For a few years now, the Pirates have had a couple of catchers as two of their top prospects. Henry Davis was taken with the first overall pick in the 2021 draft and has been under the microscope ever since. Endy Rodríguez was acquired in the January 2021 three-team trade that sent Joe Musgrove to the Padres and was declared Pittsburgh’s top prospect by Baseball America going into 2023.
There’s now a third name in the mix as Joey Bart had his long-awaited breakout in 2024. Selected second overall by the Giants in 2018, he struggled to establish himself at the big league level in San Francisco and had exhausted his option years by the end of 2023. He held onto his roster spot until the end of spring training 2024 but was designated for assignment at that time, getting flipped to the Pirates for minor league righty Austin Strickland.
Bart missed some time due to injury this year but got into 80 games for the Bucs and hit 13 homers. He slashed .265/.337/.462 overall for a wRC+ of 121, indicating he was 21% better than league average. His defense wasn’t highly regarded but that kind of offense behind the plate is hard to come by and was especially valuable on a Pittsburgh team that found it difficult to score runs. Among catchers with at least 250 plate appearances, Bart’s 121 wRC+ was fourth behind the Contreras brothers and Iván Herrera. With the same plate appearance threshold, he led all Pirate hitters in that stat.
Now there is theoretically a logjam with the three guys, as most clubs only roster two catchers at a time. The designated hitter spot probably doesn’t help, with Andrew McCutchen likely to be in there. He’s technically heading into free agency now but he and the Pirates seem to have an agreement whereby they can keep reupping with each other until he’s ready to retire. He’s now 38 years old but was one of the club’s only good hitters in 2024. For guys with 250 plate appearances, only Bart, Bryan Reynolds, Oneil Cruz and McCutchen were above average by wRC+.
Rodríguez debuted in 2023 and didn’t hit much, with a .220/.284/.328 batting line and 65 wRC+ in his first 204 plate appearances. However, his defense was universally praised and he has hit better in the minors. He has slashed .295/.383/.506 on the farm overall and .285/.362/.450 at the Triple-A level. In December of last year, he underwent surgery on the UCL and flexor tendon in his throwing elbow and missed the entire big league season in 2024. He started a rehab assignment in mid-September and played in a handful of minor league games, suggesting he should be good to go for 2025.
Davis has had a more infuriating career so far, as he has destroyed minor league pitching but struggled badly in the majors. In 377 major league plate appearances thus far, he has struck out in 30.2% of them and hit .191/.283/.307 for a wRC+ of 61. But since the start of 2023, he has a 13.7% walk rate and 21.5% strikeout rate in the minors, helping him produce a combined .302/.424/.550 line and 158 wRC+.
All of this will lead to some interesting decisions for the Bucs. Bart isn’t great defensively but is a big bat on a club that didn’t have many this year. Rodríguez has played some other positions but a big part of his appeal is his strong work behind the plate. Davis has also dabbled in playing the outfield but the offensive expectations are even higher at that position than at catcher, so moving him into the outfield mix would put even more pressure on his bat.
Davis and Rodríguez still have options, so it’s possible that the Pirates could keep all three, with two of them in the majors and one in Triple-A. But Rodríguez is already a solid defender by big league standards and has done plenty of hitting in the minors, making it fairly wasteful to have him back down there. Davis doesn’t have much left to prove on the farm with his big numbers there. Arguably, the best thing for him is to see more big league pitching and get accustomed to it.
Another path they could choose is trading one of these three. Doing so would sacrifice some depth but Jason Delay is also on the 40-man roster and is still optionable. But there are also arguments against trading each of the three.
Davis might feel expendable at the moment with his relatively weaker defense and the fact that he hasn’t put it together offensively just yet, but the path of Bart is a cautionary tale. The Giants would surely love a mulligan on letting him go and the Pirates are probably aware that they could end up on the other side of such a trade. Given that Davis was such a highly regarded prospect, it’s not hard to imagine them flipping him and quickly regretting it when they have to watch him have his breakout elsewhere.
It wouldn’t be an ideal time to trade Rodríguez either, as he’s coming off a completely lost season. With some health and a step forward at the plate, he could improve his value tremendously this year and down the line.
Selling high on Bart might be appealing because they grabbed him at such a low point and saw him take a big step forward. But as mentioned, the club had so few productive hitters in 2024 and subtracting one of them would be a risky ploy.
Though there’s potential downsides with these considerations, the Pirates might think about it anyway. They generally don’t spend a ton of money in free agency but need to upgrade the roster somehow. General manager Ben Cherington has had his job since November of 2019 and the club has been stuck below .500 since then. They were rebuilding for the first few years of his tenure but expectations have been raised with some flashes of winning baseball in the past two campaigns. Unfortunately, they finished with a 76-86 record both last year and this year, perhaps leading to a bit of desperation in getting over the hump in 2025.
It’s possible that the free agent catching market could work in their favor this winter. The best available backstops are guys like Danny Jansen, Carson Kelly and Kyle Higashioka. Jansen is coming off a nightmare season and is a big question mark right now. Higashioka is coming off a career year but will turn 35 in April, making it fair to wonder if he just peaked. Kelly has been inconsistent in his career and more okay than great even when at his best. The Cardinals will likely make Willson Contreras available on the trade market but he has a pricey contract and is about to turn 33 years old. Christian Vázquez is in a similar situation to Contreras as a pricey veteran but with the offense and defense flipped, as Vázquez is a glove-first guy and Contreras bat-first.
Several clubs could use help behind the plate, with the Rays, Padres, Nationals, Cubs, Reds, Phillies and Braves just some of the possibilities. All three of Pittsburgh’s catchers are cheap, with Davis and Rodríguez still in their pre-arb years and Bart just getting to arbitration for the first time. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projects Bart for a modest $1.8MM salary in 2025, not much above next year’s $760K league minimum. Those affordable salaries would naturally appeal to clubs with budgetary or competitive balance tax concerns.
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