The Pirates Catching Situation

10-15-23 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on X

A lot of us have made some rather large assumptions.

We’ve assumed that with two top prospects developing as catchers, the Pirates would wind up with one at least panning out.

We’ve assumed because Endy Rodriguez progressed as a defender he’d won the job.

We assumed Henry Davis’ time behind the dish had come and gone based on the assumption that Endy had already made it and started to take root.

But much like opinions, assumption can just as easily make an ass out of you.

So let’s walk through the Pirates catching depth chart, where it could be headed, what we should look for and ultimately can this team afford to have both Davis and Endy catching even if both can do the job.

Catching in the Bigs is Really Hard

Before we get into the pieces we’re dealing with and where they are in their progression, let’s start here, it was always a lot to expect for a rookie to come up here and look like they’d been catching professionally for quite some time.

There aren’t many who look the part from the jump and the ones who do, well, most of them either wind up being ONLY good behind the dish, or they wind up in the Hall of Fame.

Even Pirates Catchers we revere were more acceptable because of the team around them than they were great players.

When you sit back and think about the best catchers in baseball today the list isn’t long. JT Realmuto can hit, has world class pop time and does a good job handling his staff and frames well enough to steal his share of calls.

Adley Rutschman stepped right in and hit from the jump, and became a top end defensive catcher almost just as quickly.

Now, how a player starts out only matters at the start, how he develops from there often tells the story of what type of player he is.

Largely, it’s a position that requires years to even rise to the point of not being a liability in one way or another. For most, it’s a position that requires so much attention defensively that offense is largely ignored or at least minimized early on in the development and that’s if by some chance you managed to not hit too much and have your club deem you too valuable to risk injury or rest time using you behind the dish.

Point is, in year one or two, or even as a prospect, it’s usually far too early to exclaim you know what they’ll be. The best you can do is trend plot and see if the arrow is pointed up or if they’re so deficient in an aspect of the job the experiment needs to end.

If and when MLB introduces robo umps, I think we’ll see a lot of this change. Framing will be replaced by elite blocking skills or something of the like.

Endy Rodriguez

The Pirates, and specifically Ben Cherington wanted Endy in a deal before they eventually acquired him. In fact, they first scouted him while trying to trade Starling Marte. That never came to fruition, but Cherington tends to circle back on pieces he wanted and found a way to drag the Mets into a 3 team deal that ultimately secured the young catcher’s services for his development system.

At the time, the Pirates had nobody in the pipeline and he represented just about THE hope for the future. Anyone who follows prospects knows how dangerous and or stupid it is to believe one of anything is enough in a development system.

To his credit, Endy showed some chops on his way up, even as the Pirates continued to work him elsewhere. When the bat showed up big time in 2022, internally the Pirates decided to really put the foot on the gas with Endy as a Catcher, even as they started to work on their 1:1 selection from 2021, Henry Davis.

The selection of Henry immediately sent fans to the message boards to declare Endy the future somewhere else, but the team never waivered from their belief that either or both of these guys could grow into the job.

Eventually Henry was called up first, and the Pirates quickly showed the fans and these players, having Baseball Reference call you a catcher doesn’t mean the team has to be ready for the same tag.

Endy did get the call and unlike Henry, was seen as being capable of catching at the MLB level immediately.

For 2023, Endy finished below league average in blocks, league average in framing, above league average bordering on elite for pop time and caught stealing. We watched him struggle to connect with some pitchers while others ate up his enthusiasm and clicked.

One thing that really wasn’t there for Endy though, the bat. The bat in 2022 spanned 3 levels and saw him hit .323 with a .986 OPS over 531 plate appearances.

After taking the reigns behind the plate, the bat went south, and once he reached a place of being comfortable in AAA, he started clicking a bit, just in time to get the call to Pittsburgh where once again he spent so much of his focus and energy on catching the bat was almost non-existent.

