WHAT YOU WON'T HEAR
Here's the unspoken truth about Houston Astros facing former catcher Martin Maldonado
Jun 18, 2024, 2:27 pm
Let's end this debate once and for all. Composite Getty Image.
When Martin Maldonado comes to bat for the Chicago White Sox against the Astros this week, you can expect our TV and radio announcers to wax nostalgic about Maldy’s six years in Houston.
They’ll go on about how popular he was with fans and what a leader he was in the clubhouse. They’ll praise his defensive ability and mastery of the catcher position. They’ll talk about how pitchers had confidence in him and pitched their best with him in the lineup.
Social media will come alive with thoughts the Astros blew it by letting Maldonado go in free agency in favor of giving the full-time catcher job to Yanier Diaz.
Let’s put that defenseless talk to rest.
I could stop right here: Martin Maldonado is a terrible hitter, on course to put up the worst offensive numbers in baseball history. He’s a very below average defensive catcher, perhaps the worst in the Major Leagues.
As they used to say on the Jerry Lewis Telethon, let’s go to the tote board.
Maldonado, 37, is batting a ridiculously paltry .083. He has only nine hits in 107 at bats, with one homer and five RBI.
To put those lowly numbers in perspective, the worst season a player with enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title in history was Orioles first baseman Chris Davis in 2018. Davis batted .168 that year.
Maldonado won’t reach the required number of plate appearances, but raw numbers, Davis’ batting average was more than double Maldonado’s current .083. Speaking of double, Maldonado has only two doubles this season. The season is almost half-over.
OK, he is horrible at the plate, the closest thing to an automatic out since Little League.
This from a Reddit post: there’s an expression to describe a terrible hitter … “He can’t hit his weight.” If you’re talking pounds, that’s been done many times over history. But if Maldonado stays the course, he will be the first ever who didn’t hit his weight in kilograms. He weighs 104 kilos.
Now let’s look at his defensive numbers. Surely those must be some impressive stats to justify his place in the starting lineup. Wrong. He simply can’t throw out base stealers, an important measure of a catcher’s defensive worth. This year, 34 runners have attempted to steal a base on Maldonado. He’s thrown out only two of them for a 6 percent success rate.
Maldonado has three passed balls this season. He had 12 passed balls last season with the Astros and led the league in that department. He is one of the most porous catchers over the past decade.
As for his intangibles and handling of pitchers, the White Sox have a team earned run average of 4.93. That’s good for 29th place in MLB. There are 30 teams. The White Sox staff’s WHIP is 1.42, also good for 29th place. The bullpen has 11 saves, yup, 29th place.
Not surprisingly, the White Sox are in last place in the American League Central with a 19-54 record. That’s a winning percentage of .260. Only five teams since 1900 have had a lower winning percentage for a season. The last time a team had a lower winning percentage than the 2024 White Sox was the hapless first-year New York Mets in 1962.
It’s not like the White Sox are doing so well they can withstand a catcher who can’t hit and can’t throw out base stealers.
So why is Maldonado still behind the plate for the White Sox? He has caught 38 games, more than half of the games the White Sox have played.
Here’s White Sox manager Pedro Grifol a couple of weeks ago: “I’m actually OK with his results at the plate. He hasn’t played 12 seasons because he hits .300.”
No, he’s played 12 seasons and his career batting average is .203.
More from Grifol: “He’s played as long as he’s played because he does what he does behind the plate. A future Hall of Fame manager (Dusty Baker), he wanted him behind the plate. There’s a reason for it.”
Let’s play $25,000 Pyramid. The answer is “Things a manager says before he loses his job.”
Meanwhile, for all the wringing of Astros fans’ hands over Yanier Diaz’s recent batting slump, chasing pitches outside the strike zone and grounding into double plays …
Diaz, 25, is hitting .260 (solid for a catcher) with seven home runs and 33 RBI (tied for third on the Astros). Over 44 games behind the plate, he has thrown out nine potential base stealers for a 20 percent success rate. He has no passed balls, this year or for his career.
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There was a conversation Cleveland guard Donovan Mitchell had during training camp, the topic being all the teams that were generating the most preseason buzz in the Eastern Conference. Boston was coming off an NBA championship. New York got Karl-Anthony Towns. Philadelphia added Paul George.
The Cavs? Not a big topic in early October. And Mitchell fully understood why.
“What have we done?” Mitchell asked. “They don't talk about us. That's fine. We'll just hold ourselves to our standard.”
That approach seems to be working.
For the first time in 36 seasons — yes, even before the LeBron James eras in Cleveland — the Cavaliers are atop the NBA at the 25-game mark. They're 21-4, having come back to earth a bit following a 15-0 start but still better than anyone in the league at this point.
“We've kept our standards pretty high,” Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson said. “And we keep it going.”
The Cavs are just one of the surprise stories that have emerged as the season nears the one-third-done mark. Orlando — the only team still unbeaten at home — is off to its best start in 16 years at 17-9 and having done most of that without All-Star forward Paolo Banchero. And Houston is 16-8, behind only the Cavs, Boston, Oklahoma City and Memphis so far in the race for the league's best record.
Cleveland was a playoff team a year ago, as was Orlando. And the Rockets planted seeds for improvement last year as well; an 11-game winning streak late in the season fueled a push where they finished 41-41 in a major step forward after a few years of rebuilding.
“We kind of set that foundation last year to compete with everybody,” Rockets coach Ime Udoka said. “Obviously, we had some ups and downs with winning and losing streaks at times, but to finish the season the way we did, getting to .500, 11-game winning streak and some close losses against high-level playoff teams, I think we kind of proved that to ourselves last year that that's who we're going to be.”
A sign of the respect the Rockets are getting: Oddsmakers at BetMGM Scorebook have made them a favorite in 17 of 24 games so far this season, after favoring them only 30 times in 82 games last season.
“Based on coaches, players, GMs, people that we all know what they're saying, it seems like everybody else is taking notice as well,” Udoka said.
They're taking notice of Orlando as well. The Magic lost their best player and haven't skipped a beat.
Banchero's injury after five games figured to doom Orlando for a while, and the Magic went 0-4 immediately after he tore his oblique. Entering Tuesday, they're 14-3 since — and now have to regroup yet again. Franz Wagner stepped into the best-player-on-team role when Banchero got hurt, and now Wagner is going to miss several weeks with the exact same injury.
Ask Magic coach Jamahl Mosley how the team has persevered, and he'll quickly credit everyone but himself. Around the league, it's Mosley getting a ton of the credit — and rightly so — for what Orlando is doing.
“I think that has to do a lot with Mose. ... I have known him a long time,” Phoenix guard Bradley Beal said. “A huge fan of his and what he is doing. It is a testament to him and the way they’ve built this team.”
The Magic know better than most how good Cleveland is, and vice versa. The teams went seven games in an Eastern Conference first-round series last spring, the Cavs winning the finale at home to advance to Round 2.
Atkinson was brought in by Cleveland to try and turn good into great. The job isn't anywhere near finished — nobody is raising any banners for “best record after 25 games” — but Atkinson realized fairly early that this Cavs team has serious potential.
“We’re so caught up in like the process of improve, improve, improve each game, improve each practice," Atkinson said. “That’s kind of my philosophy. But then you hit 10-0, and obviously the media starts talking and all that, and you’re like, ‘Man, this could be something special brewing here.’”