Travis d’Arnaud Just Had A Great Season
This year’s offseason will be filled with questions from front offices and fans alike on how much stock to take into performances from 2020’s shortened season. (Well, that and a cripplingly depressing free agent market, but we’ll save the later topic for another time.) There are a handful of breakout campaigns from 2020 that seem highly likely to continue into the post-pandemic MLB. Fernando Tatis Jr., one of the most hyped prospects in the game before this shortened campaign, crushed the ball harder than anyone in the game and played excellent defense at short. Corey Seager finally followed up his 2016 Rookie of the Year hype by staying healthy and becoming just the fourth position player ever to win both LCS and World Series MVP in the same season.
In a sample that comprised of well fewer than 200 plate appearances, Braves backstop Travis d’Arnaud had an equally eye-popping breakout campaign as both Tatis and Seager. The 31-year-old catcher raked to the tune of a .321/.386/.533 line with nine home runs. He did all his damage in just 44 games while playing fourth fiddle to Freddie Freeman, Ronald Acuna, and Marcell Ozuna in Atlanta’s star-studded lineup. His .919 OPS was a career-high benchmark by nearly 100 points.
While the sample size was small, the results still demand our attention. d’Arnaud saw his hard-hit rate increase 18.1 percentage points
(up from 39.7% in 2019), tied with Tatis for the largest year-over-year increase from 2019. Seager ranked third on this list, upping his hard-hit rate by over 17 points in the same span. d’Arnaud’s hard-hit rate of 57.8% in 2020 was topped only by Tatis.
Outside of hitting the ball harder, there isn’t a whole lot else to glean from the numbers in terms of d’Arnaud’s approach to his career-best season. The last two seasons, he’s swung at 35 percent of the pitches out of the strike zone, an increased aggression that probably more than anything shows he’s healthy for the first time in his career. In 2020, his contact-rate on the pitches he chased out of the zone was at an all-time low of 54.5%; he swung and missed at a career-most 14% of all the pitches he saw. With health on his side for the first time in his career (more on this later), he’s confident in waiting for his pitch and hammering mistakes in the strike zone.
d’Arnaud obviously differs from Tatis and Seager, who still likely have their best years ahead of them as two of the top hitters in the game both playing a premium position at under 27 years of age.
As far as context for how many catchers do this at his age: d’Arnaud just had the best season by a catcher in his age-31 season or older since Carlos Ruiz in 2007. This century, the only other catchers with better seasons at age 31 or older have been Javy Lopez in 2003 (anybody else remember this guy hitting 43 home runs?), Mike Piazza twice, Jorge Posada twice, and Todd Hundley in 2000 with the Dodgers.
While he lacks some of the same youthful exuberance as other 2020 breakouts, d’Arnaud carries some key characteristics that make Braves fans excited. He plays a premium position, one where offensive scarcity is at an all-time high, and and was once considered a top prospect, albeit not one to the degree of a Tatis or a Seager.
At one point a supplemental first-rounder taken 37th overall by the Phillies in 2007, d’Arnaud was highly regarded coming up through the minors, going so far as to be rated the 47-best prospect in baseball prior to the 2011 season. His career has since been punctuated by a constant struggle to stay on the field, dealing with injuries on an annual basis while a member of the Mets.
After years of concussions, torn ligaments in his thumb, a fractured foot from a foul ball, a hyperextended elbow, and all manner of other horrors that befall a professional catcher, he was sidelined for 10 ½ months after undergoing Tommy John surgery in April of 2018. He returned in time for Spring Training the following season. After starting out the regular season 2-for-23, he was inexplicably released by the Mets on May 3. The Dodgers signed him two days later and flipped him to the Rays for cash within the week. With Tampa Bay, he looked like another astute reclamation project by the scrappy Rays, who don’t exactly have a good history with catchers. He belted 16 home runs on the season, headlined by a signature three-homer game against the Yankees on July 15, an ironic standout performance given its proximity to his former employer.
d’Arnaud cashed in on his big 2019 season by signing a two-year, $16 million deal that will see him stay in Atlanta through this time next year. Dexterity will continue to be the concern the for d’Arnaud as he closes out his tenure in Atlanta. He’s played in over 100 games in just three of his eight Big League seasons, topping out at 112 in 2017 with the Mets. He’s only caught as many as 105 games once. The universal DH persisting in the National League might benefit the Braves more than any other franchise in the senior circuit next season. It would give Atlanta the opportunity to rest d’Arnaud for spells with an excellent defensive framer in Tyler Flowers serving as a more than competent backup.
As the Braves try to replace the offensive production lost by Marcell Ozuna this offseason, Travis d’Arnaud will factor as an internal solution to the problem, in part because of the ice-cold market and in part because of his two-year track record when healthy. He is a player that has proven he can carry the weight of a lineup with stretches of excellence when managed properly. With only one year left on his deal, d’Arnaud could be in for a lucrative one- or two-year deal if he shows he’s durable enough to hold up for a full season. When he’s on the field, he’s one of the best offensive backstops in the game today and he took home a Silver Slugger last week to prove it.
-Matt Dean
