A possible back-up to Gabriel Moreno
It was a little bit of a surprise when the Diamondbacks added René Pinto to their 40-man roster on January 10th, selecting him off waivers from the Baltimore Orioles. After all, the team already had three catchers on the roster there. It was generally expected that Jose Herrera or Adrian Del Castillo would back up Gabriel Moreno behind the plate for Arizona. With Herrera out of options, he perhaps has the inside track, perhaps giving Del Castillo, who’s still only 25, the chance to practice controlling the running-game down on an everyday basis in Reno. That was certainly an obvious weakness for him last year, being credited with only two CS in 29 attempts – and one of the two wasn’t really on him.
What’s odd is that it looks like Pinto is out of options as well, This means either he or Herrera will have to be placed on waivers in order to be sent down to the minors. The plan may be to leave that until the very end of spring training, when most teams have finalized their 40-man rosters and won’t have room to add fringy players like these. Hopefully, the loser will then make it through waivers and be stashed in Reno as positional depth. We do have the 40-man space. Right now, after the addition of Pinto, that sits at 39 players: I can see us dumping Montgomery, then adding a slugger and a bullpen arm, using whatever money we save as a result. That would bring the D-backs up to a full roster.
With regard to Reno, however, I see the team also has another catcher, Aramis Garcia, as a non-roster invitee. He has three times as much service time as Pinto, though not all that much more major-league experience. He has managed to be considerably less effective at the plate there, with a 57 OPS+ since his debut in 2018. But he does seem to have a good reputation as a defensive catcher. So perhaps he’ll be the other catcher for the Aces, and teach Del Castillo a thing or two about throwing out base-runners? We’ll talk more about Garcia when we do our usual pre-season review of all the NRIs in February. Here, we should just note that losing Pinto or Herrera on waivers wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.
Both men reached the big leagues in 2022, and Pinto’s big advantage over Herrera is that he is not a black hole offensively. René has an 86 OPS+ across his 82 games in the majors, which is considerably better than Herrera’s 51 OPS+ in 130 appearances. However, he is a right-handed hitter, unlike the switch-hitting Herrera, or the left-handed Del Castillo, so wouldn’t be as good a platoon partner with Moreno, also a RHB. Also of note, Pinto is not a great thrower, and last year, caught just one base-stealer of 19. Jose wasn’t great in that department in 2024 (weirdly, Herrera was fine in 2023 and excellent in 2022), but three of 31 is still better than René managed.
Pinto was actually the Tampa Bay Rays Opening Day catcher last year, with every indication being that the team saw him as their everyday man in the role for 2024. He received glowing reports from his team-mates in spring. His battery-mate on Opening Day, Zach Eflin, said of René, “You could see his personality and his will to want to get better and want to learn the game and want to be on the same page as the pitchers. He’s done that the entire offseason leading, up into spring. He’s been a great communicator. And he’s just a great backstop. You love throwing to a guy like that, who’s smart and always wants to be on the same page as you with conviction.”
Initially, he split playing time in April about evenly with Ben Rortvedt. However, in part because of those defensive struggles, he was optioned down to Triple-A by the team at the end of April, and did not return. Not helping matters, he had to miss seven weeks in the minors due to a wrist injury. He was placed on waivers by the Rays in November, from where the Orioles picked up René. Their subsequent signing of Gary Sanchez likely rendered Pinto surplus to requirements, and the catcher lost his roster spot in Baltimore after barely two months in the organization, in order to make way for Charlie Morton. That was when the D-backs stepped in.
“He’s got power, he can control the running game, he does some really good things behind the plate. We made a decision at the time to go with Jackson instead of Rene, because we thought that was a better play. Things never really got untracked from that point forward for Rene. It’s not what we envisioned, not what he envisioned. Parts of his game perhaps didn’t take the step forward we were hoping for, some injury, some loss of opportunity. (We) got to a place now where he’s out of options and had to make some calls in terms of our roster and what’s most likely to impact us moving forward.”
— Rays baseball operations president Erik Neander, on waiving Pinto
The comments by Neander about “control the running game” may seem at odds with the poor numbers there in 2024. But Pinto’s troubles with stolen bases last year are a bit surprising, since his pop time to second-base was 1.94 seconds. That’s better than average, though was seven clicks worse his number in 2023. The figure last year was very similar to Herrera (1.93) and a whole one-tenth quicker than Del Castillo, who’s 2.04 seconds ranked him 79th of 83 catchers. But there’s clearly more involved than just raw pop, as the underwhelming numbers from both Pinto and Herrera last season indicate. For example, bases could be getting stolen on the pitcher more than the catcher.
Pinto is 28, which makes him about three months older than Herrera, so there’s likely not much more development to be had. What you see is probably going to be what you get from him, and it’s uncertain whether that will fit into the team’s needs. Obviously, we want to see Moreno out there as often as possible, but that ended up being only 83 starts in 2024. So it’s prudent to have alternatives. With Herrera struggling on both sides of the game in 2024, there’s a distinct possibility Pinto could end up taking over the job. It’s definitely a battle to watch, once pitchers and catchers report next month.