Spring Training Noises

Indians.com is reporting that there's no guarantee that Paul Byrd will have Kelly Shoppach as his personal catcher this year. I'm not entirely sure if this is just Wedgie saying something for the sake of saying it, or whether he really means it. I think Wedge handled Martinez very well last season. Vic caught only 1042 innings last year, the equivalent of about 116 full games. Martinez also happened to have his best year with the bat. Compare this to 2005, when Martinez caught 1233 innings, including almost every single game in the last 2 months of the season. To be fair, Vic did have a hell of an offensive season in 2005.

I do think that for all the dubious glances the sabermetric community directs at the general idea of how well a catcher handles a pitcher, it seems obvious that the Byrd-Shoppach pairing was mutually beneficial. It forced Wedge to move Martinez from behind the plate at least once every five games, something that will help him in the long run. Furthermore, it just seemed that Byrd and Shoppach worked well together. Wedge was also smart enough to keep Martinez in the lineup by playing him at first base reasonably often.

Wedge in the article says he's hesitant to continue the personal catcher tactic because executing it means that he'll have to sit one of Martinez, Hafner or Garko. However, he'll have to do that once or twice a week anyways, because it's not a good idea to have Martinez catch 140 games. In the end, I think Wedge is more or less giving the reporters a nugget to report, but that Shoppach and Byrd will continue to be paired up, assuming both maintain health throughout the season.