As trade talk starts to heat up for the Miami Marlins, expect plenty of it to focus on how the team can upgrade their weakest position: catcher.
If there’s been one consistent trouble spot for the Miami Marlins this season, it’s been at catcher.
That’s not to say it’s been the only trouble spot. Outfield depth has been an issue. Jean Segura has been a massive disappointment offensively at third base. Shortstop has been fine, just so long as Opening Day starter Joey Wendle doesn’t, well, start at shortstop. Any one of these issues would be survivable, and every one of these issues is at least attached to a player with a decent enough career track record of much better production.
Catcher though? Not so much. The production has been historically bad. Thanks to a monster series this week in which Jacob Stallings has gone 3-for-6 with three RBI, his average rocketed all the way to … a .149 total for the season. As a recent Fish Stripes piece spells out, he has basically been terrible at everything this season. Hitting, framing, controlling runners, pick your poison, Whatever catcher attribute you land on, Stallings has been a poison pill there for the Miami Marlins. As for Miami’s other catcher, Nick Fortes hasn’t been “Stallings bad,” but he certainly hasn’t been “MLB good” either.
At the end of the day, there just isn’t a position more in need of an offensive upgrade for the Miami Marlins than starting catcher.
Of course, the issue is that catcher is also the hardest position to upgrade at during the regular season. There isn’t a roll in baseball more overloaded with intangible contributions. Pitchers and catchers have an established report, ideally built up over multiple seasons, and at the very least built up over the course an entire spring. Consequently, teams don’t like trading catchers, as they have such a massive impact on team performance. That makes it a much smaller market to draw from than at other positions on the diamond. And when you throw in the requirement of being able to be helpful on offense? The market gets downright minuscule.
All of which is to say that the best thing the Miami Marlins might have going for them in pulling off a catcher upgrade is just how horrible their catching has been. Trading for say the 22nd-best 2023 MLB catcher would still be eight catchers better than what they were getting previously. Kidding aside, that is probably the most likely scenario for Miami. Bringing in a journeyman backup like Oakland’s Carlos Perez or Cincinnati’s Luke Maile, making a bigger deal at a position with more offensive upside, and just taking whatever small improvement at catcher results.
But … what if the Marlins did try to make a big splash at catcher?
In that case, the best trade targets would look something like this.