TUESDAY: Norris’ deal comes with $250K in incentives for 50, 75, 100 and 125 days on the big league roster, tweets Jon Heyman of FanRag. He’ll also collect $250K if the Rays trade him.
SUNDAY: To make room for Norris, the Rays have placed right-hander Kevin Gadea on the 60-day DL with elbow tendinitis, according to Topkin. If healthy, the Rays would have returned the Rule 5 pick to the Mariners (Twitter links).
SATURDAY: The Rays have officially announced the signing. A corresponding move to create a 40-man roster spot will come later today, Topkin tweets, with the simplest scenario being that Ramos would be placed on the 60-day DL.
FRIDAY, 3:40pm: Norris will earn $1.2MM and can add another $800K via incentives, Topkin tweets. That’ll be on top of the $688K or so he’s owed by the Nationals under the arb arrangement he had reached at the outset of his short-lived stint in D.C.
1:28pm: Free agent catcher Derek Norris will sign with the Rays, reports Tim Brown of Yahoo Sports. Norris chose the Rays over four other suitors (Twitter link). It’ll be a one-year deal, tweets Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times. The Rays could control Norris for two years, though, as he’ll be arbitration eligible for the last time in 2018.
[RELATED: Updated Rays Depth Chart]
The Rockies and Cardinals had also been mentioned recently in connection to Norris, who reached the open market when the Nationals released him March 15. That came after a failed attempt to trade Norris, who would have been due $4.2MM. Instead, he’ll presumably earn a significantly lower salary with the Rays. Norris picked Tampa Bay over other teams because he expects to receive more playing time there than he would have elsewhere, according to Brown.
The Rays signed a high-profile backstop, Wilson Ramos, in free agency over the winter, but after suffering a torn ACL last season, he probably won’t debut until May or June. Even when he is healthy enough to return, Ramos could break back in as a designated hitter. Thus, as opposed to going with the unexciting duo of Luke Maile and Curt Casali as their primary catchers, the Rays are adding Norris, who’s easily the most proven of the three.
The 28-year-old Norris isn’t without his flaws, having batted an ugly .186/.255/.328 with a career-worst 30.3 percent strikeout rate in 458 plate appearances with the Padres last season. However, Norris isn’t far removed from slashing a palatable .246/.336/.392 in 982 PAs with the A’s and Padres from 2012-15. Norris is also coming off his second straight season in which both Baseball Prospectus and StatCorner assigned him plus pitch-framing marks behind the plate. That surely added to his appeal from the Rays’ standpoint, as the organization is known to value framing.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Is this good or bad?
Good. He’s better than Maile, Sucre and Casali and can share time with Ramos once he’s back.
I think it’s good. Best case scenario, he rebounds at the plate to his 2013-2015 levels and he’s good for about 2 WAR this year. Worst case scenario we still have an excellent defensive catcher and a great pitch framer who isn’t that much worse at the plate than the catchers we have now, and he can ride the pine when Ramos is healthy enough to catch again. Haven’t seen the financials yet but this seems like a low risk/high reward deal to me
It’s better it’s the al east
4 of those parks the ball will fly. Shame he is playing in Tampa… that’s **** show stadium.
How many more years until they move to Montreal ?
Yeah, Montreal had such great success with the Expos…just watch, Rays will be in the playoff hunt clown.
You are insane if you think they will be in the hunt. Hold on to those dreams…
lol that’s true
Playoffs? You talking about playoffs?
Cannot even draw in a Decent crowd when winning
Last place in the al east
What does the crowd size have to do with how good the team is playing?
Ya bro, when does crowd size affect the skill of the player?!?!?!?!?
He just said no fans out in Montreal
same goes it for Tampa
Their team was way better than anything the rays have ever used or created with more money.
94 strike hurts
I’m saying 5 years and it’s possible for the rays to move
Hahaha. I read that in that in Jim Mora’s voice :)
Montreal did have success with the Expos, undermined significantly by a variety of factors mostly to do with Jeffrey Loria’s purchase of the team. I get your point, but it’s neither fair nor accurate to put all the blame on Montreal and its fans for the Expos’ departure.
