Is "Yikes" an official baseball term? Because that's how I'd answer the question. After a solid rookie cup of coffee and a first year with some promise, the Nats committed long term to Keibert Ruiz as a catcher. In year one his defense seemed to fall off a cliff while his offense didn't really improve. Now he's not hitting, though his defense is not as egregiously bad. What's wrong?
Well defensively, it's tough to say. Defensive stats are hard to believe for a single year and require patience to get a real sense of a player's ability. You are constantly going on stats and eyeballs as best you can (see our discussion on Wood last post) but they are best served almost in retrospect, unless you are identifying outliers. Last year Ruiz looked like an outlier in the bad sense. This year he's passable and that agrees more with what we've seen other years. So last year was likely some sort of fluke but it does suggest that he's not a secretly great defensive catcher waiting to get out. He's a mediocre catcher as far as we can tell. Watching him I don't see any reason to disagree.
Still catcher is a hard position to fill and if you can be average at the plate and averageish behind it, it's probably worth playing you rather than trying to find someone else. But Ruiz has not been average at the plate.
It appears also part of his approach has been trying to swing at more pitches, earlier in the count, and get them up in the air, preferably pulling the ball. In theory this should take advantage of his ability to make contact (still really good at that) but that has only lead to fewer walks, not more hits. He's putting more balls in play and more in the air but doesn't hit the ball hard enough that that is a good thing. His HR/FB rate has always been low.
If Ruiz was a speedy OF or MI you could tell him to just scrap this and put the ball on the ground, but Ruiz is a slow catcher. Not slow for a catcher, but not speedy in general. That's not a long term solution for him.
I don't know what is though. Ruiz's best ability is contact. If he wants to put the bat on the ball he will. But as baseball has emerged into the stats age it's become clear that that's not all that great a skill in terms of creating a production. You'd much rather have someone who misses the ball more but when they make contact it's loud contact. There's a balance of course but Ruiz is not there.
There are two paths forward. First would be to keep trying this : Get it up in the air on both sides, and try to work on his bat speed and power so this matters. This doesn't seem to me to be a particularly promising path given you are working against his nature and he's starting to age into what should be his prime. The other would be to let him be the weak ground ball hitter he is from the right side and let things go as they will. Neither path is promising but the latter path might let his contact skill get him to be an average bat overall. Maybe you GO for LDs and GBs from the right. I don't know. The lack of bat speed and foot speed really doesn't leave a good solution.
I'd say move on but the Nats aren't deep at C. Neither Adams or Millas seem much better and their previous hopeful Lomavita hasn't had a good year. Maybe the drafted Bazzell will do something. He definitely has an eye.
I don't think there's a good future for Ruiz. He has a lot of PA under his belt and it shows what he is : A generally mediocre catcher and a bat that can make contact but with no pop. Still finding catchers who can even be average can be hard. If the Nats let him be him he can be an annoying hitter at the very bottom of a lineup. A guy you can't K who might turn on one from the left side. Accept the "no better than average" Ruiz for the next few years and get the most value out of him, rather than try to make him something he's not.
Ruiz is an average catcher at a modest salary. That's okay. Not great, but okay.
ReplyDeleteAnd, so far, he has stayed quite healthy, which is underrated, but important. The Nats can and should spend their money elsewhere. There are plenty of teams with below average catchers.
Ruiz's contract has one hidden advantage. It reminds the CJ Abramses and James Woodses of the world that there is something to be said for a long-term commitment at a young age. Sometimes, the player comes out ahead in such a deal.
ReplyDeleteNot so fast. The same team executives who have done such a great job restocking the farm system, decided that Ruiz was a keeper and worth an early investment. Are we so sure that they were wrong?
ReplyDeletePlayer evaluations (on websites and by fans) are distorted by "in the minute-itis," ignoring that player performance is variable day-to-day and that player development is rarely a straight line. I, for one, am comfortable giving Ruiz a complete pass for this year. In the Spring, he had the flu for two-weeks and lost 20 pounds. Healing and recovering your former capabilities is what players do in the winter--it is a brutal task to do that in-season.
This is sheer speculation, and maybe even sheer cope, but I wonder if that wasn't the flu but instead another flu-like disease that sometimes has a very long aftermath (the disease which none dare speak its name, at least not since 2021). The huge difference between his first half and second half numbers support the idea that some kind of recovery was happening over those months. Next year will tell us a lot.
DeleteThe negative on the Ruiz contract is the years, rather than the dollars. It’s maybe a bit more money than you would want to pay for a mediocre player, but there is also value in stability and predictability at the catcher position. Do you wish they had a better catcher? Sure. But there aren’t that many good young catchers out there at the moment. This just doesn’t feel like the biggest issue they need to address by a long shot.
ReplyDeleteSo far, Ruiz has been pretty clearly less than the sum of his parts and Harper is correct that the track record is now long enough that we should be inclined to believe it. I haven't given up hope yet, because it doesn't take much to make it work. If the bat can play like it did last year or two years ago, and the defense can hold at the level of this year or two years ago, that's a player you're thrilled to have catch 60 to 100 games and pay $6M. But Ruiz has only hit that mark in 1 of his 3 full seasons, and his struggles haven't really looked fluky.
ReplyDeleteMy hope is that Ruiz would show a bit better with more rest. He plays more than almost any other catcher, and he's had some terrible stretches this year playing pretty much every day through illness and serious slumps. My plan for 2025 would be to give him around 90 games and Millas 70. (Millas probably isn't any better than Ruiz, but he's definitely at least as good as Adams and we need to see what he can do.) If that doesn't help, you've had another year to develop and evaluate the recent draftees, who quite clearly aren't options sooner than 2026. At that point, if you don't like what you've got, that's when you look to FA or trades.
One possible problem with my plan is that Adams is out of options. I don't think he'd be claimed off waivers, but if he were, then we'd have to sign an MiFA for C3 because there is no one in the upper minors you'd even want to fake it for double header. That means there's a decent chance Adams is still C2 on opening day, which would be a shame in my opinion.
(To be fair, Millas has made some rookie mistakes and not really lived up to his reputation as a plus catcher. So it's also his fault he hasn't completely seized his opportunity. Still, Adams is clearly worse and that really should be the end of it.)