.............

Sandy digs up an annihilating precedent, burrowing farrrrrrr into the nether regions of baseball history to identify the 2011 Tigers:

Detroit:

Avila - 130 games caught

VMart - 26 games caught - 112 DH

Santos - 6 games caught (don't know when he was and was not on the roster, but he played two games in April (19/20) ... then didn't appear again until August 25th.  So, most of his games caught were after rosters expanded.

To which Spectator -- about to launch his own blog, a sister site to SSI and MC, if we have anything to say about it -- follows on neatly:

From poking around, it looks like Leyland was cool with burning the DH if he had too, but it looks like he never did.

They did have a utility guy on the roster ready to play C if needed, but you're right -- VMart was the only other true C and also the primary DH.

But!  For the playoffs, they kept Santos as the third catcher.  Didn't want to get exposed at crunch time.  Interesting.

I didn't realize that the 2011 Tigers didn't carry another catcher beyond Aliva and V-Mart.  I especially didn't realize that it wound up costing them zero at-bats.

.........

We had submitted this question to James, and in the first iteration, he found the question annoying:

How feasible is it, in today's game, to carry one catcher with one catcher/DH on the 25-man roster? In 2010, Posada caught 83 games, DH'ed 30 ... in 2006-10, Mauer would DH 20-25 games and catch 100+, with only one other catcher on the roster usually, I think ... in 2011 Victor Martinez DH'ed 26 games and caught 112 ... Seattle would like to catch Montero in about 40 games or so. People talk about the risk of a injury to the 'pure catcher' and losing the DH for the finish of that game. It's unclear, however, whether it's more costly to devote an entire roster slot to a third (weak) catcher if it's primarily to avoid these potential few AB's without the DH. Do teams keep the 3rd catcher in part to avoid the embarrassment of an awkward-looking response to a game situation?

Asked by: jemanji

Answered: 3/14/2012

You're ignoring two things:   1)  That teams today in general DON'T keep a third catcher, and 2) that the 25-man roster today isn't a hard limit.   Teams now move players back and forth to AAA on a constant basis, keeping the third catcher close by the use of options.    The 25-man roster isn't REALLY 25 players any more, hasn't been for years.    

 

It depends on the player, doesn't it?   If you're a National League team and you have to keep a couple of pinch hitters around to pinch hit and one of them is a really bad defensive catcher, then sure, it makes sense to carry that player.   If you narrow the question to where the player doesn't do ANYTHING except provide emergency insurance at catcher, then obviously that isn't practical in the modern game where players can easily be recalled from AAA, and nobody does that. 

So, after some deliberation and then Sandy's observation, I've triangulated a position here.  Hold your applause until the end.  The M's would only keep John Jaso for the rather "indulgent" luxury of --- > avoiding a couple of times they might lose the DH for half a game.

That's not enough.  It's not worth a whole extra roster slot -- Catricala's or Seager's -- in order to avoid a pitcher-bats situation once or twice a year.  Kyle Seager should not be sent to AAA for the purpose of Eric Wedge's being able to avoid an "embarrassing" at-bat once or twice a year.

Prove me wrong,

Dr D