Mariners sign Chris Iannetta

[Erstad Grit]

A spring invite? Are you guys for real?

 

Dude had a 123 OPS+ in 2014. His OBP was .373.

 

He had a DOWN YEAR. Just like he did in 2010. 4 mil across 1 year in this day in age is an absolute bargain.

 

But hey, he had one bad year. He is a piece of garbage and should be lucky to even get a spring invite.

 

Puig was good in 2014 too. Yet everyone can plainly see his skills have problems. Hell if 2014 is the barometer to sign guys lets get Adam Dunn. It's pretty odd to me that for a catcher you are only using offensive metrics to evaluate him. CI is one of the worst catchers we have had in a long time. If his bat is even remotely as bad as it was last year he has absolutely no value.  

[Erstad Grit]

News flash: Getting on base is important, especially when it comes from a position where offense is scarce. 4 million dollars on a 1 year deal really isn't much at all now. 

 

Yeah, but apparently CI has lost the skill set to get on base. I think 4 million for a crap catcher that one hopes will re-discover the ability to work a walk is ill spent. You are welcomed to think differently. 

[Stradling]

Go ahead grit and ignore his improvement in pitch framing since it doesn't work into your narrative.

[Brent Maguire]

Yeah, but apparently CI has lost the skill set to get on base. I think 4 million for a crap catcher that one hopes will re-discover the ability to work a walk is ill spent. You are welcomed to think differently. 

Did he lose that skill set or did he have a down year? His walk rate did drop a bit to 12.9% but his OBP drop was due to his average plummeting, not his patience disappearing. I guess it remains to be seen if the drop in average is real or not but a 1 year deal to find out really isn't anything absurd. 

[Mark68]

Puig was good in 2014 too. Yet everyone can plainly see his skills have problems. Hell if 2014 is the barometer to sign guys lets get Adam Dunn. It's pretty odd to me that for a catcher you are only using offensive metrics to evaluate him. CI is one of the worst catchers we have had in a long time. If his bat is even remotely as bad as it was last year he has absolutely no value.  

Puig's head has problems. That's what affects his skills.

 

Iannetta's defense actually improved to the point where he has been around league average.

 

Yeah, but apparently CI has lost the skill set to get on base. I think 4 million for a crap catcher that one hopes will re-discover the ability to work a walk is ill spent. You are welcomed to think differently. 

So, after one year in which he had an abmormally low BABIP, he's all of a sudden lost the skill set to get on base? By the way, in 2015, when he apparently lost the skill to get on base, he still managed to hit .230/.359/.405 against left-handed pitching. So he's obviously still serviceable against lefties.

 

As has been mentioned, one year does not mean he's declining, and four million is not much to pay for a catcher who still can at least hit lefties and also has worked on his defense, including framing.

 

It seems that everybody who is not Jeff Mathis defensively (and he wasn't THAT good) must apparently suck. Never mind that Iannetta's absolute worst year offensively (.628 OPS/78 OPS+) is still comparable to Mathis' absolute best year (.642 OPS/72 OPS+) in a hitters' park (Rogers Centre).

Edited November 24, 2015 by Mark68

[Docwaukee]

Iannetta is a solid move for 4mil.  Especially as your everyday catcher only costing that much for one year

 

His 2015 essentially averaged out his very good 2014.  He probably ends up where he usually is and that is as a slightly above average offensive player and certainly above average for a catcher.  

 

Defensively, my eyes tell me he's still not very good.  His framing was good statistically which means something, but it seemed to improve too much to be sustainable.  Probably settles to being around average.  The rest of his defense is probably average to slightly below.  

 

Getting a league average hitter and average defensive C for 4mil over 1yr is a solid signing.  

 

If you have a chance to bring in a guy that is likely to be a 2-2.5 war guy for 1/4mil then its a reasonable risk.  

 

I don't see what the big deal is.  It's probably about 3% of their payroll for 1yr.  

[Mark68]

You'd think the M's just proclaimed they signed the successor to pudge rodriguez for 10 years/$200 million. 

 

It's actually a 1 year deal that experts in the baseball world found unremarkable...and baseball writers will write a story on just about anything right now. 

 

Only on angelswin.

Only when it goes against a prevailing angelswin narrative.

[Puget Sound Angel]

Looks like Zunino shelf life just ended.

[tdawg87]

Puig was good in 2014 too. Yet everyone can plainly see his skills have problems. Hell if 2014 is the barometer to sign guys lets get Adam Dunn. It's pretty odd to me that for a catcher you are only using offensive metrics to evaluate him. CI is one of the worst catchers we have had in a long time. If his bat is even remotely as bad as it was last year he has absolutely no value.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. "One of the worst catchers we have had in a long time."

Where does this line of thinking come from? It's not like we've been spoiled at the position. We had Mathis before Iannetta.

