Yes, Cervelli is terrible, but…
Saturday, August 21, 2010 at 12:23 am by Marshall Seymour
Back in May, lots of people were on the Francisco Cervelli Express. For example, ESPN NY's Andrew Marchand wrote that Cervelli was a better offensive option than Marcus Thames, and by playing him on a daily basis, the Yankees would optimize their chances of winning. Obviously, those were insane things to write.
Fast forward to the present and Francisco Cervelli has a .617 OPS. His consistent inclusion in the Yankees' lineup, due to Jorge Posada's deteriorating body, ensures a nice big Venezuelan-Italian black hole at the bottom of the order.
However, when it comes to backup catchers, he might be the best the Yankees have utilized in recent years:
Cervelli stats as of Aug 20
The problem is that Cervelli has 256 plate appearances this season, and that number continues to grow. Yet, in terms of what can be reasonably expected of a backup catcher, Francisco has been top tier when compared to Posada reserves of the past.
He’s a back up catcher being used as the primary C in a platoon situation.
It’s time for baby Jesus.
Molina would hit a well timed double (all he could do) here or there. I am Italian and consider Cervelli an embarassment to my race. Lack of hitting is 1 thing, but he is shoddy defensively. BRING BACK MOLINA and his .100 BA sez I. He can at least catch a pitch.
dude…Molina is way worse than Cervelli defensively at this point. Look up some Defensive catching charts. Cervelli is still hitting about .250. Molina never even sniffed .225, and Cervi has had a few big hits, and has a bunch of rbi’s….
It wouldn’t be so bad if the backup catcher wasn’t playing the role of starting catcher for the entire season.
You’d think they’d have some decent backups for $200 million.
If you’re using WAR too show Cervelli’s value, I disagree with your usage of WAR. The only reason Cervelli is putting up a 0.4 WAR season and not something substantially less is because he’s getting an insane amount of plate appearances.
Jose Molina > All.
@JTT: At least when Cervelli is on the basepath he moves fast than molasses on a glacier. Molina (and most back-ups) are either fat, old, or just plain slow. For some reason, our back-up catcher is none of these and should be able to play good defense. I think there are better options than him right now and he should maybe be sent down now temporarily, but Jose Molina is not the answer. Whatever washed-up, has-been, retread we have in the minors now (Moeller, I believe?) should maybe come up for a few weeks to get Cervelli some good ABs in Triple-A. His bat needs a break from all of this.
To be clear, Cervelli can be the answer as a back-up, but the Yanks need a change and he needs a change, if only temporary.
Cervelli is clearly better offensively than Molina. Jonathan Taylor Thomas = Fail
@History Professor
Cervelli doesn’t need a change. He needs to play less but he can’t because of Posada. Cervelli is what he is.
So what do the Mets want for Barajas?
“Cervelli isn’t even a quarter the catcher Johnny Bench was and still is to this day. Bench was the glue that kept my big Red Machine teams of the 70′s together.”
i think cervelli does good…
@JTT:
That’s not how WAR works. If a guy plays too much and is terrible, he will accumulate negative WAR meaning he is worse than replacement level. Catchers get a lot of positional weight because of the difficulty and specialization of the position which is why Cervelli is slightly above replacement level despite the bad hitting.
If Sal Fasano were allowed to keep the porn-stache, he’d be bigger than Jesus in NY right now.
That chart doesn’t include the +500 to WAR that came with Sal’s stache.
Call me up I cannot be any worse
Atleast Molina is a very good defensive catcher, Cervelli…not so much.
Yeah you should use WAR/PA to get a better picture. Cervelli is just getting a larger number of plate appearances than most of these other guys, so his raw WAR total is skewed higher. This is also why Molina has a 0.7 WAR in 2008 yet it was one of his worst years in his career (sub .600 OPS). That was the year where Jorge missed most of the season and Molina got way too much playing time.
“This is also why Molina has a 0.7 WAR in 2008 yet it was one of his worst years in his career (sub .600 OPS). That was the year where Jorge missed most of the season and Molina got way too much playing time.”
Actually, Jose’s WAR in 2008 was due only to his defense. He had an UZR of +8.0. Without that, his WAR would’ve been -0.1. Lot’s of bad offense doesn’t get you positive WAR.
Gary Wallace: Does WAR include a weighting for cannolis in the clubhouse?
He stinks