M’s Sign Bard, Cordero
Ryan Divish reports that the Mariners have inked catcher Josh Bard and pitcher Chad Cordero to minor league deals with invites to spring training.
Bard provides some things the M’s currently don’t have – a switch-hitting catcher who can actually hit for some power, and has a decent amount of major league experience. What he doesn’t have, however, is a throwing arm – second base is free for the taking when he’s behind the plate, as his career caught stealing percentage is just 20 percent. Given Wakamatsu’s displeasure with allowing teams to run wild last year, it is interesting to see the M’s bring in this type of catcher, but on a minor league deal, he’s a nice value. It is not too hard to imagine him outproducing either (or both) Moore and Johnson if given regular time.
Cordero is less interesting. His fastball sat in the low-80s all of 2009 as he attempted to rehab with the M’s, and he got torched by Northwest League hitters, a collection of kids right out of college and players who will never make the big show. Unless he finds another 6 or 7 MPH on his fastball, he’s never going to be useful again.
How washed up would a player have to be to make even a minor league deal look bad?
For me, Bard will always bring up memories of the Red Sox throwing him away, along with Cla Meredith, to retrieve Doug Mirabelli from the Padres.
Is this the Josh Bard that I remember being quite good just a few years ago? If so, what happened to him?
So is this more of Z’s stocking up on freely available talent? I suppose Bard could DH but we already have two of those. Maybe these are just guys to provide competition for the “bubble guys” or just simply to have extra players on the field at Peoria besides just coaches?
Looking Bard up on fangraphs, yeah he was 2.5-3 WAR in 2006/2007. He was a good player not long ago and we are getting him very cheap. Seems like a great buy-low candidate if he can turn things around. He was .7 WAR last year so its not like he is horrible. I like the Bard signing, has some upside potential and gives us a replacement+ level option at catcher if needed.
Cordero on the other hand probably wont ever be above replacement level again, but there is no risk here in signing him to a minor league deal.
I’d bet it is all of the above:
A second veteran catcher for free, one and a spare;
One of them will be in case Johnson can’t start the season or Moore needs to start in Tacoma;
A veteran catcher for Tacoma to work with young pitchers.
Keep in mind that the WAR values on FanGraphs do not include any attempt to quantify catcher defense. No one thinks Bard is an average defensive catcher. He’s certainly worse than our WAR at FanGraphs has him – depending on how much you value defense will answer the “how much worse” question.
AH, thats right, UZR doesnt cover catchers. so there is no catcher defense in that win total.
Dave do you have any thoughts on how much Bard loses due to defense?
You would think that they could at least add a valuation for %Caught Stealing vs Successful Steals.
I thought the M’s signed Veteran Catcher Eliezer Alfonzo? It was announced by I believe G. Baker a couple of weeks ago but maybe it didn’t happen?
Can’t have too many Veteran Catchers at ST.
Eliezer Alfonzo
Now THERE’S another name for the spelling police.
Yes, the M’s signed him to a minor league deal on Dec. 14.
That seems a bit too simplistic to be accurate with the variables involved. Say the throw was dead on and the player covering 2b misses the tag, how do you factor that in?
It is probably worth noting that Josh Bard has caught pitchers like Chris Young, Jake Peavy, and Greg Maddux for most of his life, none of whom were good at holding runners. Young and Peavy actively didn’t care. Michael Barrett saw his CS% plummet when he joined the Padres for a short time as well.
How much can we blame Chris Young for Josh Bard’s low caught stealing percentage all of those times he threw to Bard in San Diego in 2006-07? Or, could Bard be the reason Young hasn’t had many attempted stealers thrown out? I’m thinking a combination of both…
In fact, Dave himself made this point in this Fangraphs article:
True. You also have to account for the speed of the pitcher’s delivery.
Maybe the Mariner’s stat department will be the first ones to correctly quantify catcher defense, and they wont tell anybody about it for awhile.
Great pick up on Bart. Live in San Diego now and he was a good influence in and out of clubhouse here. Can have his moments hitting, mature family guy who can be a good backup,sounds like Jr.
Has anyone ever tried this for quantifying throwing arms:
Measure the time from the moment the ball touches the catchers mitt until the time the ball reaches 2b. This would take mechanics, throwing arm, footwork efficiency, etc all into account for the throw while ignoring things like the pitchers delivery motion or the player attempting the steal. Then mark what % of the time the ball is delivered in an area where the 2b could reliably glove the ball and attempt a tag. Use those two parameters to come up with a metric of some sort. Seems it would have fewer extraneous factors than CS%. It wouldn’t be that hard to implement if they ever put in Fielding F/X.
I realize that this says nothing of framing pitches, passed balls, wild pitches, etc but it seems like it would be a step in the right direction.
Bards three year stats don’t look all that impressive .250/.324/.361. Not impressive enough to sacrifice any defense. He is a switch hitter though and is OPS is about 150 points higher from the right side. But Moore and Johnson are both RH, it would be nice if we had someone that could hit from the left side.
I can’t find Moore’s minor league splits, but he has hit at every level he has played at. Last two seasons at AA West Tenn and Tacoma:
2008 (AA)- .319/.396/.506
2009 (AA/AAA)- .287/.352/.425
It would be hard to get numbers like that in 976PA if he couldn’t hit righties. So it looks to me like Moore will be the better option offensively as well as defensively.
I’m not sure that you can reasonably ignore the delivery from the pitcher. Or the runner either for that matter. The speeds of both delivery and the runner directly affect the steal attempt. As do the lead off distance and the jump the runner gets.