Edited November 24, 2015 by tdawg87

[Troll Daddy]

Seemed like yesterday when everyone here was wanting Iannetta to bat lead off.

Good stuff

[AngelsLakersFan]

You know it's not hard to look up a player's game logs. He played in 40 out of a possible 82 games after Dipoto left.

 

No shit I was exaggerating when I said his playing time was "0."

 

He started in 21 of the 60 games we played in the last two months of the season. He started 81 of the 102 games before that. He clearly lost significant playing time.

[AngelsLakersFan]

This is exactly what I'm talking about. "One of the worst catchers we have had in a long time."

Where does this line of thinking come from? It's not like we've been spoiled at the position. We had Mathis before Iannetta.

 

It's because fans ignore outs. Players make out more than any other thing they do, so when players make outs it is unremarkable. What fans remember are hits, and big hits are even more memorable. This is what led to the general perception among Angels fans that Garret Anderson was an elite player.

 

Chris Iannetta is the anti-GA. His value is tied to his ability to take a walk, not make outs, and how that compares to the typical weak hitting catcher. 

[Ohtaniland]

Go ahead grit and ignore his improvement in pitch framing since it doesn't work into your narrative.

It would've been nice to see him frame a pitch when he was batting. Just saying...

[Stradling]

It would've been nice to see him frame a pitch when he was batting. Just saying...

You mean like he did his first couple of years here?

[Ohtaniland]

You mean like he did his first couple of years here?

Yes he was a much better hitter when he was only paid $2.5M - $3.5M. Then Dopoto extended him for three years of suckage.

[tdawg87]

Yes he was a much better hitter when he was only paid $2.5M - $3.5M. Then Dopoto extended him for three years of suckage.

You literally don't even know what you're talking about. His best years were in 2013 and 2014, after he signed the extension.

[AngelArcher]

No shit I was exaggerating when I said his playing time was "0."

 

He started in 21 of the 60 games we played in the last two months of the season. He started 81 of the 102 games before that. He clearly lost significant playing time.

Oh, so now we're talking about the last two months and not around the time Dipoto quit. Did you ever think that Iannetta started all those games was because he was the starter out of ST? And why he got less starts later was because he never got out of his slump and had nothing to do with Dipoto?

I can understand the exaggeration if he was regulated to strictly backup, but truth was it was more a platoon.

[Ohtaniland]

You literally don't even know what you're talking about. His best years were in 2013 and 2014, after he signed the extension.

Iannetta would've only been a backup catcher on many teams during his entire time with the Angels.

[WallyWorld]

I both think Iannetta will have a decent bounce-back season in 2016 AND I'm glad he won't be back with the Angels. Ready for a change.

[AngelsLakersFan]

Oh, so now we're talking about the last two months and not around the time Dipoto quit. Did you ever think that Iannetta started all those games was because he was the starter out of ST? And why he got less starts later was because he never got out of his slump and had nothing to do with Dipoto?

I can understand the exaggeration if he was regulated to strictly backup, but truth was it was more a platoon.

 

It was easier to just look at that last two months of the season than count all the games back to whichever day happened to be Jerry's last. You can do that if you like. I'll say right out that Iannetta's playing time did not change until a couple of week's after Jerry left, which is right around the first of August.

 

I don't think you can describe it as a platoon because Chris started just 1/3rd of the games in the last two months. That was a stretch of time in which the Angels had 1 day off and played a double header. 

 

I would not expect Scioscia to just up and change everything the day Jerry left. The idea of Iannetta being Jerry's boy does not surprise me at all consider what just happened. In turn I would not be surprised if that in the aftermath of Depot's departure that Scioscia would reevaluate the situation and decide that he doesn't want to give Iannetta the playing time that Dipoto wanted. Doing so beforehand probably would've stoked the fires of their crumbling relationship.

[AngelArcher]

See, it's posts like that which tries to rehash the Dipoto discussion that have no merit whatsoever. If what you're insinuating is true, then Iannetta would have been regulated to strictly backup. Starting only once a week.

Dipoto quit July 1st. I guess it took Scioscia that whole month to re-evaluate the catcher position.

Also Perez is a Dipoto acquisition.

[Mark68]

Iannetta would've only been a backup catcher on many teams during his entire time with the Angels.

Name ten.

[Erstad Grit]

Name ten.

Orioles, Royals, Pirates, Cardinals, Yankees, A's, Brewers, Blue Jays, Mets, Giants, and Diamondbacks/Dodgers for Grandal 

[Ohtaniland]

Orioles, Royals, Pirates, Cardinals, Yankees, A's, Brewers, Blue Jays, Mets, Giants, and Diamondbacks/Dodgers for Grandal

And now the Angels

[Ohtaniland]

Iannetta is so great he would be slotted at third string on at least a half dozen MLB teams today.