Minor League Discussion & Boxes, 5-29-15

[Gilby]

Yeah, now that he appears he can be a .900+ OPS monster in the majors, I think you put him in LF and let him mash. The bat is ready now, but his defense at catcher might not be until middle-late next season, or even 2017. Plus, the moves the front office made this past offseason showed they value defense at catcher; it'd be strange if they changed their minds so soon and put someone who will be mediocre at best back there. This would be a little trickier if Bryant looked terrible at 3B, but that hasn't been the case.

 

I know the Cubs have spoken highly of Schwarber's defensive improvements, but they have no reason to say otherwise. We also haven't heard much from people outside the org other than Law who just said recently Schwarber's not very good back there.

[Clem Fandango]

Couldn't they conceivably just bring him up for LF and still have him do catching drills during off time and have Montero and Ross give him tutelage in the process while spot starting him once a week there for in game experience?

[Guest]

Couldn't they conceivably just bring him up for LF and still have him do catching drills during off time and have Montero and Ross give him tutelage in the process while spot starting him once a week there for in game experience?

 

They could but for meaningful improvement, he really needs all the in-game reps he can get.

[Guest]

Schwarber would also need to spend a good bit of time working to make sure he isn't a disaster as a MLB LF too, complicating things further. He doesn't really have a bunch of speed, athleticism, or past LF experience to spare.

[Sammy Sofa]

DAMMIT.

[sontensei]

get schwarber the [expletive] out of catcher's gear before he tears his knees up

 

This is as good a time as any to talk about Schwarber's defense. Has anyone seen any prospect writers talk about how he's looked this season? I haven't seen anything that I could be sure was incorporating his 2015 work.

 

As little as we can tell statistically, it doesn't look great. Here's Schwarber compared to his catching partner Contreras, so we're generally controlling for quality of competition and the pitchers they're handling:

 

Name          GP    E   PB   SBA   CS%
----------------------------------------
Schwarber     28    3    6    50   20%
Contreras     20    4    2    27   44% 

 

This doesn't paint a very rosy picture for Schwarber. Teams are running a TON against him, and having great success. I didn't have much point of comparison for SBA frequency, so I checked the main catchers in Tennessee's division, just in case Contreras was the exception:

 

Name          GP   SBA  CS%
------------------------------
Schwarber     28   50   20%
Contreras     20   27   44% 
O'Conner      35   19   37%
Nieto         34   34   35%
Turner        32   25   28%
Baron         34   40   30%

 

There's maybe some slight signs that Tennessee pitchers are more prone to be stolen on(it wouldn't surprise me if holding runners wasn't a big org emphasis), but Schwarber's the clear outlier here, in a bad way. He also leads the division in passed balls.

 

Hopefully the less superficial measures(framing, game calling, etc) are coming along better, because Schwarber's defense at catcher looks far from MLB ready at the moment.

 

If it's that bad they need to get him in to LF right away. It's stupid to delay him from coming up if it's just to see if he can hang defensively at a position that he'd be tolerable at at best AND has a a huge chance of shortening his career.

 

 

ick is there some stat that shows pitcher stats based on the catcher receiving? i wonder how the pitchers performance is with him behind the plate compared to others