Why Do the Pirates Insist on Playing Yasmani Grandal or Catchers Like Him?

7-24-24 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on Twitter

For the rest of forever, Pirates fans will look at the lineup on a daily basis, and there will always be at least that one guy nobody wants to see. At different times this year, that’s at times been 3 or 4 different guys like Rowdy Tellez, Michael A. Taylor, Jared Triolo, Jack Suwinski, and of course, Yasmani Grandal.

We went through this at the catching position each of the past two seasons too, with Roberto Perez who got injured before we could warm our way into complaint. Austin Hedges, who nobody wanted to see out of his catching gear of course staked his claim to “the worst hitter ever”.

I’m not here to tell you different.

Poor hitting, glove first players have been a thing for as long as baseball has been a sport, but they tend to be more of a thing on a team that has so much offense they can afford it, the Pirates have at least with the catching position decided that regardless of what’s around them, they need this for the staff.

In other words, their philosophy is, having a good defensive catcher helps the pitching, and helping the pitching means the offense has to provide less and run prevention that isn’t an arm is a lot cheaper than run production typically is.

Again, if for some reason you’ve come here looking to be talked into thinking Grandal is good, umm, keep looking. I’m not here to say they either have enough offense to afford this, or that they couldn’t achieve that with say a Jason Delay.

What I am going to put out there today, is exactly what the Pirates “THINK” this position needs to provide, and in turn, what they think a guy like Grandal has a better chance of providing than others on their roster.

Outing Efficiency

Did you ever see Joey Bart set up in one place and have to move across the plate, even if only with his glove to catch the ball? I’m sure you have, and I’m just as sure you’ve seen it cost a strike call, because even right in the zone, a catcher who moves his glove or himself so much that the umpire notices is going to lose his pitcher a strike call here and there.

Joey is fine back there, relax, again I’m in no way trying to paint a picture that Grandal is better, but specifically for a guy like Paul Skenes, the Pirates think he needs help in this area because the velocity throws off umpires and handling it steadily behind the dish at the very least helps ensure his strikes are called as such.

The other part of this, the Pirates see Grandal as the type of veteran who “will be listened to” by pitchers. In order to see things like we did last night with Paul Skenes going 8.1 innings, it takes in their mind, Grandal getting him to attack the hitters with balls they can contact to try to keep his outing on track.

There’s no nice way to say this, but Yasmani Grandal isn’t a pleasant guy, and in this case, I think that’s exactly what the Pirates want from their catcher. Someone the pitchers don’t want to ignore.

All of this is to get Paul Skenes, and whomever else they use him with, to reach 100 pitches in the 7th, 8th or 9th as opposed to the 5th or 6th. It might cost strikeouts here and there, it might cause a homerun at times, but it does lead to longer outings and in theory, shorter innings too.

Game Planning

This one is new to me. Meaning, I’ve heard it mentioned as something a guy did really well here and there, but I’ve never heard anyone crow over this the way the Pirates, and to be fair, their pitchers have this season with Grandal.

I have some friends who cover the White Sox and I asked them to fill me in on whether this was a thing while he was there. Neither of them saw it as a thing in fact in their minds, the Sox struggled to define him as a starting catcher let alone some game planning genius.

I have no doubt it’s something he’s good at, if only because it’s nearly impossible to get as many guys to lie for you as I’ve heard praise his work without prompting, including Paul Skenes and Mitch Keller.

In Game Adjustment

This one has cropped up a ton this year.

When a Pirates starter struggles, they tend to get back on track relatively quickly and according to many of them, it’s often Yasmani picking up on the opposing hitter’s approach against his guy, or even picking up on what his pitcher has or doesn’t have that day.

He uses his setup behind the dish to quietly move the pitcher back into the zone.

