Atlanta Braves: Cause for concern about Travis d’Arnaud?

The Atlanta Braves needed a solution at catcher, did they make the right choice with Travis d’Arnaud?

Travis d’Arnaud signed a two-year, $16 million deal with the Atlanta Braves this offseason. He endeared himself to the Tampa Bay faithful (all 243 of them) in 2019, hitting 16 homers in just 351 at-bats.  He routinely found himself anchoring the middle of their lineup and catching studs like Charlie Morton and Blake Snell.

Rays’ fans and players alike, were sad to hear when he signed with the Atlanta Braves.

While he only got on base at a .323 clip last season, he put up his second-best slugging season with a .459.

His career OBP is .307. His career batting average is .246. He’s been in the league for seven seasons.

Late and close (clutch situations) he has hit .233/.296/.373

He has some power but he’s not a prolific power hitter by any stretch of the imagination. He has a career slugging percentage of .412.

d’Arnaud’s 16 home runs last season matched his career-high. He has 63 career home runs with a 162-game average of 20 homers. Of course, catchers do not play 162 games. What this means is TDA has averaged a home run every 26.8 at-bats.

• The most at-bats he has ever received in a season is 385 in 2014.
• The most games he’s ever played in during a single season is 112 in 2017.
• The highest rWAR he’s ever posted in a single season is 1.6 in 2015 with a seven-year total of 3.3
• He’s only thrown out 22% of base runners for his career.
• He has posted -16 runs saved over his career at catcher.

Just for comparison-sake, Yadier Molina has 165 career defensive runs saved while throwing out 40% of base runners over his 16 seasons.

A lot of these shortcomings could be contributed to d’Arnaud’s long list of injuries, but for some reason, that doesn’t make me feel better.

Here’s a rundown of his injuries from a previous article.

"In 2012 he partially tore his PCL, in 2013 he suffered a broken foot, and in 2014 he required elbow surgery to repair a bone spur that broke off on a throw to second base.The next year he suffered a broken hand, and then the following year it was his rotator cuff.The icing on top of the cake is a 2017 Tommy John surgery."

Despite all of this, I am optimistic for d’Arnaud this season. He was healthy and did make a significant impact for the Rays in their 96-win season. If his offense has progressed to the point of being a .260/.320/.450 type-hitter, then he’s a good deal.

As far as his defensive runs saved, I know that equation puts a lot of emphasis on throwing out base runners, the main thing is the pitchers seem to like pitching to him.

Stats compiled from Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference.

What do you think? Will TDA be a hit in ATL? Let us know in the comments below!