Heading into 2010 it was a fairly easy choice that we wanted Victor Martinez to supply the offense we needed from the catcher position and give adequate defense behind the plate. So far though there has been some early results that might be good reasoning to place Martinez in the DH spot more often and give Varitek a final year of significant work in a Red Sox uniform.
While Martinez’ offense has not been there yet this season his number look fine. He is striking out only seven percent of the time, which is lower than any season in his career. His walk rate is a bit low at 8.5 percent, but nothing significant from his career rate of 10 percent. His power has not been around yet, but neither has his luck with a BABIP of .241. Once that regresses to the mean his average will return and his OBP.
There is good reason to use him over Ortiz at the DH, but is there a reason why we should use Varitek over Martinez at catcher? I was wondering the same thing and no it’s not a question of offense. He may look impressive right now, but a .500 ISO will make anyone look impressive. The power is exceptional, but once it regresses his other numbers will return to what they have been or a .230/.330/.440 line or a .340 wOBA. That is about league average and although probably better than Ortiz right now not a reason to change.
The next question is defense and pitch calling. Readers of the site should know by now that I have had big question about what is going on with the pitching staff so far. There have been changes to pitchers repertoires and huge swings in strikeout and walk numbers. This might be a small sample size effect, but that usually centers on one or two pitchers and not the full staff.
Thankfully Baseball-Reference.com can give us a peek into the numbers that might help us out. The pitching staff has responded to the small amount of chances with Varitek. Looking just at ERA we can see that with Varitek the entire staff is 4.30, but with Martinez that number jumps to 5.05. We all know the problems with using ERA to check small samples so I took a lok at K/BB and found the numbers back this up.
In 146 IP thrown to Martinez the staff has a K/BB of 1.64, but when Varitek has caught in 83.6 innings the staff has thrown a 2.35 K/BB. That would rank fourth in the league if they had done so for the whole season so far. To confirm this though we should look at what happened last year.
This is where we get to the heart of bigger samples and we realize that maybe Josh Beckett was right. Last year in 257 IP catching Martinez caught only a 1.91 K/BB from a staff that finished with a 2.32 overall. Now we can see what Varitek really adds to the team. Varitek caught 924 innings last year and had a K/BB of 2.53.
That is a change of over 0.70 in K/BB in a much larger sample and setting up a trend. This doesn’t answer what he is doing different, but there is something going on here. The difference between a pitcher with a 1.91 K/BB and a 2.53 K/BB is huge if we ignore ground ball rates. That is a below average pitcher versus an above average pitcher.
The more starts you can get Varitek against left handed pitchers will help his bat, but his pitch calling seems to be asking he play even more than that. This surely has played into Martinez not getting a contract extension offer from the Red Sox. His future is not behind the plate — and the Red Sox don’t want to lock up another 1B/DH player until they can clear out all the others.
Perhaps 2010 would have started differently had Varitek played more, but we can only worry about what we can change going forward. One note is that Clay Buchholz has seemed to work well with Martinez and could be a consistent pitcher he could work with. His K/BB in his career with Varitek is 1.89 (admittedly includes his poor seasons), but to Martinez he has thrown a 2.08 in 101.3 IP.