The Forgettable Eric Fryer

Myself and RumBunter have been doing a lot of writing about Pirates catching prospect Tony Sanchez today. I wrote this post about how I thought Sanchez holds one of the five biggest keys to the future success of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The main reason for that is because of the lack of depth the Pirates have at the catching position. After Sanchez, there's really nothing in the system that even resembles a possible big league starter.

However, I want to talk about the guy who is second behind Sanchez, and that is Eric Fryer.

Fryer was forced to make his big league debut way too early last year by the ridiculous string of injuries the Pirates had at the catching position. He played in ten games with the Pirates, and had 29 plate appearances in those games. He hit .269/.345/.269 and caught three of the base-stealers in his time behind the dish. You literally can't take anything out of such a small sample, so let's take a gander at his minor league numbers.

Fryer was drafted in the 10th round of the 2007 draft by the Milwaukee Brewers, which kind of shows you what kind of talent he has right away. The guy was never considered a real prospect, but he has hit the ball pretty well since 2008. In 104 games with Milwaukee's A affiliate in 2008, Fryer hit .335/.407/.506 with 10 home runs. At the end of that season, he was moved to the Yankees system before being moved to the Pirates system (for Eric Hinske) about halfway through the 2009 season. In his combined time at A+ in 2009, he hit .247/.345/.354 with 5 homer ins in 442 plate appearances. He followed that up with a nice 2010 season with the Gulf Coast League Pirates and Bradenton when he hit .296/.395/.466 with 16 doubles and 8 home runs. He started the 2011 season in AA before getting a small amount of games in AAA before being forced into the major leagues. In his total of 75 minor league games in 2011, Fryer hit .273/.379/.429 with 7 home runs.

It's important to note that Fryer has been blocked by a host of better catching prospects in his career. In Milwaukee, he was behind Jonathan Lucroy, in New York he was behind Jesus Montero, and in Pittsburgh he has been behind Tony Sanchez. It's tough for any player to perform when he gets as little opportunity as Fryer has. Despite that, the guy has a .281/.372/.427 minor league line while playing a position where you aren't even expected to hit well.

Defensively, I'm not real sure how he projects. He has a 30% caught-stealing percentage for his minor league career, which is around average. He has a .980 fielding percentage which means absolutely nothing. He has been used a good amount in the outfield, which helped him get all those at bats mentioned above, but there's no way his bat will ever be good enough to warrant a major league team giving him time as an outfielder.

We are all hoping that Tony Sanchez realizes his potential and turns into a starting major league catcher, but that is certainly far from a sure bet. Chances are that Fryer is never good enough to be a major league starter, but I think he is an underrated prospect, and I just wanted to remind you all that he's still alive and in the system.