The Pirates Have Built Up An Impressive Group of Catching Prospects

BRADENTON, Fla. – Chad Noble is in disbelief.

Last week, Noble went home from his new role as the first ever Pirates catching coordinator and was in disbelief with his wife about how much talent he had to work with.

“I’ve just never seen a grouping of catching talent like this in my career,” said Noble, many times, while I talked with him after games on Monday at Pirate City.

It makes a lot of sense. The Pirates have upgraded that position heavily over the last year. They acquired Endy Rodriguez in January 2021 in the Joe Musgrove trade. Henry Davis was drafted first overall in the 2021 draft. At the trade deadline a month later, they acquired Carter Bins and Abrahan Gutierrez in separate trades.

Following a year where they completely rebuilt their catching prospect depth, the Pirates added a new position, a catching coordinator.

Noble spent four seasons in the minors with the Chicago Cubs, making it as high as Triple-A before going on to become their bullpen catcher. The Pirates hired him away for their new role, helping the new talent they’ve acquired.

Beyond the four catchers acquired in the last year, Noble has other talent to work with, including Blake Sabol (who is playing more outfield), Jason Delay, and Eli Wilson, who is dealing with a shoulder issue.

The Pirates are also working to give every player in the system a secondary position, including the catchers. That will help with the logjam expected at the start of the season in High-A.

The Pirates Could Have a Temporary Logjam of Catching Prospects in High-A to Start 2022

“The only real challenge with that is getting them enough work in the catching position, but not destroying their legs for the other positions,” said Noble. “It’s a fine line between quality and quantity, and keeping everyone fresh.”

This early-season experiment might be able to shed some light onto how much of an impact a catcher’s workload has on the bat. Catchers are the hardest workers in the system, needing to practice hitting and fielding, but also needing to know every pitcher on the team and their tendencies.

“Personally, what I’ve seen, the guys who have that super heavy workload, their hitting would decline,” said Noble. “It’s natural. They lose their legs a little bit. Maybe catching these guys a little bit less, and allowing them to either DH now or play first and kind of give their legs a breather, I think it will translate to the hitting side greatly.”

The current catching logjam is temporary in A-ball, but the same group could make up a similar logjam in Pittsburgh one day. The trio of Davis, Rodriguez, and Gutierrez could be joined by Carter Bins, who is one of the better defenders in the system.

“He’s just calm and collected as you can see back there,” Noble said of Bins. “No pitcher is too hard to catch for him. It’s nice to see.”

Noble said that Bins can adapt to other pitchers quickly, even if he’s never caught that pitcher before. He’s also a calming presence who can get a pitcher back on track when things are going wrong.

“Those are the guys we all want to throw to anyway,” said Noble. “The calm demeanor guys who really don’t get too up or too down on anybody.”

Noble stressed the pitcher-catcher relationships as the most important thing in a catcher’s defense, in order to build trust and free the pitcher to only have to worry about pitching. That comes in addition to learning how to catch and receive well, how to throw out runners, how to block, and then how to hit when you’re not playing defense.

“If you’re not connected to that pitcher, and he doesn’t trust that you know him and what he does right, the trust is gone and he’s not going to be convicted in what he’s throwing,” said Noble.

The key, Noble said, is for the catchers to know their pitching staff better than the pitchers know themselves.

“Once you get the second guessing out of their brains, that’s when they’re allowed to execute their stuff the way they know how to do,” said Noble.

It wasn’t long ago that the catching position was thin in this organization. Now, the Pirates are stocked up with talent at the position, to the point where they might have multiple guys from this group of prospects reaching the majors together.

That’s a good problem to have.