Gabriel Moreno Has Entered the Catcher Gold Glove Conversation

The second-year player has already made his mark on the league

When Diamondbacks General Manager Mike Hazen traded for Gabriel Moreno this past off season he believed he was getting his catcher of the future. The initial plan was to work him into a starting role gradually, having Carson Kelly shoulder about 60% of the catching duties. Moreno had started a career high 67 games at catcher in 2022, with 50 of those coming from the minor leagues and just 17 in MLB with the Blue Jays last year. With such a low previous workload built up, it's understandable why the initial plan was to bring him along to a starting role gradually. 

Injuries Change the Plan

The plan immediately changed when Kelly suffered a fractured forearm on a hit by pitch in spring training, thrusting Moreno into a starting role from opening day. Moreno started 45 of the team's first 65 games or roughly 70% through June 11th. That was a pace for 113 games over a full season, and given his previous history, was clearly an unsustainable pace for his first full year in the majors.  It should be noted that in 2022 only three catchers caught 110 games or more, J.T. Realmuto, Sean Murphy, and Martin Maldonado. 

Manager Torey Lovullo started to give Moreno a bit more time off when Kelly returned, splitting the playing time evenly giving each player nine starts over the next 18 games. Moreno had been showing some signs of fatigue, which was manifesting itself more in his batting line. Behind the scenes and unknown to even those in the media, Moreno then suffered a left non-throwing shoulder injury in the batting cage on July 1st. The team did not reveal the injury at that time.  Moreno tried to play through it and much to the consternation of fans,  Lovullo gave him a little more time off than usual over the next three weeks. They could not get the soreness out of the shoulder, however, so eventually Moreno hit the injured list on July 23rd and missed 22 days. When he came back on August 14th, Kelly was DFA'd.  Moreno has since started 12 of the last 15 games, with backup Jose Herrera assuming the other three games.

The Gold Glove Case

Workload

Through all of that, Moreno is 8th in the National League in innings caught with 663 over 82 games and 73 starts. Barring injury he is likely to move up a couple of spots  by starting at least 20 of the remaining 29 games and should surpass the 800 innings caught threshold.  Workload and innings caught should not be an issue prohibiting Gold Glove voters from considering him. 

Catcher throwing

During that early stretch of games, Moreno immediately established himself not only as a major league caliber catcher, but showed off the premier throwing arm in the game, catching base stealers at a prolific rate. Almost from the outset he took over the lead in caught stealing percentage and in advanced catcher throwing metrics.  He has not relinquished his position. He leads the NL in caught stealing percentage with a 44% rate, catching 19 of 43 would be base stealers through August 29. 

The two primary advanced defensive metrics sites, The Fielding Bible and Statcast/Baseball Savant each rate Moreno as having saved +5 runs above average on base stealing attempts. So whether using traditional or advanced stats, there appears to be no difference in how Moreno's throwing is rated. 

Below is a good video breakdown of Moreno's throwing mechanics from former MLB and D-backs catcher Alex Avila from June 30th. 

Blocking

Early in the year it became apparent that blocking pitches was an area for improvement for Moreno. So bench/catching coach Jeff Bannister got together with him and began working on drills and fundamentals. Moreno immediately accepted the coaching and has implemented the improvements, turning a negative into a positive. Moreno currently ranks 4th in the NL with +4 catcher blocks above average according to Statcast. 

Adjusted ER Saved

The Fielding Bible has a category they describe as "Our metric for catcher value in staff handling (similar to Catcher ERA but with important adjustments)".   Moreno ranks first in that category in all of MLB, with +8 runs above average. In speaking with the pitchers he throws to, including veterans such as Zac Gallen and Merrill Kelly, they marvel at how quickly Moreno has caught on and been able to get in sync with them, and how much he cares by going over meticulous game plans prior to games. 

Pitch Framing

This is the only category that Moreno has a negative rating, in which he rates -3 runs by Fielding Bible and -2 by Statcast.  This metric is not without some controversy over it's efficacy.  Baseball Reference shows the framing runs on their catcher fielding pages, but does not include the framing runs in their WAR metric, as Sean Forman, the owner of Sports Reference is still not confident in the metric enough to include it in his flagship metric.

One front office analyst with another organization shared his thoughts with me on the efficacy of the metric,

"Many of the thing pitch framers do to steal strikes makes them worse receivers in other areas: pitch calling, setting targets, limiting fatigue due to pitch counts, etc. If the focus becomes "stealing strikes," you may do so at the cost of calling for pitches that are more effective overall regardless of what the ump calls it."

"For example the very best pitch is the one that is on the inside/outside corner of the zone, not the one off it that you sometimes steal. Calling for more of the latter over more of the former might help your framing numbers without actually helping the pitcher."

Speaking with Bannister about framing yesterday, he said he felt that framing sometimes rewards or penalizes a catcher for umpire mistakes. 

Athleticism

SIS also rates Moreno above average on covering bunts. See for yourself

Here’s the amazing play by Moreno! pic.twitter.com/BVx8pt3Hvt

— Michael McDermott (@MichaelMcD8393) August 27, 2023

What does it all Mean?

Baseball Reference dWAR or defensive wins above replacement rates Moreno as the most valuable defensive player in the National League with 2.3 dWAR. That's among ALL players, not just catchers.  This is based mostly on Fielding Bible which ranks Moreno +14, decimal points ahead of the Giants Patrick Bailey, who it should be mentioned is getting the lions share of his rating from the aforementioned framing runs. As mentioned above, Statcast ranks Moreno first in throwing and 4th in blocking, but negative in framing. 

The voting on the Rawlings Gold Glove award is done by the manager and up to 6 coaches from each staff in the league, but they cannot vote for their own players. A portion of the voting also goes to the SABR Defensive Index, which combines measures from six different sources. 

Bannister indicated that in discussions with other coaches and managers, he knows they are well aware of how good Moreno is and they're talking about him. Whether that is enough to make Moreno a finalist for the award remains to be seen. One thing is for certain. Mike Hazen indeed found his catcher of the future and D-backs pitchers and fans should be treated to his excellent fielding for years to come.