Blue Jays at Angels, August 10-12 (Three Catchers)
Tuesday, August 10 2021 @ 02:00 PM EDT
Contributed by: Magpie
And if California slides into the ocean
Like the mystics and statistics say it will
I predict this motel will be standing until I pay my bill
Two games on Tuesday, Shohei Ohtani on Thursday... this week will be lit, as the kids say.
If that's what the kids say. Come on, how would I know?
The Angels are puttering along at .500, in fourth place, ten games behind the Astros. They shouldn't feel too bad about this. Mike Trout - you know, the best baseball player in the world - has missed 76 of the team's 112 games. Third baseman Anthony Rendon, signed for roughly a quarter of a billion dollars two years ago has missed half of this season and will miss all of the rest. Alex Cobb, one of their two best pitchers (the other one will probably be DHing today) is out with an inflamed wrist, and first baseman Jared Walsh has been out with an intercostal strain (which I had to Google.) I think you have to be impressed that they've been able to stay more or less above water.
So... there was this moment in yesterday's game that I'm sure you all remember. It was the bottom of the eighth, there were two out, the team was down by two runs. And with one man on base, Reese McGuire went up to hit, and Charlie Montoyo didn't stop him. Mike Green commented on it immediately. The at bat went well, of course - McGuire fouled off a bunch of tough pitches and eventually worked a nine pitch walk, bringing Springer to the plate. Both myself and SK in NJ admitted afterwards that we were also surprised not to see Kirk or Bichette batting in McGuire's stead. (One can only imagine what the uglyone thought. Someone probably should check on him, in case his head actually did explode.)
One forms the impression that Montoyo prefers not to use his second catcher in the game if it's at all possible. It's as if the presence of a second catcher on his active roster is something to be saved for unlikely contingencies and otherwise not to be used at all. Normally, however, it's kept locked behind glass, to be broken only in an emergency.
Two things come to my mind. As you all know, I am older than the hills and likewise alive with the sound of music. And I have a distinct memory of a Blue Jays manager (Bobby Cox) freely pinch hitting for his catchers (Ernie Whitt and Buck Martinez) whenever he could get a platoon advantage out of the exchange. So how did that work, and how often did it happen. And the other thing I wondered - how often does it actually happen that a team needs to use three catchers in a game? It's one of those things that's theoretically possible. Catchers will get hurt - just this season we've seen Jansen (twice) and Kirk forced to leave games with injury. But to see two catchers get hurt in the same game? That's really got to be a little unusual.
I addressed these questions in my usual way - by spending far too much time on bb-ref.com. Let's start with the second question, because it's easier. The fielding breakdowns at bb-ref tell us how many games each player appeared in plate, how often they started, and - crucial to our purposes here - how often they finished what they started, which makes it very easy to discover if a third catcher was ever needed. For example, in 110 games this season, the four catchers have completed 86 of those games. Their appearances behind the plate add up to 134, which is 24 more appearances than the games played. And 86 plus 24 is 110 and Hey PRESTO! No third catcher has been used. This is the sort of thing that my Excel skills exist to accomplish.
Over 45 seasons, over 7,014 games, the Blue Jays have used three catchers in a game exactly 15 times. That's all. Fifteen. On average, once every three years.
Finding those appearances was not nearly as easy and not nearly as much fun, but I have located 14 of the 15. On every one of those occasions, the team happened to have three catchers on the active roster.
Bobby Mattick used three catchers in a game twice in 1980, Bobby Cox once in 1984, Jimy Williams once in 1987. I believe Cito Gaston did it twice in 1989 although I've only found one of them. He definitely did it twice more in 1990 and once in 1995. Tim Johnson did it in 1998, Jim Fregosi in 2000, and then we have to wait patiently through the Tosca and Gibbons years, until Gaston comes back and does it again in September 2008. John Farrell did it in 2012 (Yan Gomes came in to catch after Jeff Mathis, who had replaced Arencibia behind the plate, moved to the pitcher's mound in a blowout loss.)
Finally, John Gibbons used three catchers in game once in 2017 and once in 2018. The first of those occasions came when Miguel Montero pinch hit for John Donaldson in the eighteenth inning. Rafael Lopez, who had taken over behind the plate for Luke Maile in the twelfth inning, moved to third base to replace Donaldson and Montero stayed in to catch. I don't know if Donaldson was hurt or tired or cranky - the game story, our comments at the time on the Box make no such mention, although it would be wonderfully ironic if a third catcher had to be used because a position player got hurt. And the last time this happened at all in a Jays game was in September 2018 when Gibbons had Reese McGuire replace Danny Jansen in a game started by Luke Maile after both Maile and Jansen had been pinch hit for.
Just once has a manager been forced to use a non-catcher behind the plate. This was that notorious game in July 1989, when Cito Gaston was presumably lulled into a false sense of security by the presence on his active roster of no less than four catchers (and just three outfielders, one of whom was too injured to take the field.) Gaston started Whitt behind the plate and Myers at DH. Borders would pinch hit for Whitt and stay in to catch, Brenly would pinch hit for Myers. But after Mulliniks pinch hit for Borders and Moseby (his injured outfielder) pinch hit for Brenly, he had to send Tom Lawless out to catch Tom Henke in the ninth inning.
An here's an Update from The Future! I append an actual list of those 15 (now 16!) occasions. The unknown 1989 case still baffles me...
