Half-season Minor League Positional Roundup: Catcher

With Indianapolis and Altoona on their respective All-Star breaks, Bradenton and State College having scheduled off days and West Virginia’s 6-run first inning getting suspended due to weather, tonight’s probably a good night to start recapping the Pirates prospects’ half-seasons, right? I thought so.


This will be the first in a 86,492-part series that summarizes the highs and lows in Pittsburgh’s minor league system. Wait, that’s too many, even though you could still probably read that many parts before Joe Buck finishes his post All Star Game soliloquy. Anyway, I’ll be breaking down the young not-quite Bucs position-by-position. So this will appeal to all you super die-hards out there who bite your nails while following Kelson Brown’s every at bat on MiLB.com. Or maybe you’ll be intrigued if you want to know who Kelson Brown is (Spoiler alert: you probably won’t).

We’ll start off this ill-fated idea tonight with the catcher position:


Best Season: It almost seems sacrilegious to say this, but it actually appears that Tony Sanchez leads the Pirates’ catching pack through the halfway point. Most of this is due to his decent but not stellar numbers during his stint with double-A Altoona, where he was hitting .277/.370/.390 before getting promoted to triple-A Indianapolis in early June. Despite hitting home runs in three consecutive games last week (his first three of the season in any level), his line through 87 AAA at bats is .230/.280/.391 with 5 walks and 25 strikeouts. Sanchez’s plate discipline has usually been a strong point, so hopefully it’s just him working through the kinks during his first trek through the highest level of the minors. Scouting reports have said that Sanchez’s defense looks back on par this year, and he threw out 27 percent of runners trying to steal at Altoona. That number is down to 18 percent in Indianapolis. Sanchez’s season isn’t getting fans psyched for his eventual arrival in Pittsburgh, but it has been an improvement over his abysmal 2011 and is the best of all the catchers in the system thus far. He just has to keep wearing his "Slump-buster" t-shirt that he's donned during his hot streak. And for those of you that don't already, you should totally follow him on Twitter at @Tony26Montana. He might be the funniest Pirate on Twitter, and it isn't even close.


Worst Season: Although he was called up to the big leagues as an emergency third catcher when Rod Barajas got a boo-boo two weeks ago, Eric Fryer has struggled immensely after hitting over .400 in the first two weeks of the season at Indianapolis. Fryer is athletic and shows tools both at the plate and behind it, but after impressing enough last year that some prospect hounds believed he could be an eventual backup catcher in Pittsburgh, his hitting has fallen apart thus far. Stumbling to .165/.218/.217 in 115 at bats led to a demotion to backup once Jose Morales came off the disabled list. He was only promoted to Pittsburgh because it was believed that he can easily be designated for assignment and pass through waivers to return back to AAA. Hopefully he can turn it around as he did hit .345/.427/.549 in Altoona in 2011, but he’ll turn 27 in August and isn’t getting any younger.


Biggest Surprise: Although it’s only been 15 games and 50 at bats, 2012 second-round selection Wyatt Mathisen has shown he was worthy of the Pirates early selection. Mathisen’s hitting .340/.421/.420 with 4 doubles and 4 steals. He hasn’t caught all the time in the Gulf Coast League (rookie short-season ball), but it looks like the Pirates are easing him into the role. Scouting reports said that Mathisen is very athletic so he can probably handle another position on the diamond in the future if the Pirates want to move him. If he continues hitting, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Mathisen open 2013 in low-A West Virginia.


Biggest Disappointment: Ramon Cabrera brought home the Florida State League batting crown last year in high-A, but the diminutive (5-foot-8, 195-pound) 22-year-old reversed course in his first go-round in AA. Cabrera split catcher and DH duties with Sanchez over the first two months, but part of the reason Pirates’ management promoted Sanchez was to get Cabrera everyday playing time since he earned it last season. But he’s not earning it right now. Cabrera’s OPS on the season fell below .600 this week, with a total batting line of .228/.289/.298. His plate discipline is still sharp, with only 24 strikeouts and 20 walks in 252 plate appearances, but he hasn’t hit for average or power yet in 2012 after hitting .343/.410/.471 last season.


Stock Rising: Another early young surprise in the GCL, 19-year-old Jin-De Jhang is splitting time with Mathisen and his performance is opening eyeballs. Jhang is at .326/.431/.442 through 43 at bats. Perhaps even more impressive are his 7 walks to only 4 strikeouts in his first year in the United States. He was signed out of Taiwan in 2011 so he still has plenty of room to grow, but the early results are encouraging.


Stock Falling: One downside to Sanchez’ substandard 2011 in Altoona was that one of the two highly-deserving catchers in high-A Bradenton, Cabrera and Carlos Paulino, would have to hang back since Sanchez was forced to repeat AA. Paulino drew the short straw, and he hasn’t come close to repeating last year’s numbers either. As the regular catcher in Bradenton, he’s hitting .252/.301/.396 with 3 home runs, although that’s been fueled by a hot streak in his last 10 games during which he’s OPSing 1.012. Although his power numbers are similar to last year, his walks are down and strikeouts are up, which isn’t a good sign for a 22-year-old who’s already repeating high-A.


Other players of note: Jose Morales has hit fine for AAA Indianapolis after missing the first month of the season with an injury. But .279/.359/.344 hasn’t been enough to prevent him from being supplanted by Sanchez and now he’s stuck mostly in pinch-hitting duty…Minor League Rule 5 pickup Charlie Cutler has hit well in limited at bats and started to receive more action after Sanchez moved up the ladder. He’s hitting .293/.400/.402 in 111 plate appearances, but he is going to turn 26 this month while in AA…Elias Diaz is repeating low-A in 2012 after struggling with the bat last year in West Virginia and this year is no different. In fact, it’s been markedly worse for the 21-year-old, he’s hitting only .183/.249/.263 in 213 at bats. He’s thrown out 25 percent of base stealers, and still is considered one of the top defensive catchers in the system…Ryan Hornback and Jacob Stallings have split the catching job at short-season-A State College thus far, with vastly different results offensively. Hornback, the 27th round pick of the Pirates in 2011, is hitting .306/.348/.403, while Stallings has floundered along with a .183/.222/.267 line. Both have been efficient at gunning down runners in the early going, with Hornback catching 36 percent and Stallings nailing 40 percent.