It’s subtle, but I’ll try to use Joey Bart to explain the difference here. Joey has a technique that works well too for certain pitchers to do the same thing. Joey will set up middle-middle, glove center cut and he’ll call all the same pitches he normally would, including to the inside, outside, up or down. He sees that spot for the glove as a reset. It works very well for Luis Ortiz, Jared jones or Quinn Priester, not so well for Marco Gonzales, Martin Perez and yes, Paul Skenes.

This makes sense if you think about it. Marco and Martin need framing. They’re corner of the zone/soft contact type pitchers who need the catcher to help get the majority of those called for strikes. And Paul, I already told you about the reaching for velocity issue.

Then you have the preparedness. The best way I can put this is, according to team officials and the few pitchers I’ve spoken to, Grandal is simply great at varying the attack the second time through, or, not varying the attack if it doesn’t need to change.

Jacob Stallings was an ace at this too, he just had 1 or 2 pitchers tops who were capable of executing.

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Now, is all that enough? Probably not, and bluntly, I don’t think this team is in a position to have a defensive first anything as currently constructed.

That said, I’m not them, and if you asked me who would start behind the dish in a Wild Card game with Skenes on the mount, I still can’t sit here and tell you it would be Joey Bart instead.

I can say regardless, Grandal is no longer physically capable of being the starter, so latching him to someone you truly believe in makes a difference for makes some sense.

At the deadline, the Pirates moved Austin Hedges out after stubbornly using him and his net zero bat all year long, but Hedges was universally seen as a defensive wizard and he was moved to a team that was so gifted offensively that his bat wasn’t as big of a deal, AND, they barely used him in Texas.

The market for Grandal in my mind will not be big and despite the sales job the Pirates have done in addition to the defensive skills he legitimately is gifted with, I don’t see this guy having the reputation defensively to secure such a deal. I also think his in the room reputation damn near guarantees that he stays put or ultimately gets DFA’d or winds up on the IL before the season ends.

This is no longer about holding Henry Davis back, it’s now about knowing damn well Henry doesn’t help in any of these categories, just gives you a better chance for offense (yes, I saw him play early on too).

The Pirates have, under Ben Cherington, at least to me, overvalued these skills.

Now, I say this acknowledging fully they’ve done wonderfully developing pitching, and for all I know, this “overvaluing” is expressly why it’s gone so incredibly well. My point here is that this team probably can’t afford to get little offensively from the position.

Grain of salt here, I can count up maybe 10 catchers in baseball that are hitting at what I’d consider a production altering asset. In fact, Joey Bart is at least on the fringes of that group right now.

If I watch Mitch Keller, easily our most polished pitcher, throw to Joey Bart and then Yasmani Grandal, I can honestly say, I’ll see more comfort with Grandal. I can honestly say, if Mitch is getting touched in the first with Grandal, he probably won’t be by the next inning. If he’s throwing to Bart, he’s probably going to take a bit longer to either adjust his mix.

Again, none of this is to say, yes, of course Grandal needs to keep playing, or of course Yasmani has to be the personal catcher for Skenes or Keller or whatever. I’m simply saying, there is more to this position than being a capable hitter, and while it’s frustrating to watch at times, it also might be a significant part of why this staff has not only progressed quickly, but also potentially polished some arms up that they and we didn’t expect to help as much as they have.

A big part of all this is like I said earlier, there isn’t exactly a conga line of offensively minded catchers just floating around baseball, and even if they’re are, teams tend to worry about the bat being in the lineup as much as possible and minimize how much time they spend behind the dish.

It’s plausible, even if/when the Pirates have a setup something like Endy and Henry, the chances are very good they’d still want to carry a “defense” guy, or, one of them will need to show they can provide it.

As often as we yell about year 5, perhaps it’s worth noting they haven’t entered one season yet where they believed they had a catcher who wasn’t at least super experienced or ranked very highly defensively.

It’s a thing, because the Pirates want it to be a thing, and unless the pitching takes a dive, it’s very hard for me to stomp my feet and claim they’re dead wrong, even when one of them hits into an inning ending double play.