Yeah, just ask Cleveland.
Those older fan won’t come to the game. Make it more handy cap friendly . They will come.
If your team is bad enough to need Norris, its bad. Last year he had the worst season for a full time catcher in modern baseball
That’s not remotely true, by any metric you can dig up. Norris was bad, but he was bad in a very generic way. Nothing historic there.
I didn’t think it was true either so I did a search on Baseball-Reference when I first read Pads post about it in another thread. For full-time catchers, 100 games at catcher and 400 PA, Norris had the worst season in terms of BA, OBP, OPS and most other stats on offense since 1917. He was also really bad on defense being at or near the bottom in SB against, PB, WP, Errors, and Catchers ERA and ranked 89th of 104 in pitch framing according to Baseball Prospectus. Norris really was was historically bad.
His season wasn’t even the worst this century. fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=c&stats=bat�…
WAR for catchers? Wish they would let me say what I really think about it. Doesn’t apply and even Sean Smith, the guy who developed the WAR stat, says its a useless comparative stat when applied to catchers.
Norris’ season was the 12th-worst season bt=y a catcher since the year 2000. That doesn’t even put him remotely in the conversation for “worst catcher season of the last 100 years,” especially if you’ve ever looked at pre-1950 catchers, who generally couldn’t hit at all.
The worst catcher seasons since the year 2000 belong to Barrett, Ausmus, Phillips, there an Arencibia year in there, a Doumit year….you can look this stuff up.
Had to find it. Since 1921 Norris had the worst BA, OBP, and OPS for any catcher that played 100 games behind the plate and had 400 PA. In the post dead ball era no catcher has been worse.
The link is about 100 characters so you are going to have to go to Baseball Reference Play Index and do your own search. If I can do it, it’s not hard. Don’t know how to do that link to thing.
Good buy-low pickup for the Rays. Not sure why the Rockies didn’t pounce after Murphy broke his arm. Seemed like the logical fit.
Way to be credible, Marc Topkin!
twitter.com/TBTimes_Rays/status/845067420079403008
In Topkin’s defense, all his sources are in the Rays front office and I can definitely see why the they thought they were on the outside looking in. Norris took less money to come to Tampa
twitter.com/RobertMurrayFRS/status/845341348077039…
Yeah I can’t find one reason it’s bad. Assuming he was had cheap he has more experience and pop than all are other options to start the year. I see sucre and Norris starting season on 25 man
“Thus, as opposed to going with the unexciting trio of Luke Maile and Curt Casali as their primary catchers”
um??
Thanks. I had Sucre in there – hence “trio” – but removed him and neglected to change it to “duo.”
Any official word on Sucre, or are you assuming quite reasonably that the Norris will relegate Sucre to AAA to start the season?
Not sure why Halos did not pick him up. Not exactly like they are solid at catcher.
I don’t know if you are joking but the Angels have never made a free agent mistake or made a bad roster move in general in the past 20ish years…
They’re not solid in a lot more than just catcher.
Love Norris when he’s on he’s dang good.
And when he’s off he’s historically bad.
Norris had the worst season for a full time catcher in over 100 years last year. He had one good season in 2014, but its been all downhill since then.
this just isn’t true Norris was bad but not historically bad The Padres have had worse regular catchers in just the last ten seasons.
Norris’ 2016 season, since 1917, ranks somewhere like the 900th worst catcher season since then. I think you’re using just a *bit* of hyperbole.
What stats are you using? Notice I said FULL TIME catcher. 100 games played at catcher and 400 PA. He was the worst offensive catcher in most offensive categories including BA and OBP. WAR doesn’t apply for catchers. Even the guy who created the stat says its completely useless as a comparative stats for catchers. Not a single bit of hyperbole. Norris was the worst. Down vote all you want. It wont change the facts and you can go look too. Baseball Reference Play Index.
Go back to Canada, hoser!
I mean really he’ll play in a pretty empty stadium it will be spring training year round in St. Petersburg
They are taking all of the Nats’ catchers