26 May 1980 - Davis (pinch-hitter), Whitt (pinch-hitter), Macha
3 June 1980 - Davis (pinch-runner), Whitt (pinch-hitter), Kelly
18 Sep 1984 - Whitt (pinch-hitter), B.Martinez (8 run lead), T.Hernandez
29 Sep 1987 - Whitt (injured), Moore (pinch-hitter), Myers
??? 1989 - CAN'T FIND IT
5 Jul 1989 - Whitt (pinch-hitter), Borders (pinch-hitter), Lawless
16 Sep 1990 - Myers (pinch-hitter), Borders (pinch-runner), Diaz
28 Sep 1990 - Borders (pinch-hitter), Myers (pinch-runner), Diaz
30 Aug 1995 - Knorr (pinch-runner), S.Martinez (pinch-hitter), Parrish
19 Aug 1998 - Fletcher (12 run lead), Dalesandro (moved to 3b), Brown
6 June 2000 - A.Castillo (replaced 5th), T.Greene (replaced 8th), Fletcher
3 Sep 2008 - Barajas (pinch-runner), Zaun (pinch-runner), Thigpen
25 July 2012 - Arencibia (pinch-hitter), Mathis (moved to p), Gomes
5 Sep 2017 - Maile (pinch-hitter), Lopez (moved to 3b), Montero
7 Sep 2018 - Maile (pinch-hitter), Jansen (pinch-runner), McGuire
26 Apr 2022: Collins (defense), Heinemen (pinch-hitter), Kirk
The fact that it has happened so seldom is, I think, a testament to two things: a) catchers are tough guys and it takes a lot to knock them out of a game, b) managers are generally pretty cautious about pressing their luck with the first item.
Some managers don't like to change their catchers at all in the course of a game. Over the course of this franchise's history, the starting catcher has finished the game 83.3% of the time. But in Roy Hartsfield's three seasons at the helm, the man who started the game behind the plate finished the game 95% of the time, at least 150 times in each season. In 1979, he used two catchers in a game just six times. John Farrell used two catchers just 8 times in 2011, as did Cito Gaston in 1997 (it was his last season, he may have given up by then. Same with Gibbons using two catchers just 12 times in 2018.)
At the other extremes are the well-known platoon combinations of Whitt-Martinez and Myers-Borders, in the years from 1982 through 1991. In 1984 and 1986, the starting catcher finished just 107 of 162 games, less than two-thirds of the time. More than half of those relief appearances were precipitated by one catcher pinch hitting for the other. (I didn't track how often some other player pinch hit for the catcher.)
Tim Johnson in 1998 and Buck Martinez in 2001 both brought in a second catcher quite often - what those teams had in common was a LH starter behind the plate (Darrin Fletcher) for whom you would prefer to pinch hit against a southpaw if it was late and you were losing. But it generally wasn't the other catcher who was being sent up to pinch hit.
While my memory tells me that Cox, Williams, and Gaston would cheerfully send their second catcher up to pinch hit whenever the possibility was there, in actual fact it didn't often happen before the sixth inning. Maybe once a year, Cox would pinch hit one catcher for another in the third inning (and Cito Gaston once had Borders hit for Myers in the second inning) - but as a rule, this particular type of pinch hitting begins in the sixth and happens most often in the eighth inning.
As you might expect, the catchers who make the relief appearances and pinch hit for the other catcher most often are the right-handed half of the platoon tandems. Martinez in 1984 and Borders in 1990 both relieved the starter 32 times; Martinez pinch hit for Whitt 19 times, Borders for Myers 23 times.
Montoyo hardly used a second catcher at all in his first season (just 16 times in 162 games.) He was slightly more willing in the short season last year (11 times, but just 60 games). He's already used two catchers in a game 24 times this year. His starter has finished the game 78% of the time, somewhat lower than the historical average. Three times he had no choice - his starter (Jansen twice, Kirk once) came out of the game with an injury. Kirk has been replaced by McGuire for defense three times, and Kirk replaced Jansen twice late in games for no pressing reason (maybe Jansen needed a break, maybe he wanted to get Kirk some reps.) He's pinch hit for one of his catchers with another one eight times, always to gain a platoon advantage (McGuire for Jansen twice, McGuire for Adams once, Adams for McGuire three times, Jansen for McGuire twice.) He's also pinch run one catcher for another twice (once - McGuire for Jansen - was forced by injury, the other was McGuire for Kirk.)
In addition to the eight times when a catcher pinch hit for the other and stayed in to catch, there have been five more games when a catcher pinch hit for the other with the team losing in the final inning but didn't have to come in to catch because there would be no bottom half of the inning. These were Kirk for McGuire (once), Jansen for McGuire (once), and McGuire for Jansen (three times.)
While Montoyo currently has the elements of a classic L-R platoon, his deployment of his catchers seems more determined by the name of his starting pitcher. It appears that Kirk will be catching Robbie Ray and Alek Manoah; McGuire will catch the other three (for tomorrow's double-header, I predict Kirk will catch Matz - they did well together last time - and McGuire will catch Stripling). Sunday's game suggests he's not going to have Kirk pinch hit for McGuire if it means giving up the platoon advantage. What we really need to see is a game situation when McGuire is due up with a southpaw on the mound and the team trailing. Would he let McGuire hit in such a situation? I don't believe so. Besides the three RH catchers who have pinch hit for him, Montoyo has also had Randal Grichuk, Santiago Espinal, and Rowdy Tellez (twice) pinch hit for McGuire. He did leave him in to bat against the LHP Taylor the other day with men on base - but the game was tied and it was only the fourth inning.
Okay, Jays-Angels. Matchups!
Tue Aug 10 (1) - Matz (9-6, 4.30) vs Rodriguez (2-1, 3.86)
Tue Aug 10 (2) - Stripling (5-6, 4.43) vs Suarez (5-4, 3.60)
Wed Aug 11 - Manoah (4-1, 2.58) vs Bundy (2-8, 6.14)
Thu Aug 12 - Berrios (8-5, 3.23) vs Ohtani (6-1, 2.93)
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