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Jerry DiPoto has taken to calling his depth chart "layered."  SSI approves of this lingo.  Layers rock.  The more layers you fold into shtreudel dough, the flakier and more tender it is out of the oven.  The more layers a samurai folds into his blade at the firepit, the more easily it slices through a machine gun.  And the more 25-man rosters you have, the less likely it is that your starting catcher will walk 21 times and strike out 132 times.

Rob Brantly is well worth a 25-man roster spot.  But then, so are a lot of guys these days.  The crunch on Brantly would be

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CURRENT HITTING

Dr. D doesn't feel like snicking the still images, so to keep it concise, here's one dynamic swing in real time.  Note:

• The steadiness of the head
• The shortness to the ball
• Sinks his weight a la Mike Napoli (weight-sinking been berry, berry good to baseball hitters)
• Plate coverage and use of the other field

If you didn't know better, you'd think it was Joe Mauer or something.  Trouble is, a beautiful sports motion does not an All-Star make; you have other things to consider, like maybe the guy's vision is 20/200.  Good baseball hitting is layered.

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PREVIOUS HITTING

Used to be a well-regarded hitting prospect.  Like what?  Like

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has a strong, compact swing and the ability to make consistent, hard contact to all fields. He has a mature, patient offensive approach, excellent pitch recognition and advanced strike-zone awareness. He has above-average power to the pull side and also good power the other way.

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And the baseball face grades 70, that we can tell you

Thus Baseball America.  And there are several buzzwords in there, that would have perked up Jerry DiPoto's ears even if DiPoto didn't know Brantly like a book, which he does.  C the Z, baby.

Brantly used to be an exciting prospect and he's still just a 25* year old catcher, which is like being a 22 or 23 year old first baseman.  So there's more upside than with Clevenger.  Less normalside, too.

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PLATOON

Could be that Brantly is here just to Stuart Smalley the ego of Adam Lind, since Brantly has hit .092 with a .136 SLG in his first 70 trips against lefties.  But that also means that vs RHP, Brantly has hit a respectable .254 with respectable PWR and very respectable C the Z.

If you don't like Brantly's chances to start the 2017 All-Star game, you might like his chances to OPS+ 100 in his forty games as a platoon catcher.  Or more than that.  You decide; you're just "liking his chances," not negotiating with his agent.

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DEFENSE

Steve Clevenger has a rap for Jaso-like defense.  Maybe Brantly's here to upgrade the defense on 25% of the catching?  Here is a Florida Fishstripes fan on his defense.  The bottom line:  big arm, but not a hockey goalie by any stretch.  We've seen this kind of "kludgy" linebacker play catcher for us before.  But the whole sordid thing about "Run Miguel Olivo out of town because he's not Dan Wilson" was a looooong time ago.  This is the DiPoto era.

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SHTREUDEL

If Steve Clevenger fails, which he of course might, then Jerry DiPoto is ready.  Think about that for a second.  You're fretting about your second catcher, whose REL (reliability) score against RHP's is maxed out.

It's a little like saying if the Shout Box fails (which it kind of did last week), we've got the D-O-V Mainframe over there, and if that fails, I've been brushing up my Twitter, and if Twitter goes under, I've been going through a book on Morse code ...  How many layers does Seattle Sports Insider really need?  

... wait.  Don't answer that.  Some things in life actually ARE that important, aren't they.

Well, that's a bad example.  But you take our point on the shtreudel.  If you've never had it -- and Mariners fans have never had roster shtreudel, that's for sure -- it can be quite a treat.

Those 650 words said, I'm waiting for Paxton to pitch up in the zone on day 5.  Then I'll dig in.

Be Afraid,

Dr D