Why Carson Kelly is the Perfect Fit for Cubs' Needs Behind the Plate—and What it Means for Miguel Amaya

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The Chicago Cubs made perhaps their most necessary move right at the outset of the Winter Meetings on Monday, as it was reported that the team was close to a contract with catcher Carson Kelly. 

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As the offseason got underway, we knew that the free-agent options behind the dish were slim pickings, both in terms of volume and overall appeal. The path to a signing quickly grew even narrower, with Travis d’Arnaud, Kyle Higashioka, and Danny Jansen each finding homes within the last couple of weeks. This left Carson Kelly the most desirable of the options on the market. The Cubs were able to quickly nail him down in the early hours of this week’s festivities in Dallas.

While there are obviously areas of impact to which the team should seek to add throughout the roster, the signing of Kelly—or whichever of the above names would have hypothetically signed—is a crucial one for the 2025 Cubs, on a couple of different fronts.

As things stood, the Cubs were prepared to roll into the new year with Miguel Amaya entrenched as the No. 1 backstop. He was to be followed by Matt Thaiss who, with any luck, would’ve been supplanted at some point during the year by Moises Ballesteros. But the former offers very little with the bat and we’re not quite sure where Ballesteros’s glove is going to be in the short term. The current construction offered too much uncertainty. Enter Kelly.

From a defensive standpoint, it’s very possible that he was actually the best the market had to offer. Matt Trueblood looked at various options earlier today, with Kelly grading out as the most comprehensive catcher the market had to offer. Baseball Prospectus’s CDA metric had Kelly (1.8) 19th out of 65 catchers with at least 200 innings, trailing only Kyle Higashioka among available options and ahead of names like d’Arnaud, Jansen, and Amaya.

Where he really excels is where Amaya doesn’t: controlling the running game. His Throwing Runs figure of 2.0 put him in the top six among that group of catchers, and his SRAA (swipe rate above average) puts him in the top seven. While Amaya showcased some defensive growth last year, a wholly solid defensive catcher who compensates in perhaps Amaya’s most problematic aspect is the perfect supplement.

The other area in which Kelly will be a suitable no. 2 is on the offensive side of the ball. Despite Amaya’s improvements, the Cubs needed a complementary offensive catcher for two reasons. Reason 1: We don’t know how sustainable Amaya’s second-half breakout actually is quite yet. Reason 2: Amaya has notable reverse splits regardless. The Cubs needed a stable offensive presence who hits lefties well. Kelly is that.

Kelly has gone for a 117 wRC+ against southpaws for his career (against 71 vs. right-handed pitching), with a .348 OBP and .207 ISO among the numbers. He’s not an overall upgrade, given that he’s only gone for a cumulative wRC+ of at least 99 in three of the last six years, but he’ll provide exactly the type of support that the team needed to add to Amaya in the short-term. There's also a bit of harmony in the way they each attack pitches, and the pitch shapes that do and don't work against them. Just for one example: Since the start of 2023, Kelly has a brutal .254 xwOBA on high fastballs in the zone, but Amaya's is a solid .343. On anything in the lower third of the zone, by contrast, Kelly's xwOBA is .314, against Amaya's .272. There are matchups the team should be able to play to maximize production from these two, above and beyond handedness.

The possibility exists that Kelly not only supplements Amaya in 2025, but surpasses him. Such a sequence of events could throw the longer-term outlook behind the plate out of whack. That’s me being excited about the skill set as a supplement and a bit pessimistic on Amaya’s 2024 second half, and, as such, is not our concern at present. On paper, in the meantime, it’s sort of the ideal move for the current construction of this roster.

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