I owe Red Sox catcher Carlos Narváez an apology. In my preseason write-up of Boston’s backstops, I called him “organizational depth.” I lumped him in with Blake Sabol and Seby Zavala as the uninspiring backup catcher options for the team with the worst projected WAR at the position in the American League. That was in March. Now it’s June, and the rookie is slashing .288/.356/.456 with five home runs and a 126 wRC+ through 47 games. Thanks to strong framing, blocking, and throwing skills, he has earned himself 6 DRS and a +6 FRV. The only catcher who has him beat in both metrics is defensive wizard Patrick Bailey. By WAR, Narváez is one of the top-30 position players in the game. Among catchers, he ranks fifth, and if you only consider WAR accumulated as a catcher, he ranks second. If he keeps this up for a few more weeks, he’ll have a compelling case to be Cal Raleigh’s backup at the All-Star Game this summer.
Regardless what happens from here on out, Narváez has already been far more than just depth for the Red Sox. I was wrong, and I will readily eat crow or humble pie, though I’d really prefer the pie. At the same time, I can’t blame myself too much for overlooking him. After all, it took more than eight years from the day he signed with the Yankees as an international free agent for him to appear as anything more than an honorable mention on one of our organizational top prospect lists. Even then, Eric Longenhagen ranked him 32nd in the Yankees system (35+ FV) entering 2024, with the words “third catcher” closing out his write-up. Meanwhile, Narváez didn’t appear on a Baseball America list until this past offseason, when the publication ranked him 29th in the Red Sox organization. Neither Baseball Prospectus, nor The Athletic mentioned him on their top-20 Red Sox prospects lists this winter.
While I might have been wrong about who Narváez would be, I wasn’t wrong about who he had been when I called him “unknown” and “hardly… a top prospect.” Still, I used his reputation, or really his lack of a reputation, to let myself off the hook from learning more about him. Relying on reputation is often a necessary heuristic technique – if we all had to verify everything for ourselves, we’d never accomplish anything – but that doesn’t mean it can’t lead to mistakes. With more than 100 catchers to consider for the Position Power Rankings, I needed to find ways to reduce my workload. So, I glossed over Narváez because he didn’t have enough of a reputation to attract more of my attention.
Reputation can be a powerful thing. I went to see the movie Friendship last week, and I was struck by all the laughter in the theater. I wasn’t surprised that people were laughing. It’s a comedy! What surprised me was when they were laughing. More often than not, the laughter started before the jokes, to the point where I sometimes couldn’t even hear the punchlines. The audience was already laughing too loudly at star Tim Robinson’s mere presence on screen. The clearest tell that I ended up in a theater full of I Think You Should Leave superfans (and to be clear, I count myself among them) was all the laughter when Connor O’Malley appeared for a brief cameo. Maybe Robinson has crossed over from niche comedian to comedy movie actor, but O’Malley, perhaps best known for his handful of appearances on Robinson’s sketch show, remains firmly in the former category.
I bring this up because when I saw the movie, I was in the middle of writing a piece about how rarely runners are stealing against the Royals this year. (In the week since that piece came out, Royals opponents have attempted one stolen base. It was unsuccessful.) The whole thing made me wonder how much a catcher’s reputation for controlling the running game could influence how well he actually controls it. Consider Yadier Molina. Throughout his career, his opponents attempted to steal an average of 52 bases per 1,000 innings. That’s by far the lowest rate against any catcher in the 21st Century, and one of the lowest of all time. To find another catcher this century with a lower rate of stolen base attempts, you’d have to drop the playing time minimum down to 200 innings behind the dish, and even then, only one catcher comes out ahead of Molina: Mike Mahoney, who, funnily enough, caught most of his career innings as Molina’s backup in 2005. Of course, Molina played about 18,000 more innings in his career than Mahoney. If you set the minimum at 1,000 innings – still less than a full season – the next closest catcher to Molina is 13-time Gold Glover and first ballot Hall of Famer Ivan Rodriguez. Even then, it’s not close. Rodriguez allowed an average of 63 stolen base attempts per 1,000 innings in the 21st Century, 11 more than Molina. There’s no doubt Molina was absolutely terrific at controlling the running game. But were his skills really that much better than those of any other catcher? I’m skeptical.
Tim Robinson is really funny. Yadier Molina was really good at throwing out would-be basestealers. But if you let their reputations precede them, you run the risk of laughing over the joke or passing up a golden opportunity to advance a base. So watch the movie, listen to the line, and laugh if you find it funny. Consider the specifics of the situation, calculate the risk, and take off for the next base if you think your chances of success are high enough. And if you’re writing the Positional Power Rankings, you need to look at more than just the prospect lists, projections, and surface-level minor league stats, or you might call a potential All-Star “organizational depth.”
