Miami Marlins trade talk: Best trade targets at catcher

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.

The Dream: Salvador Perez

The odds on the Miami Marlins pulling off a Salvador Perez deal are admittedly longer than the odds were on the Florida Panthers and Miami Heat making any noise in the playoffs this season when the postseason started.

But those teams did end up making some noise, didn’t they? Sometimes you have to allow yourself to dream. Also, if you’re the owner of a cynically viewed franchise in a market where every team has surpassed expectations, sometimes you have to swing for the fences.

Make no mistake — Salvador Perez would be that swing for the Miami Marlins.

He’d check all the boxes for the fan waiting for Bruce Sherman to prove he’s a different breed of Marlins owner. Star player. Expensive, and not just this for this year. He’s earning $20 million this season, and he’ll do that two more times before an option year. Perez reaches free agency in 2026. It’s a move that unmistakably screams commitment, which is not something the Miami Marlins have traditionally screamed at that price point under this ownership.

However, it’s also kind of just doubling down on being committed for as long as they’ve already planned on being committed.

Perez’ contract would line up quite nicely with Sandy Alcanatara’s best in baseball deal. Same goes for Luis Arraez and Jazz Chisholm. It’s a massive salary by Marlins standards, yes. But by MLB standards? By top tier free agent standards? It’s actually a pretty reasonable figure, and is roughly equivalent in annual salary to what the Marlins were rumored to be willing to pay Jose Abreu this offseason.

You’ll noticed I’ve spent no time extolling his on the field virtues here. The man’s a legend. Seven All-Star appearances, five Gold Gloves. He’s hit double-digit homers every season he’s played going back to 2012, already has 11 homers in 2023, and would be the biggest positional upgrade the Marlins would be remotely capable of making.

The only problem is that here have been zero reports he’s on the market. All there is to go on here is that he’s a pricey veteran playing for a horrible team, and isn’t one of their two young stars. Standard practice for rebuilding MLB teams would suggest he’s available, but there is also the possibility Perez is not a standard veteran. He could be a lifer. Not a very Marlins concept, and not likely one that I think the Royals will end up pursuing, but it can’t be dismissed.

If he is a Royals lifer though, maybe KC decides to dangle MJ Melendez? Not a very good catcher to date, but he boasts far more power potential than either of Miami’s current backstops. It would be a step back to the Jorge Alfaro mold at the position, but Melendez would also be under team control until 2029.  Which makes it more likely KC decides at some point to give him another extended look behind the plate, and move Perez for more young pieces.

In short, don’t sleep on those Royals catchers.

Far more likely to happen though would be a move like this next one.

Still Exciting: Yasmani Grandal/Yan Gomes

Lastly, how about a pair of Windy City based catchers for the Miami Marlins consideration?

After a hot start, the Chicago Cubs have fallen out of the race. They’re now looking up at both the Brewers and Pirates, and are about to be overtaken by a St. Louis Cardinals team that is starting to resemble the team everyone expected to see at the start of the season. As for the Chicago White Sox, they’re also looking much better of late. However, it was a massive whole they dug themselves into, and the AL is ridiculously deep. It’s AL Central crown or bust for them, and that’s going to a very difficult road for them.

Which means one, if not two, of Yan Gomes and Yasmani Grandal are going to be on the market very shortly.

Both Gomes and Grandal are free agents after the season. Gomes does technically have a team option for 2024, but it’s hard to imagine the Marlins paying him the $6 million that would entail. That makes them both one-year rentals, which potentially makes them very cheap in terms of the prospect capital Miami would need to spend acquire one of them.

Financially, it’s a mixed bag. Grandal has an enormous 2023 salary of $18,250,000. Gomes is earning a comparatively cheap $6 million. In a perfect world, where Bruce Sherman felt the need to teach Mets owner Steve Cohen some kind of a lesson or prove himself to South Florida by spending wildly, the Marlins would just offer to eat the remainder of the contract. In every one of the trades discussed in this article, Stallings is almost certainly going the other way. Only in a Grandal deal though could Miami potentially get away with sending just Stallings. In an ideal Gomes swap, Stallings and a high upside, low floor single A talent could do it.

Unfortunately, this isn’t MLB The Show. Even in reality though, there is only so high the asking price can be for a massive, expiring contract. Either one of these players could easily be a Miami Marlin as soon as July 1, at very little expense to the organization in terms of talent. Money is the only factor here.

They are the lowest floor options, but do come with high floors themselves. Grandal can get absurdly hot, and is only two years removed from a 23-homer season. Gomes is presently hitting at a .290 clip (with a very reasonable .295 BABIP behind it); he’s reliably good for modest power numbers and yet another career average at the plate (.247) that makes him look like Johnny Bench compared to Miami’s current catcher output.

Bottom-line, the Miami Marlins have options at catcher. They just need to decide how much they want to improve there, and how much they want to spend.