The 2014 Mets, Part I: Catching

So, as I've been watching the Mets lose various baseball games of late I've been musing about how the 2014 Mets will be constructed, and how I think they should be constructed. The basic headline, I think, is that I think the 2014 Mets are not very far away from being a damn good team, anchored by a potentially dominant starting rotation. So I thought I'd do a series of posts about what I think should be done over the off-season to make the team into a potential contender. Each post will focus on one aspect of the team, with this one covering the catching situation and future posts probably proceeding to the infield, the outfield, perhaps the bench, and then the starting rotation (spoiler: the correct answer here is to do nothing, sit back, and enjoy the show!) and the bullpen. First of all, though, a few notes on what I feel should be the general philosophy behind this off-season. The Mets do have money coming off the books, as they've had for the past few years, and in principle they should be able to boost their payroll going forward, so there's some money to spend. However, I don't really think that they should try to create a whole new team through free agency acquisitions, both because that seems rarely to work and because the Mets have a lot of promising young players, so if they just do nothing the team should get better over the next several years anyway. A few nice acquisitions to speed that process up so that they're competitive in 2014 rather than 2015 would be nice, but they should as much as possible be acquisitions that don't involve either giving up currently-important pieces or forcing some currently-important pieces to be neglected or kicked to the curb. So, with that said, here's a look at the Mets' catching arrangement, which is arguably the simplest position to address in principle since it involves only two roster spots but does involve, in this case, one interesting decision. The format of this post should provide a template for the next several.


The 2013 Mets
Starter John Buck, RHB
Backup Anthony Recker, RHB

How They Were
Lousy, but surprisingly non-terrible. Buck has hit .217/.288/.371 for a wRC+ of 84, decidedly below-average but only about as much as you expect for a catcher. He's hit 15 home runs, third on the team behind Marlon Byrd and David Wright, and driven in 60, second on the team behind Byrd. Throw in some basically average baserunning and defense and you've got a 1.5 fWAR player. Recker's line is .193/.244/.385, the slugging boosted by 5 home runs in just 119 PAs. That's a wRC+ of 70, and 0.1 fWAR, giving this tandem 1.6 WAR total for the season. That's about average with a month to go. That said, most of that 1.6 came from John Buck's ridiculous April; since then the catchers have been decidedly below average.

2014 Default Projections
Starter Travis d'Arnaud, RHB
Backup Anthony Recker, RHB

This is one of the real bright spots for the 2014 Mets. They'll be replacing their kinda-sorta-average-ish catchers with their top position prospect. d'Arnaud, who has only one hit, a double, in his 15 at-bats so far this year, has a career .286/.347/.476 minor league batting line, but in his 2011 and 2012 seasons he was far better, belting 21 and 16 home runs, respectively, and hitting first .311/.371/.542 and then .333/.380/.595 before a season-ending injury. So far this year he's shown much less home-run power, but plenty of doubles and walks, and has been walking like crazy at the major league level. As for his defense, for his minor league career he threw out 27% of attempted base-stealers, though in 2013 that number has jumped all the way to 55%, 16 of 29. Overall it sounds like he's got a decent enough arm, and given that Mets pitchers are apparently raving about his pitch-framing abilities it seems like he's an average-plus defensive catcher. Basically we're talking about a potential All-Star here.

As for Recker, I put him here just because I figure he's the incumbent Mets backup catcher. I'll have more to say on the subject of d'Arnaud's back-up in the next section, though.

Desired Moves
Keep Travis d'Arnaud as starting catcher
Replace Anthony Recker as backup catcher with Juan Centeno, LHB

If you read the above paragraph about d'Arnaud, the first of those two moves should be obvious. As for the second one, let's try this thought experiment: what would the ideal backup catcher for someone like d'Arnaud look like? In other words, to back up a power-hitting right-handed catcher who's considered good enough that he'd be one of the most important players on your team. I think the answer is, first of all, a good/great defensive catcher, and second of all a left-handed bat, just for a little bit of flexibility (though of course you'd never pinch-hit for d'Arnaud against a lefty reliever with him or anything). And hey, the Mets have just the guy! Centeno bats lefty, and has thrown out 42% of those who've tried to steal against him in the minors. That number's been 54% this year, mostly at AAA. It's tougher to get a sense of the rest of catchers' defense, especially at the minor-league level, but the pure stolen-base numbers suggest an elite defensive catcher. The offense is pretty much backup catcher offense, although somewhat atypically Centeno's a zero-power guy, a career .271/.324/.328 minor-league hitter with two career home runs. But that's fine, we'll be getting plenty of offense from our backstops next year. All in all Centeno seems to be pretty much exactly what you'd like in a backup for d'Arnaud, and would give the Mets a very solid pair of catchers, with good defense and potentially great offense from the starter. That sounds to me like a significant upgrade over going with Recker again, who provides pretty little offense (if a bit more power than Centeno) but mediocre defense.