The Padres need a starting catcher

With the trade deadline coming up, it's time to start talking about some of the weaknesses of the San Diego Padres roster. One of them has been the catching position, despite Caratini's best efforts.

Back on May 27th, I called Victor Caratini the perfect backup catcher. I still think that’s true! In all of baseball, I believe you’d be hard-pressed to find a someone better suited for the role.

That being said, Victor Caratini has been the San Diego Padres starting catcher for pretty much the entire season (which is more than halfway complete) and it’s a real problem.

Victor is playing a lot

Caratini has played in 71 of the Padres’ 89 games this season. That is roughly 80% of the team’s games. He has started 53 of the team’s 89 games, or about 60% of them.

That’s a lot more than Buster Posey has caught for the San Francisco Giants, and it’s almost exactly the same amount that Will Smith has caught for the Dodgers.

About half the teams in baseball try and split their catching responsibilities closer to 50/50 among the starter and backup, and I think the Padres would’ve liked to do the same this year. Especially because Victor Caratini is rocketing towards career highs in games played and will, eventually, feel the ill effects of that on his body.

Victor’s not good enough to be a starter

I don’t mean to disparage the guy. What Caratini has been able to do at catcher has been nothing short of season-saving for the Padres. His work with the pitching staff has been incredible, and he deserves a ton of credit for the season Yu Darvish is putting together, as well as Joe Musgrove’s no-hitter. Personally, I’ve been impressed with his ability to calm down Chris Paddack during games to keep him from spiraling.

But it’s on offense where Caratini is not good enough. His OPS+ this season is 88 (100 is average) and a lot of that value is him swinging for the fences, trying to make the most of the times when he actually does make contact with the ball.

The Padres have been getting by with him in the lineup because there are so many other really good hitters in the lineup, but he’s not good enough to be in the starting lineup of a World Series contender (especially not an NL team that also has Hosmer in the lineup).

The backups are not good enough, either

This is where things start to fall apart. It’s not that Caratini has been an abomination as a starter, which he could’ve been and we’d all understand. It’s that he had to abandon his post as the team’s backup catcher, and the next man up hasn’t really done much of anything.

Luis Campusano got the first crack at it, and the 22-year old posted an OPS+ of -19. Yes, negative nineteen. I didn’t know that number could go that low.

After Campy was sent to the minors (where he slump and then recovered and now looks like a stud again), 30-year old Webster Rivas was called in for some stability and reliability. He has been….fine.

Rivas has somehow posted an OPS+ of 98 while batting .205. That means that he’s walking a ton and hitting for power, but the lack of consistency is what has hurt the offense while he’s out there. In 14 starts, he’s gone hitless 8 times. He’s only gotten multiple hits in 2 games. The overall numbers say he’s fine, but he really can’t be trusted with a bat in his hands.

But it’s the defensive side that actually worries me more. Early in the season, when the other option was Luis Campusano, this pitching staff really took to Caratini. He became a partner, and a comfort blanket, to almost every starter in the rotation.

The good news is that they all seemed comfortable with Austin Nola for the month that he was around, and it was unsurprisingly the best month the team played all year. The bad news is that the pitching staff has taken a step down almost every game if it’s someone not named Caratini or Nola behind the dish.

Can Austin Nola be relied upon?

This is the biggest question that needs to be answered before the trade deadline. Bigger than the starting rotation or the bullpen or Hosmer or even the outfield depth. If the Padres are going to accomplish any of their goals this season, they need either a healthy Austin Nola or a replacement for him.

It’s worth stressing just how good this team was with a healthy Austin Nola. The team went 13-5 in games that he played in, which coincided with the team sweeping a home stand despite missing Fernando Tatis Jr., Eric Hosmer, Jurickson Profar and Wil Myers.

That being said, Austin Nola has missed 80% of the team’s games this season. The news broke in spring training that he had broken his foot in his first game with the Padres last year and didn’t fully recover until the offseason.

Then, halfway through spring training, he broke his finger and missed the first month of this season. After playing a little more than three sterling weeks with the team, Nola sprained his knee and went right back to the IL. He is slated to return to the Padres after the all-star break.

You ready for a scary stat? He’s relatively new to the position, but Austin Nola has never caught more than forty-four games in a single MLB season. He’s up to 13 already this year, despite being something of a ghost.

Since moving to catcher, it has been one injury after another for him. He was battling a wrist injury with the Mariners even before the Padres traded for him. It’s very fair to ask if his body can take the rigors of the catcher position, and it’s almost fair to assume the answer is no.

I hope I’m wrong about that, and even if I’m right Nola is a solid DH option for the Padres going forward, but the San Diego front office has to be heading into these next three weeks with some backup plans for their catching position.