Sure, he's also a much better hitter than Johnny Bench now, since neither are on the Astros I don't see how that is important. Short of a deal involving Gattis, there's no place for Wieters here.
Maybe the Astros like catchers that can catch the ball. I'm not sure the Astros prefer Gattis as a backup catcher instead of as a DH. Granted, I'm not sure the Astros want to keep Gattis.
That's what they got Brian McCann for. What's the point in investing in 3 legitimate catchers when you have other needs?
Gattis can be moved to DH or another team. Gattis failed to block the ball almost once per game...not sure he's a legitimate catcher.
I questioned this so decided to look at some stats. I assume you're talking about the # of wild pitches he allows. Let's do a comparison between Castro & Gattis: Gattis: 445 1/3 innings caught, 5 passed balls (PB), 42 wild pitches (WP) = 1 PB+WP per 9 1/2 innings Castro: 908 2/3 innings caught, 12 passed balls (PB), 50 wild pitches (WP) = 1 PB+WP per 14 2/3 innings Ok, point conceded. However I don't recall who Gattis was catching last year vs Castro. To really come to any conclusion that would be an important piece of data. I'm sure McCullers's CB in the dirt is much more challenging to block than anything Keuchel or Fister were throwing. Gattis also had a 46% CS rate. Probably flukey but much better than Castro's 24% CS. Long-winded way of saying I tend to disagree with you with regard to Gattis being a legitimate backup catcher. Anything you lose on the defensive end was more than made up for with his bat.
i too like Gattis as the backup catcher and/or backup DH. Gattis needs to play catcher to get his head into the game.
If Evan Gattis is the weakest link in your order, or on the field defensively, I think it's safe to say your team is stacked. I'm perfectly fine with Gattis backing up McCann/DHing this season.
That would be a lot of money for a club like the Astros to invest in 2 older injury prone catchers. Unrelated note, saw that KC signed Jason Hammel to essentially the same contract we gave Morton. Hope we picked the right reclamation project.
Why not? Astros look deep and it is hard to improve team. Adding a guy that helps even a little, that is cheap, and that doesn't cost a prospect seems like a good plan.
Pitchers and catchers report for some teams in 8 days and he doesn't have a contract yet. Odds of him being cheap are pretty good. Whether he helps or not is more debatable in my opinion. I'm not sure if Beltran is a LF primarily or a DH primarily. If Beltran is playing LF, that puts Gattis at DH a lot. I'm not sure Gattis's bat makes up for his bad defense at catcher. I'd rather have Weiters than Aoki or Marisnick playing.
What data are you using to support that Gattis is bad at defense? From the stats I look at, he is below average in blocking pitches (which is a teachable skill), above average at throwing out base runners, and slightly above average at pitch framing (also teachable). Using the data from the Fielding Bible, he saved 2 Defensive Runs Above Average (DRS) in 445 innings while Jason Castro was at -2 in over 900 innings (this put him in the slightly above average category). Fangraphs overall defensive value puts him equal to Castro, slightly above average again. On the other hand, Fans Scouting Runs above average puts him pretty low. I think the reluctance on the part of the Astros to turn over the starting catcher position has more to due with his knee problems than his defense. Edit: By comparison, Weiters saved 3 runs in 980 innings, and was rated slightly ahead of Gattis in overall defensive value (8.4 vs 6.8), but is one of the worst pitch framers in the league.
Agree with all this. Also, the fact that he was rated that highly last season after not catching in over 2 years to me would indicate we can expect improvement this year since the rust should be gone.
Jason Castro regressed last year.... to the point that he was further away from being an elite defender than Gattis was to being a bad defender.
I would not put much faith in framing data for such a small sample. On blocking, he was horrible (almost three times as likely as having a ball get through than league average..though pretty close to Castro who had a bad year). He was good at catching runners last year. All base runners have to do is not try to steal and they will pick up more extra bases on Gattis than any other catcher assuming no regression. I expect he'll be worse at throwing out runners this year than he improves at blocking. When he was with the Braves, each year he caught, he was much worse in the second half of the season than the first. If you want Gattis's bat in lineup, there are other places that his defense won't hurt as much.
Seeing that, at some point I'd put part of the blame on the pitching staff. Giles, Fiers, McHugh, Gregerson, and Sipp all had momentary lapses in their control of their breaking stuff. Sure, an elite catcher will save a wild pitching staff. The Astros don't need Gattis/McCann to be elite... they seem to be valuing their bats more than their defensive abilities at this point.
Just saw that Nate Eovaldi is still unsigned. I think he went to Alvin HS... anyway, he's young (26), has pretty good stuff but control issues. Couldn't he help?
as what? If he takes a ST invite / non-roster guarantee? I wouldn't want him bumping anyone, but wouldn't mind having him in AAA of course, working to change something or converting to a RP
If rumors that the Astros are looking at Weiters are true, they definitely aren't doing it for his bat being better than Gattis's.
