Cubs Near Deal With Free-Agent Catcher Carson Kelly

[Matthew Trueblood]

The Cubs are on the verge of the move we foresaw and recommended this morning, as multiple reports indicate they're nearing a deal with free-agent catcher Carson Kelly.

Image courtesy of © Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK

Though (as I laid out in my first post of the day) they did have a few options, the Cubs' best and dearest hope coming into Day One of the Winter Meetings was to get a deal done with free-agent backstop Carson Kelly. Now, they're on that precipice.

Kelly, 30, hit .238/.313/.374 in 91 games and 313 plate appearances in 2024, which he began with the Tigers but finished with the Rangers after being traded in July. That batting line was about 5 percent worse than the league average, adjusting for park effects, and marks him out as a better hitter than most complementary catchers. With the Cubs, should this deal be completed, he'll settle into a fairly equitable time share with Miguel Amaya, and give the team solid defense to pair with that stick.

I laid out a comparison of Kelly with Amaya, trade candidate Christian Vázquez, and already-signed free agents Danny Jansen and Kyle Higashioka in the piece linked above, showing that Kelly was the best of them in 2024, overall. He owed much of that value to his superbly accurate arm behind the plate, but he's also coming into his own as a hitter. Jansen was the best hitter in the bunch as recently as early this season, but he slumped badly in the second half and Kelly showed far more consistency with the bat. His swing speed distribution compares interestingly with Jansen's; note how he gets up into the zone where a hitter becomes truly dangerous (around 75 miles per hour) more often.

Jansen is better at pulling fly balls, but Kelly makes hard contact more often and whiffs much, much less. His 17.6% strikeout rate was one feature that attracted the Cubs' interest; he'll be a catcher capable of handing the stick and keeping the line moving from the bottom of the order.

Kelly also owns an .812 career OPS against left-handed pitchers, and has been over .800 each of the last two years. He'll probably draw most lefty assignments, while Miguel Amaya (career .701 OPS vs. RHP, .559 vs. LHP) will sit those days. Kelly will take on some right-handed starters, too, though, as the Cubs figure to try to balance their catching workload fairly evenly. The new rules (less time between pitches, which means more prolonged squatting; more frequent steal attempts) make catching a more demanding and grueling job than ever, and having someone the team can trust to take about half the playing time in reliably advantageous matchups would be huge for Chicago.

 

 

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