Cervelli Finally Gets His Chance
Entering the year, Francisco Cervelli had a career high of 317 plate appearances in a single season. The narrative was familiar: he could hit, he could receive, he just couldn’t stay healthy. The 29-year-old finally shook the injury prone label with a 510 plate appearance, 3.8 WAR season.
The Pirates acquired Cervelli from the Yankees in exchange for Justin Wilson over the offseason. While Pittsburgh definitely got the better end of the deal, Wilson was a key cog in the Yankees bullpen. In the real world, Cervelli flat outperformed Yankees star Brian McCann. That’s before considering Cervelli’s league best 27 runs saved via framing. McCann “saved” negative 2.5 runs.
We don’t care about defense in fantasy land. However, we can assume he’ll continue to play full seasons whenever healthy. He’s not a world beater on the offensive side of the ball, but he holds his own. His $5.40 value was the eighth best at the position.
Much of that production is the result of a high .295 batting average and his plate appearance total. He’s one of just nine backstops to bat over 500 times. That volume has extra value in two-catcher leagues and formats that disallow streaming.
Cervelli has posted a high BABIP over the last two years. His brief 162 plate appearance 2014 season came with a .408 BABIP. In 2015, he tallied a .359 BABIP. There are two factors that make this look fairly sustainable. He keeps the ball on the ground (52 percent GB rate) yet his soft hit rate is low. Hard and medium hit ground balls are more likely to sneak through a hole. Since he also sprays the ball around the field, he’s immune to shifts.
The downside of this approach is a lack of extra base hits. Of 133 hits, just 29 were for extra bases – 17 doubles, five triples, and seven home runs. Given that his home games are at PNC Park, I don’t view his approach as a huge negative.
He doesn’t have the power to produce more than 12 or 15 home runs in a pitcher friendly stadium. Meanwhile, his current approach led to a valuable .295/.370/.401 line. More fly balls would eat into that average and OBP. His ISO would increase, but the slugging percentage might stay right around .400.
Additionally, PITCHf/x data suggests he geared towards hitting low pitches. That doesn’t automatically mean he has to hit ground ball (Jose Bautista mashes low pitches), but it does seem to be the way his swing interacts with low pitches. Observe a couple charts.
His best contact rates come on inside and low pitches. When he swings through the ball, it’s usually a high pitch or in the dirt. We talked about his high BABIP previously. As you can see, he generally performs best in the lower half of the zone. Here’s a couple more charts.
Curiously, he showed his best ISO on low and in pitches. That quadrant of the zone can force a bit of an upper cut into the swing leading to more fly balls. However, that’s not the story here. His fly ball rate is actually extremely low on these pitches. I hypothesize that he’s hitting these pitches hard and down the line.
Cervelli offers a stable but boring fantasy profile. For this reason, I expect him to be one of the best values in draft season. In a 12-team one-catcher league, I anticipate a friendly cost of about $2. He’ll probably run about $5 to $7 in 12-team two-catcher formats. He’s not likely to suffer from pre-draft hype either.
Steamer projections are now available on the site. Cervelli is expected to hit .268/.338/.376 with a .324 BABIP. Personally, I believe in the high BABIP enough to project something closer to .280/.350/.385. Cervelli won’t carry your team, but he can be a valuable core component.
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Nothing in Cervelli’s background, from the minors through the majors, suggests he’s this good, but I always thought he could be an everyday catcher. He did early split the position with Posada in 2010, but for whatever reason that was the worst defensive season of his career. His next chance at a fulltime role was in 2013 when the Yankees let Martin leave and planned to split the position with Cervelli and Chris Stewart, although was never really the plan. The job was going to Cervelli first, with Stewart as the backup. Cervelli, unfortunately, suffered a season-ending injury, reinforcing a belief that he was injury prone. Yankees went out and signed McCann, pushing Cervelli back to the back-up role.
The Yankees as much as any team values pitch framing. Ben Lindbergh’s excellent article on GrantLand shows how long the Yankees have focused on this, employing in various capacities the likes of Molina, Martin, Cervelli, Stewart, McCann and John Ryan Murphy post the Posada years, and in fact pushing Posada into retirement. McCann has always rated as one of the top pitch framers in the game, and overall his catching looked very strong this year. The question then is his down year a question of noise in the pitch framing machine, or is it a still that rapidly diminishes as a catcher ages? We’ve learned much about pitch framing in the past few years, but I suspect there is much more to be learned.
I think Cervelli is certainly capable of the line you suggested. His .400+ SLG seems more the outlier to me, but his ability to put the bat on the ball, use the field, drive up pitch counts has always been there, and he’s always been a solid receiver. I’m glad he’s getting some recognition playing regularly for the Pirates, who clearly also value pitch framing as much as the Yankees. In fact, it almost feels like current Yankee catchers will become future Pirate catchers. Murphy will look good in a Pirate uniform with a bit more seasoning. : -)