The Guardians have announced the signing of free agent catcher Meibrys Viloria to a non-roster Minor League deal with an invitation to Spring Training.
Originally signed in 2013 by the Royals, Viloria progressed through Kansas City’s minor league system before jumping from Class-A Advanced to the majors in late 2018 shortly after his 21st birthday with Drew Butera traded and Salvador Perez nursing an injury. He would hit .259/.286/.333 in 29 plate appearances before returning to the minors at the conclusion of the season.
After beginning the 2019 season in Double-A, Viloria returned to the majors in a permanent role, finishing the year with a weak .211/.259/.286 line in 148 plate appearances. He bounced between the major league team and alternate training site during the 2020 season before being designated for assignment (DFA’d) in early 2021 and being outrighted to Triple-A. There he would hit .242/.368/.338, but would not make another appearance with the Royals and was granted free agency after the season.
Viloria joined the Rangers on a minor league deal ahead of the 2022 season. He spent most of the season in Triple-A, hitting .280/.422/.440 while putting up a much weaker .159/.280/.270 at the major league level. Viloria was DFA’d in early November, claimed by the Giants five days later, and DFA’d for the second time in the span of two weeks before electing free agency.
Both of Cleveland’s 2022 catching core, Austin Hedges and Luke Maile, entered free agency after the 2022 season, with Maile recently inking a deal with the Reds. Bo Naylor, the Guardians’ No.5 prospect ranked by MLB.com, is currently penciled in as the starting backstop, but the team has been connected to Sean Murphy and will presumedly fortify the position during the offseason.
With a career .201/.270/.283 line over parts of four seasons at the major league level, Viloria will likely compete for a backup role with the Guardians. However, for a team that values defense, Viloria has thrown out a strong 36% of runners.
Indians gonna spend at all this offseason?
There is no current MLB team with that name. So likely not.
Still the Indians.
Username does not check out
That’s a little offensive just say Guardians please.
Seattle still the Pilots
It’s been over a year now. Just move on. You can like the name or hate it, but they’re not the Indians anymore.
Michael & fre5hwind: I live 45 minutes from Cleveland. I’ve lived in NE Ohio since 1986. I’m not a Cleveland fan. I follow 2 teams in the NL (the Pirates & the Braves). I still occasionally call them the Indians. They’ve been the Indians for SEVERAL DECADES. It takes time to get used to the name change.
I do the same thing as I have been a Cleveland fan since 1965, but they are the Guardians. High IQ and others still purposely call them Indians need to deal with reality.
Oh yeah, slipping up is going to happen. For anyone that’s so used to following the team, it makes sense to an extent — even ESPN had a graphic during the playoffs this year promoting the “Indians vs. Rays” game.
The issue isn’t that, but the people who just intentionally call them that when they’re the Guardians. I’d imagine most of the people here just stubbornly refuse to accept the name change as opposed to slipping up though. Like it or not, that’s the name; trying to prove a point in a comments section isn’t bringing Chief Wahoo back.
No
The Dolan’s are cheap
Hardly. Any more than my refusal to buy a Ferrari when a nice Honda will do.
Yay you saw my suggestion.
Meibrys is a ok-ish backup catcher.
At least Malle hit over the Mendoza line. Seriously they talk about getting Murphy and end up with a worse hitting catcher than Malle and Hedges?
It’s a minor league deal with an invite to spring training. There’ll be about 15 more on every team. This doesn’t change their pursuit of Murphy or others.
Stay uniformed bud
Stay uniformed? Huh?
I think he meant uninformed
I think he meant unicorned.
Me too, blue.
Depth piece they can call up in emergencies.
Pretty much. They lost a lot of depth for AAA/AA between the last two seasons. At one point they had to call up a guy who had less than 600 ABs in the minors to be an emergency catcher. Their depth chart before this was:
Majors: Naylor and Lavastida, both rookies
AAA:David Fry, a 3B/1B who might get taken in rule V, and Seth Caddell, undrafted in the 2020 draft (just 45 ABs last year)
AA: Angel Lopez (46 ABs last year in AA), and Eric Gonzalez (151 ABs)
Now some of that depth will be restored if they get an MLB catcher and push Lavastida back down. But they lost both their ML catchers and several of their top minor league catchers (Gavin Collins, Mike Rivera, and Sandy Leon who was their AAA catcher at one point).
So yeah, they needed this guy
A mystery why so few catchers can hit. They see pitches all season long year after year but never learn to hit them. It’s really bizarre.
And it doesn’t help that there are organizations like CLE who place much more weight on catchers’ defensive metrics while having little or no concern about their offensive output. I remember when Francisco Mejia was tearing up minor league pitching, and as soon as he reached the major CLE traded him. Granted he is a poor defensive catcher, but he didn’t much an audition.
The main problem was that Mejia wouldn’t move to a different position. He was never going to usurp Gomes & Perez with their excellent defense. It was that lack of cooperation that made him an expendable trade candidate. If he had been willing to transition to the corner outfield, Cleveland might have given him a longer look
“However, for a team that values defense, Viloria has thrown out a strong 36% of runners.”
The average team steals a base about every other game. So a 10% increase in throwing out runners is about 8 outs in the course of a 162 game season.
