This winter’s free agent market has been hot in some ways but there are still plenty of intriguing names out there for most positions. One area that moved fairly quickly was the catching market, with many of the top names off the board.
It wasn’t an amazing class to begin with but the top free agent backstops this winter were Danny Jansen, Carson Kelly and Kyle Higashioka. All three of them signed about a month ago. Gary Sánchez, Travis d’Arnaud, Jacob Stallings and Austin Hedges have also been locked up.
For teams still looking for help behind the plate, their options are now more limited. Former All-Star Game MVP Elias Díaz is still out there, though he’s coming off a season in which his struggles were pronounced enough that he was released by the Rockies, finishing out the year as Higashioka’s backup in San Diego. Christian Bethancourt had some good results with the Cubs last year but was nonetheless outrighted, perhaps due to how inconsistent he’s been in recent years. James McCann has had passable offense at times but his work behind the plate hasn’t been well regarded.
One intriguing guy still available is Yasmani Grandal. His numbers were rough in 2022 and 2023 but there are some ways in which last year was a bounceback. The Pirates gave a lot of time behind the plate to Joey Bart, who engineered a nice breakout season, as well as former top overall pick Henry Davis. But Grandal was somewhat quietly in the mix next to those guys and managed to get into 72 games and step to the plate 243 times, as well as crouching behind the dish for 560 1/3 innings.
Offensively, he had a cromulent performance. His 18.9% strikeout rate was his best apart from his part-time work over a decade ago, before he was established as a big leaguer. His 9.9% walk rate was a bit below some of his previous work but still above league average. He also popped nine home runs in that limited role. His .228/.304/.400 batting line translated to a 95 wRC+, below average overall but above par for a catcher.
Grandal has been a solid defender in his career, particularly in the framing department, and that continued last year. Among guys with at least 550 innings caught in 2024, Grandal ranked seventh on the FanGraphs leaderboard for framing. The six guys ahead of him on that list each had more than 700 innings behind the plate. Patrick Bailey was the only backstop significantly ahead of the pack on a rate basis. Statcast had Grandal 11th on their framing leaderboard. Of the 10 guys ahead of him, only Hedges caught fewer pitches than Grandal.
The strong framing contributed to a solid overall defensive profile. When combined with a decent year at the plate, he actually provided some sneaky value, depending on which measure of wins above replacement you trust most. Baseball Reference only gave him 0.6 WAR on the year but FanGraphs had him at 1.4 and Baseball Prospectus at 1.8. That’s likely due to those outlets having different weights for catcher defense or framing specifically.
Grandal hasn’t gotten any attention this offseason. He hasn’t been tagged at MLBTR since early May, when he was activated from the injured list, having started the season on the IL due to plantar fasciitis in his left foot.
He isn’t going to help sell season tickets, but for clubs who still want upgrades behind the plate, perhaps he’s the best bet. He isn’t likely to cost much either. He only got $2.5MM plus incentives from the Bucs a year ago. Perhaps his solid season can get him a bump, but he’s also now 36 years old and still unsigned, which doesn’t give him a lot of negotiating leverage. Even if he does earn a raise, it surely won’t be massive.
Going back to Pittsburgh is probably not an option. Bart surely earned himself some run after his strong season, while the club still has Davis. There’s also Endy Rodríguez, who seemed to be emerging as the club’s catcher of the future in 2023, but then spent 2024 recovering from surgery on his ulnar collateral ligament and flexor tendon in his throwing arm. Jason Delay is on the 40-man roster as well.
Teams like the Red Sox, Nationals, Padres, Phillies, Atlanta, Blue Jays, Mariners and others could arguably do with improving their catching depth. Some of those clubs have strong starting options but most clubs avoid leaning on one catcher too much these days. Cal Raleigh led the league with 125 starts last year, meaning every team had a backup/secondary catcher in the starting lineup at least 37 times, often far more.
There’s obviously some risk with signing a 36-year-old catcher but he arguably has a decent floor, depending on how one values his framing. While he struggled offensively in 2022 and 2023, BR considered him to be well below replacement level, but FG had him just barely below, while BP gave him 2.3 WAR for that two-year period.
