By now it’s widely known that rookie catcher Christian Bethancourt’s development has not progressed as the Braves hoped, neither offensively nor defensively.
He was hitting .187 with two homers and a .483 on-base-plus-slugging percentage in 42 games before Saturday, and Bethancourt’s passed ball in the eighth inning Friday – his seventh in just 37 games as a catcher this season — pushed the Mets’ lead to 3-1 (they won 5-1 after Yoenis Cespedes added a two-run homer in the ninth).
In 74 games and 261 plate appearances over parts of three major league seasons, Bethancourt has hit .213 with two homers, 21 RBIs, a .238 OBP and .273 slugging percentage (.510 OPS), with 57 strikeouts and only seven walks. His swing still gets too long too often and he tries to pull the ball too frequently.
Still, the Braves say publicly that Bethancourt, who turned 24 on Sept. 2, remains a big part of their future and that they must remain patient with him. Still, there is reason to believe the team might pursue another catcher this winter in addition to trying to re-sign 38-year-old A.J. Pierzynski, whose role went from mentor/backup to primary catcher — and a productive one, at that — this season after Bethancourt struggled early on.
“That game (Bethancourt) caught in Philadelphia the other day was probably about as well-caught a baseball game as I’ve seen anybody catch in a long time,” Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said, referring to an 8-1 win Wednesday in which Julio Teheran and two relievers combined for a four-hitter with three walks. “Sometimes I think a young prospect that’s been heralded as the next coming of Yadier Molina or Johnny Bench, sometimes he gets under the microscope too much. But I’m fine with him. I really am.
“People can have games like (Friday’s). People have four strikeouts, people throw the ball away. It happens. You can’t get mad. It’s the inexperience. You get frustrated, but you can’t get mad. You get mad if they’re not playing hard or running hard, you get made and really blow a lid. But sometimes the inexperience comes up.”
Bethancourt’s seven passed balls in 37 games as catcher was the fifth-most among 56 players who’ve caught this season in the National League. The only four with more passed balls than him all caught at least 97 games, including the Padres’ Derek Norris with a league-high 12 passed balls in 115 games before Saturday.
Bethancourt’s seven passed balls were more than twice as many as some teams’ primary catchers including the Nationals’ Wilson Ramos (three passed balls in 109 games) and the Brewers’ Jonthan Lucroy (three in 86 games), and three more than the Cardinals Yadier Molina (four in 129 games), the Giants’ Buster Posey (four in 98 games) and Pierzynski (four in 94 games before Saturday).
In 2014, Bethancourt had six passed balls in 31 games caught. The next-worst rate in the NL was then-Braves catcher Gerald Laird, with seven passed balls in 48 games.
During the 2014-2015 seasons, Bethancourt has 13 passes balls in 68 games caught. The most passed balls in the NL last season was 12, by three different catchers. The Braves hope that Bethancourt will note that Mets catcher Travis d’Arnaud, who had 12 passed balls in 105 games in 2014, only had one in 49 games caught this season before Saturday.
Bethancourt also had four errors this season and was tied for the ninth-lowest fielding percentage (.986) among 56 NL catchers through Friday’s games. Posey had one error before Saturday, and Pierzynski had two.
