So, You Signed a Catcher
The Cubs designated Tucker Barnhart for assignment today in a move that was surprising only because of Barnhart’s salary for 2024. The backup catcher joins Trey Mancini, Edwin Ríos, and Eric Hosmer as depth signings that didn’t work out. Looking at the other catchers who were available, though, it’s hard to blame the Cubs’ front office on this one.
| Name | Games | wRC+ | WAR | WIth Team |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Willson Contreras | 102 | 123 | 2.1 | Yes |
| Omar Narváez | 30 | 65 | -0.2 | Yes |
| Christian Vázquez | 78 | 64 | 0.5 | Yes |
| Mike Zunino | 42 | 62 | -0.2 | No (DFA) |
| Austin Hedges | 69 | 24 | 0.6 | No (Traded) |
| Roberto Pérez | 5 | 12 | -0.2 | No (60 day IL) |
| Tucker Barnhart | 47 | 53 | 0.1 | No (DFA) |
| Gary Sánchez | 62 | 112 | 1.4 | No (DFA) |
| Luke Maile | 59 | 91 | 0.2 | Yes |
| Kevin Plawecki | 0 | No (DFA) | ||
| Curt Casali | 40 | 38 | -0.2 | Yes |
| Jorge Alfaro | 18 | 24 | -0.4 | No (DFA) |
| Pedro Severino | 0 | No (DFA) | ||
| Cam Gallagher | 47 | -13 | -0.9 | Yes |
| Luis Torrens | 13 | 75 | -0.1 | No (DFA) |
| Sandy León | 22 | 1 | -0.4 | No (DFA) |
| Andrew Knapp | 0 | No (DFA) |
I was a proponent of signing either Narváez or Vázquez over Barnhart this offseason, but Narváez has been hurt and bad, and while Vázquez has out-performed Barnhart, he has two years and $20M left on his contract. In fact, only six free-agent catchers have been worth positive WAR this season: Contreras, Vázquez, Hedges, Sánchez, Barnhart, and Maile, and only three have out-hit the average catcher. The Cubs were set on not re-signing Willson Contreras, and Gary Sánchez was passed over by two organizations this season before finding a role with the Padres. I guess you could call Luke Maile a miss, but Barnhart accrued significantly more defensive value in his time with the Cubs, and they prioritized defense over offense at the catcher position.
Tucker Barnhart didn’t work out in Chicago this year, but by all accounts he was a great teammate, good pitch framer, and paired with one of the team’s best pitchers during a run of excellent starts. You can argue (and I have) that the Cubs should have traded for Sean Murphy or William Contreras, but for the purposes of this exercise I'm assuming that only free agents were options at the time. If you were signing a free-agent catcher last offseason, it was hard to do much better.
All data from FanGraphs. I used DFA and released interchangeably in the above table for simplicity, even though they are technically different.