Despite this awful offensive performance, he gets a ton of love from the Mariners fan and analyst community. I think some of the reason for this is that he is second on the team in HR. However, the majority of the reason is because Miguel Olivo isn’t Rob Johnson. After suffering through two years of atrocious catcher play from Rob Johnson, Mariners fans are eager for anything else. I once found myself wishing that Guillermo Quiroz would stick, just to end the Rob Johnson debacle. However, this lack of being someone else is not an acceptable excuse for Miguel Olivo’s poor hitting. The Mariners need to get more hitting out of the catching spot.
The problem with Olivo is the Mariners don’t have any simple solution. There isn’t a minor league catcher that has shown any batting skill waiting to be called up. The existing backup, Chris Gimenez, is actually somehow worse at hitting than Olivo. On top of that Olivo brings other things to the table, besides his offense (which is good considering how bad his offense is) which might be helping the team win games.
Among the Hispanic players, Olivo has become a team leader. The other guys look up to him. As long as they aren’t trying to emulate his offense, this is a good thing. As a player Olivo has always acted like a professional. It would be a good thing for his work ethic and competitive fire to wear off onto the younger Mariner players. It is one of those intangibles that coaches and reporters are always talking about requiring but there is no way of measuring.
In addition to his leadership Olivo appears to have done a great job with the pitching staff. Ranked by ERA, the Mariners pitchers are the fifth best in the major league baseball. I am sure that means he has one of the best catcher’s ERAs in the league. However, catcher’s ERA is more of the sign of correlation than causation. It doesn’t really measure the impact of a catcher on the pitcher’s skill. I don’t know of any readily available statistic that measures a catchers impact on a team’s pitching. Regardless of a lack of a metric, the Mariner’s pitchers are on a roll, set to have the best season as a group in Mariners history, and we probably should give Olivo some of the credit for that.
That is where the problem lies with Miguel Olivo. His two positive traits, his leadership and his handling of the pitching staff, are immeasurable. We can’t directly relate either to team wins. We just have to accept that in the leadership and pitch management department Miguel Olivo is helping the Mariners win games. So, how do we know if his positive input from the intangibles is outweighing his negative input from the hitting? How do we know if we even need another solution at catcher? We don’t. We just have to accept Eric Wedge playing him at starting catcher everyday as proof in the Mariner’s belief that Olivo helps them win games. This is a crappy solution for a team so terribly in need of offense.
As I see we are stuck with three possible outcomes to the Olivo problem:
· The first is we just accept things as they are, hope his intangibles really are doing something and keep ignoring the fact that he can’t hit a lick. This is the worst choice, but also the most likely to happen.
· The second is we trade with another team for a new catcher that can hit. This is the ideal solution. The problem is catchers that can hit don’t come cheaply on the trade market. They are rare and very valuable. I just don’t see the Mariner’s being able to make a good trade that brings new catcher here.
· The third and the solution I would like to see, is just a little bit of a spin on the first. The Mariners keep Olivo, but they reduce his playing time, and by doing that reduce the negative impact he has at the plate. In his place they keep trying any of the plethora of minor league catchers floating around in the organization and hope one of them breaks out. This allows Olivo to continue to offer his intangibles to the team without hurting the team offensively on a daily basis. It also opens the door to the possibility of finding someone, anyone, else to play catcher for the mariners on a Daily basis.
Even with his unheard of terrible OBP, Olivo has (sadly) been our most consistent power hitter. On a team where Adam Kennedy plays every day and has hit fourth, Olivo gives a power boost that we sadly need. Honestly, I think he is atrocious defensively: I've never seen a catcher miss so many balls, and I watched Michael Barret on the Padres. He is a tricky subject because he is a great guy, but unfortunately a horrible baseball player and a huge mistake as a free agent signing for multiple years, not so much because of how bad he is (very), but rather that the Mariners will not try and get a new catcher because of his presence.
ReplyDelete