With the free agent market for catchers awfully thin this year, I think that mostly everyone assumed that the Pirates would try to turn to the trade market to replace Russell Martin (who hasn’t left yet, but come on, Victor Martinez got four years today, Martin’s gonna basically fill his own check out at this point). They apparently aren’t waiting around: Jon Heyman is reporting tonight that they’ve traded for Francisco Cervelli and Joel Sherman quickly added that the return for the Yankees would be Justin Wilson.
I always like to stress the need to not view off-season moves in a vacuum, and so there are a few things to keep in mind here. The Pirates are still saying that they haven’t given up on re-signing Martin, though I am obviously skeptical. The second is that Cervelli isn’t so hugely expensive that he would preclude the Pirates from trading for another catcher, should one become available on the trade market. He made $700,000 in his first arbitration year last year and while he’ll get a raise over that, it probably won’t be a huge one.
Anyway, let’s take a second and pretend like it’s a slam dunk that Cervelli will be the Pirates’ opening day catcher next year. Cervelli has always had a strong reputation as a pitch-framer, and it’s obvious that the Pirates and Yankees share some common values there. In May of 2013, Ben Lindbergh wrote about pitch framing at Grantland and focused on the Yankee catching tandem of Francisco Cervelli and Chris Stewart. Not even two years later, both of those players are Pirates. I wrote last week that my best guess was that if the Pirates couldn’t re-sign Martin, that it made sense to find a catcher that could replace as much of the defensive value behind the plate that can’t be made up elsewhere, and then make up the runs lost by his bat elsewhere on the field. Cervelli fits that mold, I think.
In terms of hitting, he’s probably a slightly better hitter than Chris Stewart, assuming that Stewart can’t replicate his bananas .294/.362/.331 2014 season that featured a .364 BABIP (career: .275), 30 singles, and five doubles. Cervelli doesn’t have much power, but he does have a career ..348 OBP stretched out over his seven years and 785 PAs with the Yankees. He hit well in 2014, too, with a .301/.370/.432 line in 49 games. The problem is those 49 games. He spent 64 days on the disabled list this year with a thigh injury, he spent 100 days on the DL last year with a hand broken from a foul tip, he’s missed time with three concussions (2009, 2010, and 2011), and he’s never played more than 64 games in a big league season. In the last two seasons, in which he was supposed to be the starter (2013) and Brian McCann’s primary backup (2014), he’s played a total of 66 games.
If we go back to the “not viewed in a vacuum” perspective, I’m fine in theory with the Pirates heading into 2014 with Cervelli and Stewart as their catching duo so long as the money not spent on Martin goes into the pitching staff (that was basically the thesis of this whole post), because that’s where the Pirates need the most help. I’m pretty nervous about those two playing 162 games between them, though, which means that I’m not sure the Pirates should just leave things here, whether they acquire another potential starting catcher or not.
As for Justin Wilson, well, he’s a relief pitcher. The Pirates had some relief problems last year, but they seemed on their way to addressing them in September, and they obviously know it’s a point to focus on this winter. They have, in general, done a good job unearthing relievers off of everyone else’s radar, and I suspect that will be their approach again this winter. Wilson had a rough year in 2014, but obviously he’s got a dynamic arm, especially for a lefty. It wouldn’t shock me if he had a season like Tony Watson’s 2014 somewhere down the road, it’s just that I expect the Pirates to have unearthed another Tony Watson independently before whenever that happens. The Pirates’ philosophy with relievers (acquire them for nothing, flip them for value when adventageous) is clear by now, and this trade certainly fits in that philosophy.
As a final aside that doesn’t really fit into any particular bin and is just something worth throwing out there, Brandon McCarthy apparently has a very high opinion of Francisco Cervelli after spending some time with the Yankees this year. That’s nice to know given the high opinion the Pirates’ pitching staff has of Martin, and hey, maybe it’s a sign of something else down the road.
