The Marlins announced a series of nine minor league signings on Wednesday, each of which contains an invitation to Major League Spring Training. In addition to confirming their previously reported signing of former All-Star Matt Kemp (more on that here), the Miami organization will bring two former big leaguers to camp: catcher Ryan Lavarnway and right-hander Josh A. Smith. Rounding out the list of non-roster invitees are catchers Brian Navarreto, Santiago Chavez and BJ Lopez; infielders Gosuke Katoh and Christian Lopes; and right-hander Aaron Northcraft.
Lavarnway, 32, has appeared in the Majors in eight of the past nine seasons — 2016 being the lone exception — but never tallied more than 166 plate appearances in a single MLB campaign. He’s a career .211/.270/.343 hitter in 445 trips to the plate at the big league level, and he owns a lifetime .272/.364/.426 batting line in 2055 Triple-A plate appearances spread across nine seasons. Lavarnway boasts a 31 percent caught-stealing rate in Triple-A but has struggled more in the Majors (20 percent).
Lavarnway has typically hovered around average in terms of pitch-framing in the upper minors (with the 2018 season being a notable outlier that saw him rate rather poorly). Miami has Jorge Alfaro and Chad Wallach on the 40-man roster but was thin at catcher beyond that, so the quartet of Lavarnway, Navarreto, Chavez and Lopez will add an influx of depth at the position.
Smith, also 32, pitched in 31 innings for the Red Sox in 2019 and has compiled 158 1/3 frames in the Majors between the Reds, A’s and Red Sox dating back to 2015. He has a career 5.40 ERA and a near-identical 5.37 FIP with averages of 7.5 K/9, 4.0 BB/9 and 1.65 HR/9 to go along with a 40.6 percent ground-ball rate.
The overall profile on Smith isn’t particularly appealing at first glance, but his curveball may have caught the attention of the Marlins. Smith ramped up the usage of his hook to a career-high 23.1 percent in 2019 and logged a career-high 12.1 percent overall swinging-strike rate (15.3 percent on the curve). Statcast pegged the spin rate on Smith’s curve in the 95th percentile among MLB hurlers, so perhaps the Marlins will look to more aggressively utilize that offering in hopes of coaxing better results out of the journeyman 32-year-old.
Reds legend Ryan Lavarnway
Hit .667 in 2018 for the Pirates. He’s a beast, I tell ya.
If the Marlins wanted to sign a catcher to a minor league deal named Benito, why didn’t they just sign Benito Santiago? I know he’s old but his career will end up better than Chavez’s will. Not to mention the fact that Benito Santiago got shot by someone and just battled through it to still become an MLB player. He was fearless on the field. Dude got shot. What can a baseball player do that worries him?
Is this the season Kemp become’s MLB’s first 50-50 player, as he predicted years ago???
Different article?
Kemp is mentioned here
Wait fifteen years as he’s only soon to turn 35,
When you remember the Orioles gotten a steal of a trade from mariners with this guy for trumbo that one year.
that was Steve Clevenger
Lavarnway’s disappearance of power is something that still baffles me. I remember him as a prospect on the Red Sox and he hit 32 HRs in AAA and it looked like he was destined to be an impact bat at the ML level for years to come (at the time the question seemed to be more whether he was going to be a DH or a catcher) but then all of a sudden his power disappeared and still to this day that seems to be the case. It just seems so odd how a guy could go from 20-something to 32 HRs in the minors to basically never cracking double-digits again. Who knows maybe he can find it again as a (really) late bloomer but I wish him the best. always seemed like a nice guy — and he’s smart! If I remember correctly he was an Ivy League grad right? Because at the time there was a game where he caught Craig Breslow and I believe at the time it was the first time that a P/C combo was “all ivy-league” haha