John Jaso, Designated Hitter With Catcher Eligibilty
Following his trade from the Athletics to the Rays, it has recently been announced that – at least for this season – John Jaso will be ditching his catcher’s gear aside from emergency situations. Jaso missed the end of last year due to a concussion and the team has decided that since they acquired him for his bat, they want his bat to remain in the lineup as much as possible and not risk any further health problems.
Obviously there is some risk in acquiring a player for your fantasy team that is coming off a season ending concussion. We have heard everything is fine and that he will be ready to go once spring training gets going, but there is still some inherent risk. Thankfully he will be moving from behind the plate, and the team has even said they plan on getting him work in the outfield and at first base. Whether he actually earns enough playing time at either the outfield or first base to gain additional eligibility is yet to be seen, but it is certainly not implausible.
So, getting back to why the Rays actually acquired him – his bat – let’s take a look at how good of a bat it actually is. I was surprised when I saw that aside from his second year with the Rays, Jaso’s lowest wRC+ is 115. Along with that, he has never posted an ISO below .100. He is not exactly a “power hitting catcher” but in two of the past three seasons his ISO has been above .160. An elevated stance since he departed from Tampa Bay the first time around looks like it is at least partially a reason for the increased power.
Jaso’s past limited playing time is a good reason why I feel he may be undervalued in fantasy drafts. I just acquired him in a very deep dynasty league and will be happy to play him at either my catcher or designated hitter position. If he is given 450 plate appearances, which is just under what Matt Joyce has been sitting at as a left-handed platoon option in Tampa Bay (albeit under Joe Maddon and not Kevin Cash), Jaso has the ability to hit in the mid-teens for home runs and add a likely impressive on base percentage at a position filled with those who are usually limited offensively. In deeper leagues Jaso is even more attractive, and of course in DFS he is a great option to consider given his likely place in the Rays batting order – Cash has preached a more consistent lineup than Maddon’s past groupings – and his success against right-handed pitching in his career (.272/.368/.424, 127 wRC+).
With that said, while he will be the team’s primary designated hitter and is right now slated to hit second, he will almost certainly be platooned. To me that is not a bad thing. Again, he will likely get more plate appearances this year as a DH or occasional first baseman or outfielder than he has in his past as a close to full-time catcher. Looking at him to hit in the range of 450-500 plate appearances is reasonable if healthy, and his production looks undervalued to me as he can help in runs, home runs, and avg/on base percentage while most catchers are one or two trick ponies.
Ben has been at RotoGraphs since 2012 and focuses most of his fantasy baseball attention toward dynasty and keeper leagues.
This is like us fantasy owners (and Billy Beane) acquiring Scott Hatteberg pre-2002 due to catching eligibility.
I have liked John Jaso since he played for the Rays last time. However to see Jaso return under the fold of hitting coach Derek Shelton I cringe at the thought. I live in St Petersburg and have been a Rays fan since day one. It shouldn’t take Derek long to screw things up. Ray fans around cannot understand why Derek Shelton is still here. Ray fans continuously watch our batters watch perfectly good strikes go by. Then swing at balls down and out. I would like to know if records are kept of teams/batters who strike out looking. I would bet the Rays are at the top of said list.
The Rays had the 4th best BB% in MLB and the 3rd lowest K% in MLB. It doesn’t take data on whether they struck out swinging or looking to know that your comment is completely misguided.
…but if you want to look at team stats (and didn’t want to google any harder than I did, which is to say taking the first result from one google with “called third strike statistics team”) you’d find this Gammons article which (scroll down) ranked the Rays #7, well back from the top and barely in the top quartile.
Important to note that Jaso’s splits when DH-ing are disastrous.
2014
as C: 14.9% K%, .190 ISO, 143 wRC+
as DH: 20.4% K%, .089 ISO, 68 wRC+
2013
as C: 15.6% K%, .107 ISO, 131 wRC+
as DH: 25% K%, .043 ISO, 86 wRC+
If he’s DHing full time this year I’m staying away.
Position splits scare me, because they are often tied in with the hand of the opposing pitcher. Plays catcher against righties, DH against southpaws. Not saying this is the case here, I’m staying away regardless, but there’s often a better reason for odd splits than the position being played.
I didn’t follow the As that closely, but I believe Jaso DH’d primarily against southpaws because they wanted Norris in the lineup at C against them, but got most of his catcher reps against righties
The disastrous splits are more of a problem when the player splits time between a position (like catcher) and DH throughout the course of the same season. Fangraphs and others have referred to it as the DH penalty… When catching, jaso’s in the rhythm of the game. When he’s the DH, he’s out of the rhythm and his hitting suffers. The thinking is that as a full time DH the problem will solve itself, as DHing will be his sole rhythm…
See Billy Beane’s signing of Billy Butler.
Jaso is also a really terrible defensive C, so its wise to not play him there anyway. Norris is too, that’s why Beane got rid of them both, to avoid Melvin continually playing them both because he viewed them both as legit C’s instead of Mike Napoli-style 1B’s-in-training like they really are.
Normally I don’t pay much attention to positional splits, but there’s plenty of evidence that some players don’t like to DH and it affects their performance at the plate. Joe Mauer is a notable example. Here’s a write-up on it from a year or so ago:
https://mglbaseball.wordpress.com/2013/12/09/pinch-hitter-dh-and-other-penalties-revisited/
There actually is no logical reason for a player to do one job worse because he wasn’t saddled with additional jobs that have nothing to do with the first job at the same time.