TORONTO — About a month into his first season as a general manager, Dana Brown sensed some stunted development. He constructed his first opening day roster prioritizing offense and put one of his top prospects in a position to augment it.
Explanations in both private and public painted Yainer Diaz as a solution to help make up for Jose Altuve and Michael Brantley’s early-season absences. The Astros carried Diaz and César Salazar as backup catchers to veteran starter Martín Maldonado, a setup that allowed manager Dusty Baker flexibility to start Diaz elsewhere and not worry about his catching coverage on the bench.
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On paper, the decision was rooted in logic. In practice, none of it was applied. Baker bypassed Diaz for almost all of April and into May, turning his debut season into one without much rhyme or reason.
The team optioned Salazar back to Triple-A on Monday, shrinking the catching corps to two and ostensibly making it more difficult for Diaz to crack Baker’s lineup. Take Tuesday’s 5-1 loss against the Blue Jays, for example: Baker paired Maldonado with starter Hunter Brown, started Corey Julks in left field and slotted Yordan Alvarez at designated hitter.
The decisions left Diaz on the bench. One evening earlier, he had delivered the first four-hit game of his career during the Astros’ 11-4 annihilation of Toronto on Monday.
“I like when he’s in the lineup. I like what he brings to the table. I like that he has power, his OPS is climbing. Ultimately, I’d like to see him in the lineup more,” Brown said before Tuesday’s game at Rogers Centre. “But Dusty is running the team, he’s the manager, and it’s his job ultimately to find a place for him to get in the lineup. I think he will do that. I think it’s a matter of the dog days of August, the middle of July, he could get a little bit more time.”
Baker gave Diaz 75 plate appearances while the team carried three catchers. Diaz started five games at positions other than catcher: three times at designated hitter and twice at first base.
He took just 28 at-bats in April, while the team struggled to sustain any sort of offensive continuity. Diaz played so sparingly that Brown acknowledged he worried about development. Brown said he brought those concerns to Baker.
“I think Dusty worked him in there. It would have been nice to see him a little bit more,” Brown said. “But, you know what, I’m not in Dusty’s shoes. I’m not writing the lineup. It’s his job and it’s his call. I think he played him enough that he got some good at-bats in, but once he started playing a little bit more, I think he’s cleaning up the approach a little bit and the OPS is on the rise.
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“Losing development time is big for a young prospect,” Brown continued. “I think now that he’s playing a little bit more, he’s actually starting to get in a groove a little bit. As long as he can continue to do that, I think that’s very good. The development time is important and that’s one of the things we worried some about with carrying the three catchers (was): is he going to lose development time while playing?”
Monday’s 4-for-5 showing raised Diaz’s OPS to .786 while his playing time has increased during the team’s stretch of 17 consecutive games. Diaz has started six of Houston’s past 10 games and is on a 9-for-19 tear since the team’s last homestand, when hitting coaches encouraged him to study video of his at-bats in Triple A from last season in order to improve his plate discipline. Chasing outside the strike zone is perhaps the biggest hurdle between Diaz and everyday playing time. He swung outside the zone 47.6 percent of the time in May. The league average is 28.4 percent.
The chase rate proves what the public sometimes forgets: Diaz is not without faults. He is a 24-year-old rookie navigating his first full major-league season, not some bona fide star being passed over. Diaz must temper some of his aggression at the plate and be more selective about the pitches he swings at.
Behind the plate, only one major-league catcher throws harder than Diaz. He’s caught seven of the 17 baserunners who’ve tried to steal against him. Diaz’s pop time is the fourth-fastest in the sport, too. Two of the catchers ahead of him? Sean Murphy and J.T. Realmuto. To the naked eye, Diaz needs no improvement defensively. Internally, though, the Astros would like to see him improve his game-calling and pre-start preparation.
“The big thing for him right now is our game preparation and our game management, learning our system, learning our pitchers, understanding opposing hitters’ tendencies and navigating ballgames,” catching coach Michael Collins said. “That’s the big part he and I spend plenty of time on, constantly talking about it and preparing for each start. That’s something that comes with being here. It does take a little bit of time being here, being in this environment, in those game situations to fully put it all together. Behind the scenes, that’s his big focus — the game prep and understanding his pitchers.”
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Maldonado is renowned for just that. Quantifying its value is impossible. So is overstating how much it dictates the Astros’ decision-making. Diaz can hit all he wants, but it’s difficult to envision the Astros ever handing him equal playing time with Maldonado still on the roster.
Baker’s explanation as to why he caught Maldonado on Tuesday reflects that reality. Diaz caught six of Hunter Brown’s first seven starts this season. Maldonado has caught his last five, including Tuesday’s.
“Maldy takes control of the game almost better than anybody. It’s tough when you got rookies on the mound and it’s tougher when you got a rookie catcher and a rookie on the mound,” Baker said. “Yainer’s still trying to learn. He’s learning his craft and this is on-the-job training. I loved hitting, but there’s more to catching than hitting than any other position on the field, other than the pitcher. And he doesn’t hit anymore. That’s part of our defense. If they don’t score, we’re not losing.”
Baker’s offense needs to score, too. Diaz has started 19 games this season. Houston has scored five or more runs in 10 of them. Diaz boasts a 113 OPS+ and is slugging .486. The Astros are a better offensive team when he’s in the lineup. For a team entering Tuesday with a .722 OPS — 18th of 30 major-league lineups — finding any sort of offensive spark feels mandatory.
Dana Brown believes so, too. Finding more at-bats for Diaz, be they at designated hitter or first base, is what the general manager wants. He will trust his manager to make it happen, but carrying two catchers only complicates matters.
Starting both Diaz and Maldonado on the same day could limit Baker’s late-game strategy, but he so rarely pinch-hits for Maldonado — even when the team carried three catchers — that it’s almost a moot point. Baker has shown an affinity for rookie Corey Julks, who collected two more hits on Tuesday while starting in left field. Julks still boasts a .693 OPS, .282 on-base percentage and a 28.1 percent strikeout rate, but in a far larger sample size than Diaz has been allowed to have. Julks can play left field, too — perhaps the one interchangeable position the Astros have.
José Abreu’s continued decline does invite wonder whether Diaz could see more time at first base, but Baker has been reluctant to bench Abreu even as his struggles deepen.
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“If you look on the back of Abreu’s (baseball) card, it’s over an .800 OPS for his career. Those are all positive things, but the reality is, he’s struggling this year,” Brown said of the first baseman with a .532 OPS. “I think Dusty worked Yainer in the other day to give him a little bit of a day off, a little bit of a break. I think that’s a good thing and so we’ll see where it goes from here. It’s Dusty’s call.”
(Photo: Andrew Lahodynskyj / The Canadian Press via AP)
