The Pirates keep finding ways to circle back to Henry Davis.
Pittsburgh has already run through Joey Bart, who handled most of the catching early in the season before landing on the IL and eventually getting dealt to the Braves in a minor trade. Endy Rodríguez then stepped in and gave the position a lift with the bat, but his glove lagged behind, and a hip injury pushed Davis back into a bigger role.
That leaves the Pirates with a familiar problem: Davis can catch. He can really catch. But the bat has been so light that it wipes out most of what he gives them behind the plate.
The defensive numbers are loud. Davis has thrown out 18 stolen base attempts against him, and 17 of them have been erased, giving him a 48.6% caught stealing rate that leads baseball.
The MLB average is 22.7%. He’s also posted 10 Defensive Runs Saved in total, with his work behind the plate built on a 1.91 pop time and a strong arm.
He’s been above average at blocking pitches and average as a framer. In all, he has eight defensive runs saved over 635 1/3 innings.
The offense, though, is a different story. Davis is hitting .170/.267/.300, which has translated to a 58 wRC+ over 256 plate appearances.
Catchers are expected to carry a lower bat than most positions, but that number is still far too low even for that group. Anything under an 85 wRC+ is a problem, and Davis is well short of that mark.
For a while, it looked like the Pirates might finally have a way out. With Davis no longer serving as Paul Skenes’ personal catcher, his hold on a regular role seemed shaky. But Rodríguez is out, and Pittsburgh doesn’t have much else to lean on.
That reality got sharper at the trade deadline, when the Pirates were linked to Colorado catcher Hunter Goodman, only to back off because the price was too steep. Adley Rutschman was another name in the mix, but after seeing what the Boston Red Sox gave up for him, Pittsburgh’s decision to pass made sense. The market was thin, too, once Shea Langeliers and Ryan Jeffers came off the board.
Still, the club may be regretting not finding a way to land someone, especially with Rodríguez going down soon after the deadline. A mid-tier option like Tyler Stephenson of the Cincinnati Reds would have helped.
So the burden lands right back on Davis. That’s a strange place for a player who was the No. 1 overall draft pick in 2021 and ranked No. 24 on MLB Pipeline’s top 100 prospects in 2023. He still has elite bat speed, measured at 74.3 miles per hour, and the raw tools that once made him such a prized prospect are still in there somewhere.
He’s 26 now and closing in on 1,000 career big league plate appearances, but the offense has never really taken off. There have been flashes of power, but not much more.
The Pirates would probably love to stash him as a No. 3 catcher in Triple-A. Instead, he’s starting again, because there just aren’t many alternatives.
Rafael Flores Jr. has struggled in limited chances, and the move for Christian Bethancourt says plenty about both Flores Jr.’s production and Rodríguez’s injury situation. Pittsburgh may have waited too long to treat catcher as a premium deadline need.
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