The Marlins announced this morning that they’ve added catcher Santiago Chavez to their 60-man player pool and placed catcher Will Banfield on the 10-day injured list (retroactive to July 6). No reason for the IL placement was listed.
Miami’s pool had previously been full, and teams can only exceed 60 players when players are put on the injured list due to COVID-19-related situations. Marlins general manager Michael Hill had previously revealed that four players have tested positive for the coronavirus, though he did not specify which players. Banfield’s IL placement doesn’t guarantee that he was one of the four. Players can be placed on the COVID-19 injured list if they exhibit symptoms but have yet to test positive or if they come into contact with someone who has tested positive.
The 24-year-old Chavez isn’t on the 40-man roster. The longtime Athletics farmhand spent his entire career with the Oakland organization prior to signing a minor league deal with Miami in the 2018-19 offseason. He re-signed a similar deal this past winter and will give the club some depth behind Jorge Alfaro, Francisco Cervelli, Chad Wallach, Ryan Lavarnway and Brian Navarreto. Chavez has never hit in the minors — 2018’s .635 OPS between Class-A Advanced and Double-A was a career-high — but he’s thrown out a ridiculous 48 percent of attempted base thieves in eight professional seasons.
i guess if there is a silver lining to the lack of a MiLB season its that the prospects can all work with some of the system’s best defensive catchers, even if they arent projected to play at the same levels.
Not trying to really hate on Chavez BUT his minor league stats are really kind of surprisingly weak. The tiny amount of RBI’s he’s accumulated is really kind of pathetic. He must be quite the defensive catcher to be able to have stuck around this long — and to have now made it all the way to the 60-man ‘roster’ — even if he doesn’t wind up playing in the majors – it’s still pretty impressive that a guy who barely hits .200 (sometimes only hitting .150-.170) is even in a position to potentially make the majors if an injury or two occur.
Impressive? You did see it was the Marlins he signed with, right? It’s more like a crappy franchise desperate for a lukewarm body.
To answer your first point, yes he’s an elite defender. A 48% caught stealing rate is absurd.
But a lot of teams have several catchers in their 60-man pools just as a means of splitting up the workload. I doubt they see him as a legitimate major league option as much as they want a good defender working with their staff (and giving their other catchers more of a break).