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http://sports.nationalpost.com/2014/04/ ... f-a-boost/

Everybody loves Dioner, he helped Hutchison settle down and be effective, and he and Buerhle are in sync from the beginning.

JPA at least partially to blame for our horrible starters last year?

Hopefully someone will present some analysis on how well pitchers have done with Navarro over his career. It's not like pitchers haven't had a few great starts throwing to JPA. I don't think anyone expected JP to carry a pitching staff considering where he's at in his career, so I'm not rejoicing the fact that the article/players are taking jabs at him in that area.

We all hate him because he was expected to deliver some offensive production from a position where that is rare, and ended up being worse than average.... and because he was kind of being a whiny douchebag about it.

I remember a stat popping up for the Cardinals about their starting pitching stats with Yadier Molina behind the plate versus other catchers. Their starting staff was significantly better across all stats with Molina behind the plate. I don't think traditional stats quantify the impact a catcher can have. Maybe JPA was the biggest culprit for our woes last season?

JPA was as big of a disadvantage offensively as he was defensively. The only thing he did well last year was pitch framing but there is some who believe framing is meaningless and it's more or less about where the ball crosses the plate.

Navarro has a much better baseball IQ, he knows how to call a game, read the opponents bats and call a pitch accordingly. The team seems under more control with him behind the plate.

If your opponent has trouble catching up to the fastball, it is rather pointless to throw off speed pitches, you are just doing favors for the hitter and giving him a chance to catch up to the pitch. That's something that Navarro did with Hutch's start, only throwing 3 or 4 change ups total the rest were sliders and heat.

Just about any catcher would be better than Arencibia but it's good that we have catcher that is somewhat reliable both behind the plate and swinging. Look forward to watching more from him, it's much less nerve wracking for all of us because JPA was a nightmare.

DonYon wrote:Hopefully someone will present some analysis on how well pitchers have done with Navarro over his career. It's not like pitchers haven't had a few great starts throwing to JPA. I don't think anyone expected JP to carry a pitching staff considering where he's at in his career, so I'm not rejoicing the fact that the article/players are taking jabs at him in that area.

We all hate him because he was expected to deliver some offensive production from a position where that is rare, and ended up being worse than average.... and because he was kind of being a whiny douchebag about it.

I think this is the much bigger reason why people do not like him. People think Goins sucks but they are not mad at him, they are mad at AA for him being here.

Is this going to be the new media narrative if the good starting pitchers stay healthy?

Nothing against Navarro's game calling ability, but the Jays gave 69 starts last year to a combination of Rogers/Happ/Redmond/Wang/Ortiz/Jenkins/Romero/Nolin/Laffey in 2013. That's the reason the pitching sucked, not JPA.

Randle McMurphy wrote:Is this going to be the new media narrative if the good starting pitchers stay healthy?

Nothing against Navarro's game calling ability, but the Jays gave 69 starts last year to a combination of Rogers/Happ/Redmond/Wang/Ortiz/Jenkins/Romero/Nolin/Laffey in 2013. That's the reason the pitching sucked, not JPA.

It was going to be like this no matter what catcher we brought in, almost anyone would be an improvement in that area. While we gave that many starts to scrub starters, we still let Arencibia start 120 games that likely effected our total runs against. Maybe not as much as these scrub starters but how many runs were scored because Arencibia called bad pitches( 5 home runs to right field by Reddick last year in one series), not catching the ball on a play at home plate, not blocking a pitch that should be blocked. Our pitching would have been much better last year with a better catcher.

BigLeagueChew wrote:

Randle McMurphy wrote:Is this going to be the new media narrative if the good starting pitchers stay healthy?

Nothing against Navarro's game calling ability, but the Jays gave 69 starts last year to a combination of Rogers/Happ/Redmond/Wang/Ortiz/Jenkins/Romero/Nolin/Laffey in 2013. That's the reason the pitching sucked, not JPA.