Are you willing to value those 8 additional outs over and above a lower batting average of about .015? So you take a .230 hitter over a .245 hitter if he’s a better thrower. That makes sense.
What doesn’t make sense is accepting a .200 batting average because he throws out a few more baserunners.
Catching is NOT about throwing out runners!
That’s a good point, but you’d imagine with the rule changes next season, more base runners will attempt to steal bags.
That’s when that 36% will become a lot more important
Now with bigger bases AND the pitch clock AND the limit on how many throws a pitcher can throw to a base catchers that have fast accurate throws are going to be more in demand.
There is so much more value a good catcher brings to run prevention than throwing out runners.
I’m really pulling for the Guardians to land Murphy – God knows they have the prospects to get it done. Worst case scenario is they don’t get him and immediately pivot to Hedges who hit a ghastly .163 last year. The only way that is even slightly acceptable is if he was a gold glove finalist (which he was NOT).
Again…..
The difference between a catcher that hits .200 with maybe a .250 OBP vs. a catcher that hits .250-.260 with a .290-.300 OBP and plays 80% of games is maybe 2 to 3 more times reaching base a week.
The name of the game is pitching. Pitchers are not supported by offense, they’re supported by defense. In particular, they’re supported by the catcher – the pitchers partner – that calls every pitch, oversees the rest of the defense, implements the plans of the manager and pitching coach. He has to know the tendencies of the days opposition batters, baserunners, and how their manager likes to run a game. Additionally, the catcher gets beat up physically.
A superior catcher seems like a nice trade off for 2 or 3 more times reaching base a week.
Any hitting a catcher does is a bonus.
A catcher’s hitting stats are important in rotisserie league.
How he handles pitchers, calls a game, and blocks balls in the dirt is important in baseball played on a ML field. MLB teams play to win games.
@Samuel Hedges should be at the top of everyone’s wish list then!! We’re not talking .200 here. We’re talking .163. He was a black hole for an average offense. And like the OP pointed out, his defense wasn’t even that good. I thought Maile did just as good handling the pitching staff and he was non tendered. The Guardians can do better.
CyBieber;
Make up your mind. Are you saying Maile is OK but not Hedges?
–
Look, the Astros glided through the playoffs and won the World Series easily. Their catcher was Martín Maldonado. The pitchers love throwing to him, and fans in Houston that are used to a team that contends every year and goes to the playoffs most years, love him. They’re smart fans. Partially because when Maldonado left the Astros for a few years the team suffered. The FO brought him back
Here are Maldonado’s stats for 2022:
.186 / .248 / .352 / .600 – with a bWar of 0.2 and an fWar of 0.5.
You talk to any person associated with the Astros and they’ll tell you that Martín Maldonado was one of their most valuable players.
–
What those stats tell me is that the stat people have no clue how to accurately measure a catcher’s value to a ML team.
Terry Francona is – and has been for years – the best manager in MLB, and will go into the HOF the first year he’s eligible. Why don’t you stop down by the dugout a hour before a game and tell him that he needs to get the front office to either spend $20m a year (almost double what Bieber will get in 2023) to get a klutz like Willson Contreras that can hit some and whose pitchers can’t stand throwing to him; or maybe trading one of their 2 top prospects (one of which is Biebers replacement) plus 2 other quality prospects for 3 years of Sean Murphy (who I like). The FO listens to Francona. You got a beef with Hedges go see Terry and straighten him out.
@Samuel – I’m saying that Maile does the same thing that you were describing in Hedges and Cleveland non tendered him.
Maldonado plays in the Houston offense. That offense can absorb the lack of offense from their catcher. And that catchers offense was better than Hedges. So I don’t know where you’re going with that.
I don’t want Contreras. He’s outside of what Cleveland would pay financially for a catcher. That being said, what pitcher said they don’t like throwing to him? Or did you just make that up?
@Samuel – As far as the Astros struggling without Maldonado, they were 69-40 when they re-acquired him at the July 2019 trade deadline. I wouldn’t exactly call that struggling.
No, they’re not as supported by offense than defense; however, you can’t win without scoring.
@rememberthecoop
Cleveland won 92 freakin’ games and ran away with the division playing Austin Hedges and Luke Maile. And you’re saying we can’t win with those guys? We just did!
It doesn’t require trading top prospects to improve the catching position. You can easily do that by signing Cristian Vazquez and working in Bo Naylor later in the year. I’m of the opinion that Bo Naylor playing 90 games and Austin Hedges 70 games would lead to a significant uptick in catching offense while maintaining a positive defensive profile.
Cleveland fans are so scarred by the offense our catchers produced last year that they are overreacting, and think Sean Murphy is the difference between winning and not. He’s not; he’ll cost decades of control in good prospects to “solve” a problem where there are far less costly and positive alternatives. .
YES!
Our big off-season move! Plan the parade!
Orioles were a close runner-up
Now everyone has to go through the Blue Jays for a catcher.
Seriously? WTF?
What is confusing about it? Most teams bring a few NRI catchers to camp..
@sleek789
It’s a very good move.. At the very least, CLE needs a guy with major league experience and a solid defensive profile to help bridge the first two months while Bo Naylor is in Columbus “making sure he’s ready.” (service time considerations).
Will be a nice cheap backup to Narvaez while Naylor matures
At first I read Ron villone