We are now just 39 days from the start of the 2012 Boston Red Sox regular season, so in order to properly prepare you for watching meaningful games, I am going to break down each player on the 40 man roster, advance scout style, reviewing their approach, strengths, and weaknesses. In honor of Jason Varitek’s retirement, let’s start with catchers and his young protégé, Jarrod Saltalamacchia.
Despite first entering the majors in 2007 as a member of the braves, 2011 was actually Jarrod Saltalamacchia’s first year as a full time player. The one time stud prospect was shipped toTexas at the ’07 deadline trade for Mark Teixiera and then faltered at the major league level for over two years with the Rangers, including a terrible stretch where he couldn’t consistently get the ball back to the pitcher. After numerous attempts to acquire the catcher,Boston finally pried him away from Texas at the 2010 deadline. With the dramatic up and down storyline his early career took, many people seemed to forget that Salty was just 25 years old entering the 2011 season.
Depending on your perspective, 2011 was either a breakout year for Saltalamacchia or the latest affirmation of his inability to be an everyday catcher in the big leagues. The season started off terribly for him. His struggles to adapt to major league pitching continued and his defense was cringe-worthy. After a particularly rough game onApril 22, 2011 in which Salty allowed 3 pass balls, 3 steals and was hitting just .205 on the season, it looked as if he might never fulfill the promise he had shown at the minor league level. That game turned out to be a turning point for the catcher, however. He figured things out both defensively and at the plate. From May 1 through July, Salty hit .277 with a wRC+ of 130 during that time. Unfortunately, he ended the season even worse than he began it and his total wRC+ was just 89, 11% worse than average.
Still, his 2.5 fWAR was 13th among catchers with over 250 plate appearances, a solid showing for a first year regular. His fielding certainly improved, giving him 4 runs saved above average by Fangraphs system, even though he caught knuckleballer Tim Wakefield all season. While Saltalamacchia didn’t rival the Detriot Tigers Alex Aliva or Mike Napoli in value, he was far from an unproductive player.
Some could take the more pessimistic view of his 2011 season though. He finished the season with a .235/.288/.450 batting line and struck out over 30% of the time at the plate. He will be 26 in May and it would be foolish to expect him to make any great leaps forward in his hitting ability at that age. His only plus tool as a hitter was his power, and he did not go deep often enough to off set his proclivity for making outs.
Regardless of just how you view his 2011 season, Saltalamacchia gave us a good idea of his skill sets and style of play over the course of his career. Let’s take a closer look.
Hitting
Saltalamachhia is a switch hitter, but he is better overall from the left side. As a lefty he has hit .265/.331/.441 (101 wRC+) while as a righty he has hit just .207/.262/.341. For this reason, he was limited to just 123 plate appearances against lefties last year. With Kelly Shoppach on the club, he will almost certainly see a majority of right handed pitching again in 2012.
Salty hits the majority of balls in play in the air, with a 42.6% fly ball rate on his career. This limits his ability to hit for average as fly balls are the easiest hits to convert to outs. Even so, he has sustained a very reasonable .322 batting average on balls in play, thanks to a strong line drive rate and the fact that 14.4% of all his fly balls find the seats. The biggest issue limiting him offensively is his strikeout rate. His minor league numbers suggest that he may be able to improve on this slightly. His 7.9% career walk rate is solid enough, especially for a catcher and the plus power can help to make him an above average hitter if he is not forced to see too many lefties.
Against righties, he uses the whole field well and has power even to the opposite field. When he does put the ball on the ground, it is typically to his pull side, making him susceptible to the shift. He is far better against fastballs than off-speed pitches, with his highest whiff rate (and an unfortunately high swing rate) coming against sliders.
Defense
Saltalamacchia has become a very soild defender, though he isn’t going to number among the elite defensive catchers anytime soon. He threw out over 30% of would be base thieves last season, which is impressive when you consider that he caught all 23 of knuckleballer Tim Wakefield’s starts and even more impressive if you watch just how poor a job Boston pitchers do holding runners on. He was rated as 4 runs above average by Fangraphs catcher defense system, which focuses primarily on base runners and pass balls/wild pitches and at 2 runs above average by the FRS system. His game calling ability has been steadily improving with help from the master of pitch selection, Jason Varitek and it is safe to say that he is an average to slightly above average fielding catcher at this point.
Jarrod Saltalamacchia is not likely to ever transform himself into a super star catcher. However, with his steady glove and his ability to hit the ball out of the park, he makes a very solid role player. He needs to have his exposure to lefties kept at an absolute minimum if Boston wants to maximize the production they get at catcher, but as the lefty hitter in a platoon he should give average to above average production for a catcher overall.
