Milwaukee Brewers: 3 Options at Catcher in Free Agency

With Yasmani Grandal now off the market, the Milwaukee Brewers have to look elsewhere to fill their need at catcher. These are three options via free agency.

Last offseason when Yasmani Grandal was unable to find a long-term deal to his liking, he bet on himself and signed a one year – $18.25 million contract with the Milwaukee Brewers, and both parties benefited greatly. The Brewers had perhaps the best all around catcher in baseball who was a big contributor to their second consecutive post season appearance, while Grandal earned himself a long-term, lucrative deal.

Unfortunately, that deal isn’t with the Milwaukee Brewers, who now have to look elsewhere to find a catcher to join Manny Pina for the 2020 season. When it comes to catchers on the free agent market, there is a steep drop off in terms of production after Grandal, but these three are the next best options and they certainly won’t come with the same price tag. Meaning, the Brewers will hopefully spend that money elsewhere.

Robinson Chirinos

MLB Trade Rumors Projected Contract: 2 years – $10 million

Robinson Chirinos spent the 2019 season with the Houston Astros where he compiled a .238 batting average, an OPS of .790, along with 17 home runs, and an OPS+ of 105 all while appearing in 114 games. His batting average, OPS, and OPS+ are all above his career averages but within the ballpark. Not to mention that his fWAR of 2.6 was the 10th best among all of the catchers in baseball last season.

Chirinos does strike out at a high rate with an average of nearly 31 percent over the last two seasons, and while it may not be fair to compare any of these catchers’ pitching framing ability to Grandal’s, it is a huge drop off with Chirinos finishing 2019 with -5.6 runs saved below the average catcher when it comes to pitch framing. And for some context, Grandal was at +17 last season. This difference could very much effect the success of the Milwaukee Brewers’ pitching staff. But overall he did finish +3 in defensive runs saved (DRS).

Jason Castro

MLB Trade Rumors Projected Contract: 2 years – $10 million

Jason Castro has spent the last three seasons with the Minnesota Twins and is coming off a 2019 season where he’d appear in just 79 games and totaled a .232 average at the plate with a .767 OPS, 13 home runs, along with an OPS+ of 101. However, his OPS and OPS+ are well above his career averages of .703 and 93, respectively.

Unfortunately, Castro does strike out a lot as well, averaging nearly 34 percent over the last two seasons, however, he did walk 12 percent of the time last season. Defensively, Castro is much better at framing pitches than Chirinos as he finished with 3.2 runs above average in 2019 and even had a 2016 season where he totaled 16.1 runs saved. But while his pitch framing is better, Castro would finish with -7 DRS.

Travis d’Arnaud

MLB Trade Rumors Projected Contract: 2 years – $14 million

Travis d’Arnaud started the 2019 season with the New York Mets but finished with the Tampa Bay Rays and of the three, he may be the best option for the Milwaukee Brewers . Overall he’d total a .251 batting average with a .745 OPS, 16 home runs, and an OPS+ of 98. All of which are fairly close to his career averages in each category.

Although he walks less than Castro and Chirinos – just 7.6 percent of the time – he does strikeout far less with a career average of just 17.9 percent. Defensively d’Arnaud was very average as a pitch framer with 0.6 runs saved, but overall had a DRS of -3. We also have to take note of d’Arnaud’s extensive injury history.

As you can see, the Milwaukee Brewers aren’t going to replace Grandal’s bat at the catcher position, that is going to have to be done elsewhere, and none of the options are nearly as good as he is at pitch framing. However, the Brewers were able to get to game seven of the NLCS with Pina and Erik Kratz who aren’t exactly offensive juggernauts, but were solid defensively. In 2020 the Brewers could take a similar approach but that means they’ll need to spend some money on pitching and acquiring some big bats at other positions.

All stats and contract projections via Baseball Reference, Fangraphs, and MLB Trade Rumors