What can we learn from the Roberto Perez deal?
Other than "We are at the point in the offseason where we are reading too much into a deal for Roberto Perez"
The Giants signed catcher Roberto Perez on Sunday, bolstering their depth at catcher and also giving Bay Area sports fans a much needed discussion topic during a dead period for sports. January! Nothing going on, am I right?
So, since we’re all excited beyond measure to discuss Roberto Perez, let’s discuss Roberto Perez. What did we learn from the Giants signing him? Let’s find out!
The Giants are comfortable with their backup catcher having one elite skill
By all accounts, including those of Fangraphs and the 2019 and 2020 AL Gold Glove voters, Roberto Perez is a phenomenal defensive catcher. He has received nothing but rave reviews for his work behind the dish,
Conversely, he is not a strong hitter, which makes sense. If he were a strong hitter, then he would be starting himself, instead of signing in a place where, if everything goes right, he will backup Joey Bart. Now, in 2019 he did hit 24 homers and have a wRC+ of 102, but that was the heyday of the juiced ball, so it’s tough to tell exactly what those homers mean going forward. Last year, Perez did a nice job as a hitter for the Pirates, but in just 69 plate appearances; the year before, he got 161 PAs with Cleveland and hit .149/.245/.319, which is, uh, notably sub-par.
Perez is perfectly capable of having nice years at the plate, but he always follows those up with multiple years of awful hitting. I would assume the Giants aren’t just taking it on faith that he’ll have a good year. Instead, they’re seeing his value as coming from his defense, and anything on the offensive side is just a bonus.
The Giants are not comfortable with Austin Wynns as their primary backup catcher
I mean, they probably shouldn’t be. Wynns ended up having a nice year for a backup last year, hitting .259/.313/.358 in 177 plate appearances. But that was bolstered by a strong run late in the year against Colorado and Arizona, and also came with a .320 BABIP when his career rate is .275.
Wynns, then, cannot be expected to maintain even his mediocre 2022 offensive output, and Fangraphs has his defense grading out at nothing special. If you’re the Giants, then, why not stash him in the minor and sign someone new? You’re not losing much and you’re building up depth so that, if something happens to Joey Bart or to Wynns, then you have a competent major league catcher ready to step in. This was not necessarily the case during the Mike Papierski era, and it would appear the front office learned from that.
Blake Sabol is not going to make this team
There’s just no way there’s room. Sabol, who was taken in the Rule 5 Draft by the Reds and then immediately traded to the Giants, is not particularly good defensively behind the plate. His bat has been impressive in AA (and for 101 plate appearances in AAA), but the questions about his glove kept him from being selected to the 40-man roster of his original organization, the Pirates, a franchise not known for its strong major league roster. If they look at the bat (quite good) and the glove (an unknown for us) combined, and don’t see someone worth protecting on their 40-man roster, well, not to appeal to authority here, but that’s not a good sign for Sabol.
The Giants are very conscientiously trying to make Joey Bart happen
You don’t sign Roberto Perez to be a starter. His injury history is too checkered, and his bat, in most years, isn’t good enough. You also don’t sign him to back up Austin Wynns or Blake Sabol, or to start over them. Roberto Perez should not be on the same major league roster as Wynns or Sabol.
No, you sign him to complement Joey Bart. You sign him to mentor Joey Bart a little bit, to show him whatever ropes there are at catcher. Perez has Veteran Savvy and Knows All The Tricks and whatever other cliche you want to say about him. Bart, even taking into account his time learning from Buster Posey, has more to learn, and if you’re the Giants, Roberto Perez is a great candidate for teacher.
If you get down to your fourth string quarterback in a conference championship game, and then he gets a concussion and you have to bring back a quarterback who can’t throw the ball more than a few yards, you’re probably not going to win
Hey, how’d this one get in here? I’m trying to write about baseball!
The Giants still don’t have an answer at catcher
Sure, they have guys who could be answers. They’re going to give Bart a good, long chance to establish himself as The Answer (not Allen Iverson). If that goes badly, or even if he’s okay but nothing special, they’ll give tryouts to other members of the roster, primarily Perez and Wynns (though, if he performs in the minors this year, don’t discount Ricardo Genoves).
But none of them are sure things. None of them are sure things to even stick as backups — every catcher in the upper levels of the organization could very easily expose himself as not worth the roster spot. It’s not hard to see how the position goes right for them this year — the most likely scenario involves Bart breaking out — but it’s equally easy to see how it goes wrong
The Giants, then, signed a catcher, and they got uncertainty as a free throw-in. It’s better for them to have Roberto Perez than to not have him, so in that sense the signing was a good idea. But if something goes wrong in a few months, they might need him, and that won’t necessarily go well.
For more than a decade, Buster Posey made it so that you didn’t have to worry about catcher. Now, it’s the top item to worry about. Times change, though when it comes to this, we all wish they wouldn’t.