The Dodgers have activated catcher Russell Martin from the 10-day injured list and optioned fellow backstop Rocky Gale to Triple-A Oklahoma City, Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times tweets.
Martin’s return should be a welcome one for Los Angeles, whose primary catcher, Austin Barnes, has seen his numbers decline significantly over the past couple weeks. Barnes sported an otherworldly 1.110 OPS when Martin hit the IL with lower back inflammation on April 10, but he’s now down to .729 in that category. Martin, meanwhile, slashed an outstanding .333/.500/.600 with five walks against three strikeouts in 22 plate appearances prior to going on the IL. The well-respected 36-year-old is in his second stint with the Dodgers, with whom he stood out from 2006-10 before rejoining the team in an offseason trade with the Blue Jays.
Gale, on the other hand, has done anything but thrive as a Dodger. The 31-year-old posted a matching and equally woeful .143/.143/.143 line in 14 trips to the plate after the Dodgers promoted him to replace Martin. Gale, who debuted with the Padres in 2015, owns an ugly .111/.111/.194 line in 36 major league PA.
20016 was a great year for Martin.
I think 20016 will be a great year. Its hard to tell.
He is buns
Dodgers need to find a catcher that can hit. Maybe a trade for Cervalli?
The same Cervelli who is currently hitting .184/.253/.250? He’s obviously not that bad but he’s also only had a handful of season where he’s been a league average hitting C. Highly unlikely that LA goes over the salary cap for Cervelli.
They have two good catching prospects, they may be waiting for later in the season to call one of them up if they do well
Doing a big disrespect leaving out his 0.00 ERA while talking about his season
He’s getting close to 200 homers!
Barnes shouldered too much of the catching load when Martin was out. Look for his hitting to pick up a little now that it’ll be closer to a 60/40 split for Barnes and Martin catching again.
As loaded as LA’s lineup is, it doesn’t need huge production out of the Cs, just solid defense and gamecalling, with a few hits or walks once in a while. Anything else is a bonus.
I agree different bears. It’s nice to see the dodgers NOT swinging for the fence every at bat. Now if they can only learn to bunt against the shift. Think this will be the only reason Martin plays with his beloved dodgers (kinda like Kemp last year) be interesting to see how Gale does in the middle or end of the year
Aww the days of Yaz…Paul, and Mike are well behind us now. Maybe Keibert or Will may have a bat to play with in September…or are the days of September call-ups behind us too?