Seattle Mariners Defensive Preview: Part 1 – Catchers
In baseball, team defense and pitching success go hand in hand. Last year, the M’s defense wasn’t good overall. In 2020, Seattle Mariners pitching should be better because the fielding behind them should be much better. We begin our three-part series on M’s defense, by looking at the catchers.
Slice the pie any way you like, 2019’s Seattle Mariners defense was pretty bad. Their .978 fielding percentage was last in all of Major League Baseball. On a basic level, too many errors led to a fifth-worst 5.51 runs against per game. Their offense, which scored 4.68 runs per game, wasn’t good enough to overcome the weak defense and mediocre pitching.
Advanced stats paint a gloomier picture of 2019. WAR or Wins above replacement is a measure of how many wins a team would gain or lose if a player was replaced with someone else at the Major League average. Taking all fielding positions into account, Seattle had a -5.6 defensive war. Had Mariners manager Scott Servais fielded a team of average defensive payers, Seattle would have won about six more games.
2020 represents a new start for the Seattle Mariners. An “on the fly” rebuild is happening with the team, spearheaded by General Manager Jerry DiPoto. As a result, some of the new, younger players are better fielders than their 2019 counterparts. Today, we look at the catchers.
Murphy is the man
Omar Narvaez was Seattle’s primary backstop in 2019. His .278 batting average, 22 home runs, and .813 OPS attest to his offense. For all the good Narvaez did at the plate, the 27-year-old was awful behind it. He allowed the most stolen bases, the second-most passed balls, and made the sixth-most errors among all MLB backstops.
His backup, Tom Murphy, came out of literally nowhere last season to be a revelation. Murphy was waived by Colorado last March after totaling 250 at-bats over four seasons. San Fransisco claimed him, then flipped him to the M’s for a minor league pitcher, four days later.
Perhaps Murphy needed a change of scenery. Not only did he hit for a .273 average and 18 home runs with a .858 OPS, but his defense was also outstanding. The backstop from upstate New York gunned down an American League second-best 38.9 percent of runners attempting to steal. Additionally, his dWAR was third-best in the A.L. Murphy had such a good 2019 season, Narvaez became expendable. DiPoto traded him to Milwaukee in the offseason, making Tom Murphy the new starter.
The rest
Austin Nola signed as a minor league free agent after the 2018 season, will serve as Murphy’s primary backup. He made his major league debut on June 16, 2019, at the age of 29. Not many baseball players at that age jump to the majors for the first time.
Nola played seven games behind the plate last September. While he is no Murphy defensively, Nola can adequately fill-in here and there. His value to the team lies more in his ability to play several different positions.
There are three other catchers among the Seattle Mariners 60-man player pool, Brian O’Keefe, Joseph Odom, and Cal Raleigh. The latter two have never played in the Majors. If Murphy gets injured, any of the three is a better pure catcher than Nola. In that scenario, either O’Keefe or highly regarded Raleigh would, at the least, split time with Nola, due to their defensive superiority.