The Good and Bad of Sandy Leon

It was a very strange year at catcher. The top of the end of season catcher rankings don’t look too unusual with Jonathan Lucroy and Buster Posey at the top, but those full-season numbers do not capture the amazing impact three catchers who become starters midseason had. Gary Sanchez’s prospect star had faded a bit in recent seasons, but that reflected defensive doubts. Most scouts agreed that Sanchez would hit if he could field his position. Willson Contreras had become the top catching prospect, and he immediately delivered on that promise with the Cubs.

Sandy Leon was completely different. Leon made his debut with the Nationals all the way back in 2012, and Wilson Ramos was not the only reason Leon never played regularly before this season. In his 235 plate appearances from 2012-15, Leon slashed an abysmal .187/.258/.225. His .223 wOBA over that period made him roughly equivalent at the plate to Mike Leake. This season, Leon was tied with Lucroy for the third-highest wOBA of .362. He was nearly identical to Contreras in both plate appearances and production.

Leon’s own status as a non-prospect was not the only obstacle he overcame this season. Ten months ago, the Red Sox seemed set at catcher with 23-year-old prospect Blake Swihart coming off a promising rookie season in which he produced a .321 wOBA and 25-year-old defensive wizard Christian Vazquez back healthy following Tommy John surgery. Their struggles earned Leon a chance, and Leon was too good with that opportunity for the team to take the job back from him.

In mid-August, Jeff Sullivan noted that Leon had outperformed his preseason ZiPS projection by more than any other batter with 100 plate appearances at that time. That would likely put Leon atop most analysts’ potential bust lists for 2017, and even a cursory look at Leon’s peripheral numbers back up that skepticism. Specifically, Leon’s .310/.369/.476 triple slash was propped up by a .392 BABIP.

Unlike pitchers, many batters can support BABIPs well above .300, but Leon doesn’t have one of the two main ingredients for that: speed. Leon didn’t steal a single base this season. Among hitters with at least 200 plate appearances and fewer than 10 steals in a season since 2002, Leon produced the 14th-best BABIP. Tyler Naquin and David Dahl were also in that top 15 because of this season, and Chris Colabello saw just 32 plate appearances in his next season (2016). The other 11 batters all saw their subsequent season BABIPs drop anywhere from 28 points to 127 points. On average, the 47 batters with a BABIP of .370 or better, at least 200 plate appearances, and fewer than 10 steals in a season who saw another 200 plate appearances and stole fewer than 10 bases the following season saw their BABIPs decline by 60 points, from .382 to .322.

Drop Leon’s BABIP by 60 points, and his resulting .250 average, 7 home runs and 0 steals would look a lot like Stephen Vogt (.251, 14, and 0) over a full season. Vogt was the No. 14 catcher in the end of season rankings.

Still, I think the No. 28 ranking from Brad Johnson’s catcher rankings article is too pessimistic because, even if Leon is hit hard with regression, I think he demonstrated enough defensively to earn himself job security. Leon has been particularly impressive in his career at limiting the opposing running game. He threw out 13 of 33 attempting basestealers this season (39 percent) and picked off two other runners. Now for his career, Leon has a caught stealing rate of 42 percent, which is the best among catchers who have caught at least 1,000 innings since 2012.

Leon has moderate power, decent plate discipline—he had an 8.1 percent walk rate and a 23.3 percent strikeout rate in 2016—he is part of the most productive offense in baseball, and he should have job security in 2017. I would take a shot on him in two-catcher and AL-only formats.