you can nowadays. When I would get home from school, the Braves would come on TBS in the evening. That’s really who I started to try to model as I was broadcasting these games throughout my house as a 7, 8 and 9 year-old.”
So, the Braves hired Brandon Gaudin, the former voice of Georgia Tech sports, for the play-by-play TV gig. I honestly couldn’t tell you a thing about his style, etc., but I do like his professional backstory:
(From Wiki) “Gaudin was born and raised in Evansville, Ind. He was an Atlanta Braves fan and wrote a letter to Skip Caray asking how to get into sports broadcasting. Caray responded and encouraged him to practice, critique, and practice some more. Gaudin kept those words in his heart, and in high school convinced a local radio station to allow him to broadcast some of his school’s baseball games.”
[After getting the Braves job,] Gaudin said, “I get to be behind the mic for the team I grew up idolizing. And the team who fostered my love for both sports and broadcasting.”
I like him and will stop googling him now:
@ 15,
I am not sure abut development of catchers, but feel with Fasano, it is pretty good.
I do believe that there has been a long time preference on drafting for catchers. This preference was mainly ‘can they play catcher, shortstop, and centerfield.” Then, the hitting started failing and they decided they needed to draft some “bat first” players like like the 2 big boys from Panama City and Eastern North Carolina (each of whom had terrible strike out problems). But I believe if you took “average round / place in round catcher drafted” and weighted it, the Braves would be in the top 3 or 4. Also, in the last 10 years, they have probably focused more on catcher at the major league level than most organizations.
Tim McCarver is dead
I’ve generally liked Brandon Gaudin fine. Even though I’m in Atlanta, I don’t typically listen to a whole lot of Georgia Tech sports on the radio. When I did, he seemed perfectly fine, though. He also worked TV for Fox Sports as a sorta back-of-the-roster guy on their NFL coverage, and football and basketball on the Big Ten Network. Also fine in those roles. Basically, not spectacular, but I also don’t have anything negative to say about him, either.
New thread.
https://bravesjournal.mystagingwebsite.com/2023/02/16/team-prospect-rankings-and-why-they-fail/