Before the season began I wrote that Miguel Olivo would probably be the player that I would miss the most on the Royals 2010 team. Well, half way through the season that premonition is truer than anyone could have possibly imagined. Olivo is the best catcher in baseball, including Joe Mauer, hands down no questions asked. It took a bit before he became the everyday catcher for the Rockies as he was signed to be a platoon/back-up guy, but Miguel Olivo's 2010 season has thus far been ridiculous in every possible way.
We all know how the PBR - and basically every other Royals blog - feels about Jason Kendall; he currently doesn't have one single quantifiable statistic which can even be said to be average. Yet he has started nearly every game (I take back the previous comment he leads the league in games started as a catcher) and now hits #2 in our line-up. BA - .256; horrible, SLG% - .304; only three players in the AL have been worse and one is Juan Pierre, OBP - .315; great if your name is Yuniesky Betancourt but for an "on base guy" pretty pathetic, leads the league in both errors and stolen bases against and at best he has been OKAY at blocking pitches (the whole reason he was signed, by comparison J. Buck has 1PB and Kendall has 3PB). You might attribute the errors and stolen bases against to the excess playing time but do you know what Kendall would say to that:
“I don’t buy it. It’s all mental. I don’t get tired, and I don’t think I’ve slept in six years. I haven’t slept since my kids have been born.”
What has Olivo done this season you might ask? The answer is where do you start; first lets go with what the advanced stats gurus over at Fan Graphs have to say: Miguel Olivo's WAR is 2.7 which would put him just a tick above ALBERT PUJOLS' 2.6 WAR. Slash line; .301/.365/.523, CS% - 54% ; leads the league at more than twice Kendall's CS%, has the highest overall fielding in the league (according to Fan Graphs), basically Miguel has done nothing wrong this year at the plate or in the field.
While a standard rebuttal might be that he hasn't played the whole year or that he is now playing at Coors field, there are only two things that jump out at you: BA and OBP. While it wouldn't be a stretch to say the BA is affected by the field on which he plays the OBP is just an anomaly. He is on pace to shatter previous career highs in walks and OBP and this just can't be explained by the field; it is either a change in Miguel or maybe he won't walk the rest of the year and it will even out, who knows. However, the power numbers really aren't out of line with last year, he has always had a good arm and has been an above average defender with the one exception that he has a few too many passed balls. So make what you want of the OBP, give him a little discount for the BA, but the Royals focused on the PB and thought this made him a poor defensive catcher.
The Royals knew or should have known he was a solid catcher and chose to look at one statistic which may not have anything to do with him and let that dictate their misguided desire to sign a new catcher. Not only did the Royals not want him, but they paid him a cool $100K not to come back. Their motto was get rid of the passed balls and BOOM problem solved. What they got back in return was an older catcher who is one of the worst offensive players in the league and one of the worst defensive catchers, but the big benefit is that they get this everyday.
Something which may be purely correlation and not have anything to do with Olivo, but none the less is worth mentioning is the season that Zach Grienke had and the season that Ubaldo Jimenez is currently having. If Ubaldo keeps it up then you can credit Olivo as being the catcher behind two of the most dominant pitching seasons in the last 20-some years. There are a lot of ifs here but Zach is off from last year and maybe it is simply that Miguel knows how to call a game, exactly what we were told was Kendall's strong suit. Olivo obviously doesn't do anything to make theses guys throw harder nor does he make their breaking balls drop harder and we'll have to wait and see how Zach and Ubaldo finish the season, but it it makes you wonder.
All of this is like beating a dead hoarse, maybe more like a stable of dead horses or maybe like beating all of the dead horses from the civil war over and over again. However, the fact remains that currently - of course things can change - Olivo is one of the most valuable PLAYERS in the game. Not only is he just a solid catchers, but the fact that he is a good player, who plays a premium position, makes him on par with some of the best players in baseball (aforementioned Pujols, Miguel Cabrera, Joe Mauer, etc.) All of this couldn't be more embarrassing for management and equally frustrating for a fan. As it stands now, we paid $100K to get rid of one of the best players in baseball and $6 mil to get one of the worst.
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