If I had looked a little closer, I might have considered what the Red Sox gave up to acquire Narváez. They sent 21-year-old Elmer Rodriguez-Cruz and international bonus pool space to their fiercest rival to complete the swap. Rodriguez-Cruz was universally a higher-ranked prospect than Narváez. He first appeared at no. 16 (40+ FV) on our Red Sox Top Prospects list two years ago and climbed to no. 7 (45 FV) last season. We currently have him at no. 6 in the Yankees system. Whether or not the teams’ internal evaluations match our own, that’s not the kind of player you trade for organizational depth – especially not to a divisional foe, especially not while also including international bonus pool space, and especially not when there are plenty of guys like Sabol and Zavala who are all but free to acquire. The Red Sox didn’t just need a backup catcher. They wanted Narváez.
Boston catching instructor Parker Guinn spoke highly of Narváez in spring training, telling MassLive’s Christopher Smith that he was “one of the top, if not the top defender in Triple-A last year.” Guinn also discussed the team’s plan to make Narváez even better: a throwing program to “improve his arm strength.” So far, so good. He ranks in the top quartile of catchers in pop time, and he’s caught 10 of 42 prospective basestealers. According to Statcast, he’s been worth +2 caught stealing runs above average.
In a piece for the website “Talk Sox,” our own Davy Andrews took note of Narváez’s remarkable framing this spring, and that excellence has carried over into the regular season. Narváez has converted 45.2% of non-swing pitches in the shadow zone into strikes. That’s the 11th-best rate among qualified catchers, even though Red Sox pitchers have made the job as difficult as possible; they have the highest rate of out-of-zone shadow zone pitches in the league. Accordingly, Narváez ranks fifth among all catchers in our framing runs metric.
What’s more, it’s not just defense that makes Narváez so valuable. The only catchers (min. 150 PA) with a higher wRC+ right now are Raleigh and Will Smith. Narváez was a glove-first player in the minors, and that remains the case. He won’t maintain a .366 BABIP all season, and while his .357 wOBA puts him in the top 20% of hitters, his .327 xwOBA is only a tick above league average. Yet, he doesn’t have to be a great hitter if he keeps playing this kind of defense. He only has to hit well enough to justify a spot at the bottom of a lineup, and so far, it looks like he can hack it against major league pitching. His 9.6% walk rate suggests he knows when not to swing, and his 43.6% hard-hit rate shows he can do some damage when he does. This might come as a total surprise to anyone who only looked at his Triple-A stats (104 wRC+) or preseason ZiPS projection (77 wRC+), but there were clues hinting at his possible growth to come.
Eli Ben-Porat of Baseball America wrote before the season that Narváez had the skills to be “a quality hitter,” taking note of his improving exit velocities and plate discipline. Ben-Porat even suggested Narváez could replace Connor Wong as Boston’s primary catcher before the end of the year, and went so far as to say he could “post a few three-win seasons” in his career. As Ben-Porat acknowledged, that second prediction was almost wildly optimistic, especially considering how low his own publication had ranked Narváez as a prospect. However, it didn’t take long for Narváez to usurp Wong, and he’s well on his way to a three-win campaign.
In fact, if you go to our WAR leaderboard and bring down the playing time minimum below the qualified threshold, you’ll find Narváez (2.0 WAR) on the very first page. I’d argue his is the top-ranked name that even a dedicated baseball fan might not have heard before. To test this theory, I texted my brother: “Are you familiar with Carlos Narváez?” Take note that he’s a big enough fan that I didn’t need to specify I was talking about a ballplayer; I’d be more likely to specify if I were texting him about anything other than baseball.
“I maybe know the name,” he replied.
With the way Narváez is playing, he won’t be anonymous much longer. He’s building a reputation. How do I know that? For one thing, he already has some smart baseball minds spewing beautifully meaningless word salads to describe his performance. Former Red Sox catcher, team captain, and current coach Jason Varitek told the Boston Herald that Narváez is “an elite defender, an elite receiver.” So much so, in fact, that, “In a nutshell, Carlos is a baseball player… He’s a baseball player and he exudes baseball.” There’s some high praise in that nonsense.
More meaningful than clichéd jargon is the fact the Narváez has become Boston’s starting catcher, with no clear competition to take the job from him anytime soon. He’s also playing himself into the Rookie of the Year conversation. Entering the season, the Red Sox had three strong candidates for ROY consideration, presuming they made their big league debuts: Kristian Campbell, Roman Anthony, and Marcelo Mayer. Yet, their strongest candidate right now isn’t any of those Top 100 Prospects. While Jacob Wilson seems to be running away with the award, Narváez would get his fair share of votes if the season ended today.
So, is he a true breakout star? A solid player having a terrific run? A flash in the pan? We’ll have to wait and see, but no matter what, he’s become a name you should know. Carlos Narváez deserves a reputation.
Content Source: blogs.fangraphs.com