It’s March 11th and the Mets still haven’t resolved their catcher situation yet, which I guess makes sense. Wilson Ramos will definitely be the starting catcher. It’s still unclear if the Mets will go with Devin Mesoraco or Travis d’Arnaud, who is still sorta rehabbing but getting into more games now as the back up catcher. Travis d’Arnaud is the offensive threat, Jacob deGrom is comfortable throwing to Mesoraco.
The Mets acquired Mesoraco in a early/mid-season trade for Matt Harvey. Devin did alright as a Met as the Mets just needed someone who could catch and be in the lineup reliably.
2018: 274 PA, 244 AB, 11 HR, .221/.303/.398, 0.6 WAR, 99 DRC+
Career: .232/.309/.406, 100 DRC+
From looking at his career line, Devin, according to DRC+ is a remarkably average player. Like exactly average. Here’s how computers project him:
(Citations: Baseball Prospectus (BP) projections are from the Baseball Prospectus annual which can you can get here. It’s highly recommended. ESPN projections can be found here. ZiPS can be found here. Steamer can be found here. Baseball Reference projections (BR) can found on the players BR page which linked elsewhere on this article. )
The average of the projections has Mesoraco getting on base at a similar clip and showing less power in 2019 which matches the trajectory of his career to this point. ESPN is really down on him, but ESPN was struggling to project playing time. ZiPS was also down on him, and they don’t really factor playing time.
Interestingly, BP is the most positive for his On Base Percentage, and they tend to be the most conservative of all of the projections we look at.
It’s still very unclear what the Mets are going to do with the catching situation right now. My gut tells me they are waiting / hoping for a team to get into a desperate situation and call them with a trade proposal. Or they could carry 3 catchers on their roster, which is a very Mets thing to do.
