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Why Jason Castro is a Home Run for the Angels and Not Exactly a Classic Eppler Signing

Jason Castro hits the ball so, so hard.

In 2019, he was 16th in Barrels/Plate Appearance. 8th in Barrels per Batted Ball Event. Both put him in the same cluster of players as our God King Michael Nelson Trout, who is 4th and 7th in those categories, respectively. Average Exit Velocity ranks 29th out of all players with at least 50 batted ball appearances.

When he made contact, he hit the ball hard, at a 51.7% clip. This led to 13 home runs in 79 games, a career-high clip. It also led to an ISO clip of .203 and a career-high .435 Slugging Percentage, nearly 45 points higher than his career high.

And in regards to everyone's new favorite statistic, Castro raised his launch angle to 14 degrees, his highest since his 2015 season (when Statcast started tracking this stuff).

All of these factors led to Castro having his best offensive season since his 2013 season with the Astros (booo). If he repeats this kind of production (a big IF with the Angels and their free agent track record), it will (hopefully) finally be an answer to the black hole on offense at the catcher position.

As far as production at the catcher position over the last few years, Castro isn't the best one they have had in terms of WAR. Martin Maldonado produced a 3.1 fWAR season with the Angels in 2017, when he played in 138 games. Castro produced a 1.6 fWAR season in 2019. Remember, this was only in 79 games.

The rest of our catching results:

In 2018, Kevan Smith/Max Stassi/Jon Lucroy produced a combined -0.8 fWAR.

2016 - Jett Bandy/Carlos Perez (power couple) produced a combined 1.5 bWAR.

2015 - Perez/Ianetta produced a combined 1.8 bWAR.

As you can tell, we haven't been spoiled by good catching recently. So, why is Castro the answer? Offense! Finally!

Nearly all of the WAR production that was listed above has come from defense. Even in his best season with the Angels, Maldonado earned nearly all of his production from his defensive skills. I'm not sure how the rest of the Angels fanbase feels about our catching production, but personally, I am excited to see some value come from the catcher spot in our lineup. Finally, we no longer have what is essentially a free out at the 7 or 8 spot in the order. Defense is great, it really is, but I am glad Eppler decided to add some pop to the lineup where we would not normally have it.

Castro isn't a slouch on defense, but he isn't amazing on defense either, which marks a departure from Eppler's usual focus on defense-only players. Castro ranked 20th out of 84 catchers with at least 100 innings caught, in terms of pitch framing. That sounds good, until you realize that nearly all of the catchers that played with the Angels in the past few years have been worth at least double, nearly triple as many pitch framing runs saved as Castro. This is where Eppler has departed from previous philosophy. Angels catchers over the past 5 seasons have been a mixed bag in terms of defensive runs saved and caught stealing percentage, but what they have not been poor at is pitch framing.

In short, Castro is not as good at pitch framing as the others, and his defensive value is less than other Angels catchers, but his offense will be a breath of fresh air, compared to Jon Lucroy/Kevan Smith/Stassi/Bemboom/Bandy/Ianetta/Maldonado/Perez, who essentially represented a fat zero in terms of offensive production.

Los Angeles Angels roster

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