I have it on pretty solid sourcing that the team was almost entirely unconcerned with his bat, favoring instead to have him work tirelessly on improving behind the dish, which to his credit, he did finally, earning the trust of Mitch Keller his only real hold out.

Next year, while he will still need to improve as a backstop, his main focus will need to flip to becoming an offensive threat again.

Henry Davis

A 1:1 selection. A Catcher. A hitter. Davis was perceived to be the answer before he did a damn thing as a professional. Injuries slowed his progression as hand injuries kept him from catching as much as you’d like, in fact they kept him from doing anything really.

In 2022 Davis would finally be handed the reigns and while he was plenty good for a team like Altoona, his technique left a lot to be desired.

Receiving the ball didn’t look clean, his set up left him lunging for balls and reaching strikes into called balls. Poor form actually almost caused him to have to go on the IL again due to exposing his throwing hand dangerously. In fact, he was a victim of a foul ball off his throwing hand in one of his two MLB opportunities behind the dish this year and eventually the hand injury sent him to the IL.

Right field has been less then a pleasant experience too, but a calculated risk was taken that he could hurt the team less learning RF on the fly than he could at catcher.

Now, maybe injury is really the root of all this. The Pirates claim they’re going to give him an opportunity to catch next year, and I guess the question will be, how much of an opportunity?

We have next to nothing to go on. Even his college teammate has talked to the lack of training that took place at Louisville to grow as a catcher, so we can’t really even look back to college.

Back to the Endy conversation, Henry has to face his development too. To take meaningful innings back there, he’ll have to at least approach Endy defensively, and quite frankly, the Pirates might decide the bat is too important to put back there, although he hasn’t really shown that yet either.

Jason Delay

He was about 2 days from retiring from the game, unable to make the Pirates even as they started 2 journeymen catchers with very little pedigree. As luck, or lack thereof would have it, injury forced the Pirates to recall the DFA’d catcher and he didn’t look back.

Framing is really where he excels clocking in at the 75th percentile of the league, but not touching Endy on the other categories.

A bat is hardly ever a concern for an MLB backup catcher, but .251 with a .666 OPS isn’t disqualifying in any way shape or form. I’d put it this way, if the starter were an offensively explosive and defensively deficient player, he’s exactly what you’d want back there. If it were flipped, you’d probably prefer a backup who could hit first and defend later.

Conclusion

Obviously we’re in wait and see territory here a bit. That said, as dangerous and stupid as it can be, I’ll make some assumptions.

Henry has a long way to go to catch Endy defensively, doesn’t mean he can’t or won’t, just means Endy is already to where you’d expect a healthy Davis to be, providing he’s capable of it.

All three are dirt cheap and collectively it’d be hard to upgrade and still allow room for further development which for the next half decade minimally they can’t afford to take a pass on.

If Henry isn’t going to show he can handle the backup duties this year, meaning he needs to be at least close to as good as Jason Delay behind the dish, a position and skill set he’s singularly focused on for the best part of a decade, the Pirates can’t afford to pretend it’s ok. In fact, to string this out can only hurt Henry’s overall development.

It’s important to remember, part of the reason veteran starters are interested in signing with the Pirates is Oscar Marin’s increasing reputation for helping guys find what’s been missing, AND the Pirates up until this point insistence on rostering a catcher who is universally seen as one of the best in baseball defensively. The likelihood of them changing their mind on this is very low, but it does speak to why Jason Delay isn’t likely going anywhere, this year anyway.

This isn’t about the Pirates “not giving Henry a chance” as much as injury stunting him, his bat mattering and Endy’s emergence as at the very least a league average defender.

Over the course of 2024, Endy will not be given the same grace he was given in 2023. In other words, improving behind the dish is a welcome thing, but he was a top prospect for his bat, and that aspect must emerge or the Pirates may very well not yet have a catcher. Failing to make one of these two the perennial starter would be a rather large indictment of the system and talent identification teams.

What they do with Henry or Endy long term is a different discussion, but behind the plate make no mistake, this season is huge.