What I’m proposing simply measures the amount of time from when the catcher receives the ball to when it arrives at 2B. The better catchers should be able to consistently have a lower number than others. It also shouldn’t change much depending on the pitcher or runner. The catcher’s job in a steal attempt is to get the ball to second as fast as possible (yes, I know there are 3B steals as well, but just for argument . . .).
I seem to recall a few years ago hearing the talking heads in the booth using a stat like this. IIRC I usually heard it referenced when they were talking about Pudge. (Which is kind of like saying all pitchers should be judged by the 100 MPH fastball, but whatever.) Anyways, I haven’t heard it used for several years and am not sure if it’s talked about at all these days.
according to Geoff Baker, he also spent a half-season as primary catcher for Tim Wakefield; while with Cleveland his throw-out rate was 36- 44%; and last year w/ Washington it was 27%. Point being he probably isn’t as bad as his career #’s indicate.
Average MLB catcher 2009: 254/321/396
Does the Bard signing mean that Rob “CERA” Johnson will have his playing time cut?
Perish the thought.
I keep reading the topic header as “M’s Bad Sign, Cordero”, but that’s beside the point.
The question is, do we hope Josh Bard makes the team out of ST, or do we hope he doesn’t?
We should hope Bard doesn’t make the team and Adam Moore goes back to AAA. If anybody doesn’t need a backup catcher, it’s Rob Johnson. He should play 9 innings per game, 162 games per year.
Check out his 2007 stats. I thought this was rather fascinating: caught 10 out of 131 steal attempts, and in only 108 games. Ouch. That’ll kill your average. That’s a large enough sample to grossly distort your entire career (almost 1/3 of attempts against him in his career were in that year). Throw that year out and he’s at 35%. (Pun recognized but not intended)
That’s a good question. Exactly how good does he have to be in ST for us to really want him coming up with the club. And who’s roster spot does he take if he does make it? My guess would be Moore as I can’t really see the team sending Johnson down easily.
So how good does Moore have to be to come up with the club? And if both Moore and Bard are clearly the better performers, does the club send Johnson down?
Right, Bard’s offense is slightly below average for a MLB catcher (.685ops vs .717ops). Not very impressive. The point is that Moore has more upside both offensively and defensively than Bard. And while it’s not hard to imagine Moore struggling his rookie season at the plate, he is going to be better defensively and except in the very worst case not way behind Bard offensively.
My browser is showing the tags.
That should have been my browser isn’t showing the /snark tags.
Bard’s 20% “throw’em out” percentage was hurt badly by some of the worst “hold’em on base” pitchers in baseball. He’s about a 30% guy otherwise…still not the best, but not the worst, either.
Regarding Cordero, it’s typically in the 2nd year after surgery (elbow, shoulder) that a pitcher begins to approach is future performance…and it’s rarely the first year. So there is some hope for Cordero, although 6-7 mph is a long stretch. I’ll tell you what, though…if he DOES make it back, the Mariners will have one hell of a bullpen!
Next up: a starting pitcher and a 1B. I thought the pitcher might be Justin Duchscherer, but it looks like Oakland wrapped him up. Rich Hill? Ben Sheets? Chein-Ming Wang?
The real point here is that it is difficult to find a catcher who will hit even league average for that position. For 2010 anyway (and keeping in mind a point of OBP is worth more than a point of SLG), ZIPS still projects Bard as essentially average offensively for a catcher (251/320/371), while Moore is projected solidly below average for a catcher (251/304/356).
(And yes, looking at offensive averages by position is not the optimal evaluation method, but is used here for illustrative purposes only.)
Moore is projected to be a league average hitter, which is significantly better than a league average catcher. Maybe not this year, but over the years to come. So if you compare Bards projected OPS, .691, with Moore’s, .660 even with the rookie discount, and the factor in Moore’s superior defense, then I think Moore is the clear winner. If Bard were likely to deliver a .750ops then of course the calculus would be substantially different. But there is no way that a well run organization would sacrifice better defense and a years worth of development for a potential all-star catcher for a marginal .031ops.
So, whats the story with Moore? What is his upside? I haven’t heard much hype about him. I remember early on people seemed to love him. Or is he just really raw?
With it being a Minor League deal we can just keep him in the minors as a backup plan as well, right?
All the talk about developing new stats for evaluating catcher throwing defense, I’m skeptical. The average teams sees about 150 attepts per year. Figure most primary catchers won’t get more than maybe 120, and then when you start filter out different pitchers or situations… I think the catcher would probably be retired and managing somewhere in AA before you could gather enough attempst to be statistically significant.
If you look under “Reference Material” along the left-hand column of this site, you’ll find a link to “The Future Forty.” This is Dave’s attempt at projecting the top prospects in the M’s system. He hasn’t updated it since ST, but going into 2009, he had Moore tagged as having the potential to develop into a 2.50 WAR catcher during his peak years – a bit above league average for the position.
As far as stocking up on catchers, not a bad idea considering Adam Moore has 24 Major League plate appearances and Rob Johnson apparently single handedly created the national health care crisis having so many surgeries this off-season.
With regard to Bard’s CS%, keep in mind the Padres had some SPs that were very vulnerable to SBs regardless of who was catching. Career SB% for Pads SPs Bard worked with:
Jake Peavy: 82%
Greg Maddux: 76%
Chris Young: 91%
Justin Germano: 84%
David Wells: 69%
Randy Wolf: 60%
Cha Seung Baek: 58%
Josh Banks: 81%
Also, Nick Hundley’s career CS% is 22%, and Bard’s 2009 CS% with the Nats jumped to 27%.
Looks to me like Z found another hidden gem.