It was going to be like this no matter what catcher we brought in, almost anyone would be an improvement in that area. While we gave that many starts to scrub starters, we still let Arencibia start 120 games that likely effected our total runs against. Maybe not as much as these scrub starters but how many runs were scored because Arencibia called bad pitches( 5 home runs to right field by Reddick last year in one series), not catching the ball on a play at home plate, not blocking a pitch that should be blocked. Our pitching would have been much better last year with a better catcher.

I'm just not entirely sure I buy that argument. Buehrle had pretty much exactly the same year he always does and he doesn't develop his own game plan or call his own pitches.

The primary reason the Jays had terrible pitching was simply because they were predominantly using terrible pitchers. And if guys like Hutchison/Morrow/McGowan get hurt in 2014, there's going to be very little that Navarro can do to prevent the team ERA from rising once again.

Randle McMurphy wrote:I'm just not entirely sure I buy that argument. Buehrle had pretty much exactly the same year he always does and he doesn't develop his own game plan or call his own pitches.

The primary reason the Jays had terrible pitching was simply because they were predominantly using terrible pitchers. And if guys like Hutchison/Morrow/McGowan get hurt in 2014, there's going to be very little that Navarro can do to prevent the team ERA from rising once again.

I agree with you , what we sent out there wasn't very good at all after all the injuries. I'm of the mindset those bad pitchers would have still struggled but slightly less with a better catcher. Not enough to make them from a bad pitcher to a good one but a slight difference.

Fangraphs has Buerhle with a lower fWar since he left the White Sox with Pierzynski as his catcher. I don't know if you can say the cause is his catcher or Buerhle himself but I think arguments can made both ways.

Does the catcher influence the game or just the pitcher, maybe a combination of both. I'm just happy Arencibia is longer here.

Let him catch Dickey's next game.

Lets hope JPA is like Bargs and Gay, an addition by subtraction to this team.

It's way, way too early for this kind of article.

Santoki wrote:It's way, way too early for this kind of article.

Media needs its narratives.

The guys in the booth were taking shots at hitters in the Jays lineup who'd be swinging for the fences instead of advancing a runner, and ending up with a K or pop up.

They have to give upside somewhere at this point in the season, and C is the only place we made an external upgrade. Narrative expected to continue.

Yeah, I'm not ready to give Navarro credit for anything, but JPA was soo **** stupid, like negative IQ, that whatever help and assistance pitchers are used to getting from catchers in terms of game-planning or spotting corrections or whatever, I promise they got negative value from JPA so anybody would be an enormous upgrade. I don't see that affecting a guy like Buehrle, who just does his job, but I'm sure it didn't do any good for guys like Morrow, who even after so many years still looks like a guy learning his craft, or the ragtag replacements after injuries.

I honestly think if we could sum up all JPA's deficiencies into a true WAR calculation, he would've come close to breaking some kind of record for negative. Like -10 WAR bad. That's how much I irrationally hated JPA that last season.

satyr9 wrote:Yeah, I'm not ready to give Navarro credit for anything, but JPA was soo **** stupid, like negative IQ, that whatever help and assistance pitchers are used to getting from catchers in terms of game-planning or spotting corrections or whatever, I promise they got negative value from JPA so anybody would be an enormous upgrade. I don't see that affecting a guy like Buehrle, who just does his job, but I'm sure it didn't do any good for guys like Morrow, who even after so many years still looks like a guy learning his craft, or the ragtag replacements after injuries.

I honestly think if we could sum up all JPA's deficiencies into a true WAR calculation, he would've come close to breaking some kind of record for negative. Like -10 WAR bad. That's how much I irrationally hated JPA that last season.

Considering we weren't privy to anything that JPA did beyond what we saw on the field, I'm not sure we can say a thing like that.

One thing JPA was really bad at that would have affected the pitchers is his ability to throw out base stealers.

I do not know how much of an effect this would have had but it seemed like anytime a player with half decent speed got a single or walk this would effectively turn into a 'double'.

And don't forget about all those passed balls...

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I didn't know too much about Navarro's game before this year but I really like what I see so far