Friday Rockpile: Unprecedented spring leaves few questions

1. Bull you’re not trying to stir the pot. I clearly point to more than one good season when defending CDI.

2. You do have a point though. I seem to have something in my head that recalls someone saying/reporting that Corpas showed up out of shape (and I’m addressing your comment down the page a bit as well) and it’s shaped my image of Corpas as being someone who got a contract and coasted. Whereas I have an obviously biased view of Iannetta, but I recall more about how Iannetta put in the extra time during the offseasons blah blah blah. Selective, I know.

But much as it is a double standard, we’re not really comparing apples to apples here. One relief pitcher with a hot as hell season is hardly rare for major league baseball. We have like 6 or 7 or 8 relievers in the pen at any given moment, so if one falls apart, bring another one out. We only have 1 backup catcher.

Relievers grow on trees. Granted, not relievers with 2007s like Corpas’, but the point is that you can find effective relievers nearly anywhere, whether that be by crafty trade, solid scrapheap scouting, or your own farm. If Corpas is good to go, again, I’ll eat those words (I wonder if someone has tracked how many words and hats I might need to eat), but the concern is that he’ll NOT show up and suck for awhile and cost us precious wins in April and May, two months where we need to flourish for once.

There’s something to be said regarding the disparity between a batter having a bad game and a pitcher having a bad game (ie a strikeout by a batter might be forgotten by a rally from the next couple of batters, but a dinger from a pitcher could more easily mean the game), but that’s not really a Bad Corpas vs Bad Iannetta debate so much as it is just a conversation about the nature of baseball.

My defense of Iannetta is typically based around his strengths: Walking a metric ton and hitting for good power. 2009, he had an OBP .116 higher than his AVG, right in line with his career numbers, and had an ISO of .232, which followed his 2008 pretty closely. However, he went flyball crazy, struck out way too much, and as a result, hit for a pathetic average. He still did post an .804 OPS, which is fantastic from a catcher as a rule.

Corpas’ biggest strength is pretty much not walking anyone, and then striking out enough people to post a solid K/BB (his K numbers are not and never will be elite, but stacked up next to BB, they look great), along with keeping the ball in the park. In 2009, he walked even fewer than he did in 2007 (1.87 as compared to 2.31). He struck out a similar number to 2007, and as a result, his K/BB actually climbed in 2009. His HR9 climbed a bit, but not to the point where you wonder if the humidor broke or anything. However, much like Iannetta struggled in easily-recognizable ways, Corpas was very hittable, allowing a .317 AVG (.813 OPS) and a .366 BABIP. His fastball became more hittable and his slider/change dropped from being elite pitches to pedestrian at best. Pitch F/X shows a serious drop in his slider’s movement since 2007.

Basically, Iannetta and Corpas have similar things happening: Their easy-to-recognize/remember performances suck (Iannetta Strikeouts, bad AVG; Corpas ERA, OPSa), but the advanced numbers say they were both still productive.

Really though, it comes down to an issue of replaceability. When Iannetta has a down season, I’ll defend him not just because because his skillsets seem to still be in play, but because who exactly are we going to replace him with? The AA Defense-First option, a washed-up veteran, or the nowhere-near-ready prospect? However with Corpas, if he’s having a down season, yeah, I SHOULD be defending him (and I kind of tried to midseason), but it’s hard to when relief pitchers are such a fungible commodity, and we have Sam Deduno, Esmil Rogers, etc who could all come up and really get their feet wet in the bullpen and maybe get the benefit of “OH HAI MAJOR LEEG BATTERS U HAVNT SEEN ME YET LOL”, not to mention O’Dowd/Dac’s abilities to make serviceable pitchers from the scrapheap.

To sum all that up, the reason I defend Iannetta is that he hasn’t been as bad as his AVG would suggest, and we NEED to have something productive from catcher, while we would LIKE to have Corpas be productive. Better-hitting Iannetta is pretty much a necessity, while better-pitching Corpas would be a luxury.

It wasn’t for having a differing opinion. It was for semi-trolling and calling out a double standard that didn’t really apply. Iannetta has had one fantastic season, one very solid season, and a solid looking last two months in 2007.

if you put a player on waivers, any team that claims him takes on his salary and remaining contract.

If he clears and we have to release him, then yeah, the other teams pay league min and we pay the remnant.