Quote:
Originally Posted by blandman
Third wasn't the black hole everyone makes it out to be. It wasn't the black hole 2nd was, or LF was for stretches. It certainly wasn't the black hole we're going to have a C. And unless Keppinger is making up that difference between AJ's career season and black hole offense, it isn't even a wash.
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'Holes' at C matter little. Below are the playoff teams from 2012 and the Catchers who played majority of the time for them (and their games started at C with their avg/obp/slug). Very few teams have the luxury of having an offensive threat at catcher and most elect to go with guys who are durable, and who are good defensively. One thing that sticks out on this list are guys with respectable OBPs. Flowers was a very high OBP threat in the minors (amassing a .391 career MiLB OBP) and my hope is that regular ABs in MLB put him at a respectable level OBP wise.
Yankees
R Martin 128 gms .211/.311/.403
C Stewart 54 gms .241/.292/.319
Baltimore
M Wieters 134 gms .249/.329/.435
T Teagarden 21 gms .158/.226/.316
Detroit
A Avila 113 gms .243/.352/.384
G Laird 56 gms .282/.337/.374
Oakland
K Suzuki 75 gms .218/.286/.536
D Norris 58 gms .201/.276/.349
G Kottaras 27 gms .212/.280/.471
Texas
M Napoli 72 gms .227/.343/.469
Y Torrealba 49 gms .236/.302/.342
G Soto 44 gms .196/.253/.338
Washington
J Flores 80 gms .213/.248/.329
K Suzuki 42 gms .267/.321/.404
W Ramos 24 gms .265/.354/.398
Atlanta
B McCann 114 gms .230/.300/.399
D Ross 54 gms .256/.321/.449
Cincinatti
R Hannigan 110 gms .274/.365/.338
D Mesoraco 53 gms .212/.288/.352
D Navarro 20 gms .290/.306/.449
St Louis
Y Molina 136 gms .315/.373/.501
T Cruz 47 gms .254/.291/.356
San Francisco
B Posey 114 gms .336/.408/.549
H Sanchez 56 gms .280/.295/.390
And while we know Flowers isn't going to produce the power numbers that AJ had last year, I think it's realistic to assume AJ wouldn't have come close to those either. The Rangers are paying $7.5M for an aging catcher (who's caught a boatload of innings in his career) for past performance. Flowers will be fine and I'll take the defensive uptick he's going to provide over any offensive holes he might add... Especially when considering the above list.