Pressed into starting duty after Welington Castillo’s PED suspension, Narváez broke out on offense. Omar had always been reliable for an above-average OBP with exceptionally little power but managed to raise his SLG almost .090 points from his 2017 numbers, ending the season with nine home runs and a .275/.366/.429 slash line. Unfortunately, he combines that approach at the plate with being one of the worst receivers in baseball both in terms of framing and blocking.

The Mariners traded for Colomé last May, obtaining the former All-Star from Tampa in yet another of the Rays arcane trade attempts to put together the most efficient team to miss the playoffs by 7 or more games. Colomé saved 84 games for Tampa from 2016-17 and pitched well for Seattle as a set-up man after the trade last season, striking out 3.77 hitters for every one he walked over 46.1 IP. He relies almost exclusively on a  low-90s cutter and a mid-90s four-seamer though he does also have a changeup he’ll throw maybe 5 times a season as well.

What does this mean for the roster and the immediate future of the White Sox? Colomé won’t hit free agency until after the 2020 season and likely slots in as the closer for next year’s team as he currently might just be the best reliever on the team. The Sox need improvement from the bullpen this season and unless he gets injured or completely loses his mechanics (which could happen because pitchers are pitchers), this helps shore up that weakness a good deal. Everyone other reliever becomes a bit more palatable when they’re moved down the ladder one rung.

As for catcher, I wouldn’t expect anything big happening. Yasmani Grandal is a free agent and would be a great addition to a team that’s contention window could begin early if management wanted to make some splashes this winter, but I don’t really see it happening. Seby Zavala was just added to the 40-man and I’d be pretty surprised to see Rick Hahn & Co. relegate Castillo to the bench with how much he’s being paid. That being said, trading your reliable backup catcher with four years left of team control for a good reliever with only two years does hint towards moving into the bolstering the major league roster portion of the rebuilding phase.

It would be very fair to say that Omar Narvaez is one of BP South Side’s favorite sons. The essentially unheralded former Minor League Rule Five draft pick displayed quiet competence during his cup of coffee in 2016 (.267/.350/.337) and then improved upon it during his first full season as a backup in the majors in 2017 (.277/.373/.340). He established himself as a useful bench bat that could maybe even become half of a platoon if his defense improved a bit. A solid OBP coupled with doubles power is useful anywhere, but especially at the backstop.

Instead, circumstances forced the Sox into using Narvaez as the number one catcher after Welington Castillo got caught using EPO and missed half the season with a suspension. Fortunately enough, he rose to the challenge. Narvaez had a whopping three career home runs to his name over 412 PA before 2018. He’s the kind of hitter who somehow only managed to hit two dingers during the Season of the Juiced Ball. Yet somehow in only 322 PA this season he knocked nine pitches out of the park. His plate discipline skills remained as good as they’ve always been (with just a slight uptick in strikeouts) but seemingly out of nowhere his ISO increased 2.5 times (.063 to .152). His .794 OPS was second on the team behind only Jose Abreu’s injury-riddled .798. That’s a bat that more or less demands starting reps.

Unfortunately, his defense skills didn’t make the same jump and remain stagnantly poor. He lacks range and fluidity while blocking as his 12 passed balls and the 44 wild pitches thrown while he was catching show. He threw out 24 percent of all would be thieves, which isn’t too bad but league average was 28 percent. And while defensive metrics tend to be suspect and catchers get it worse than anyone, it’s hard to say his -17.5 FRAA is undeserved. His poor framing skills (-10.8 framing runs) gave back a win alone on defense.

His 2018 wasn’t perfect, but it was the leap forward he needed to cement his place on the 2019 roster. If the Sox can find production at other positions, that should play well enough to make his defense palatable.

During his tenure on the South Side, Flowers was far from a world beater. The former bat first/maybe catch 3 days a week prospect seemed to suddenly forget how to hit. But he quietly started becoming one of the better pitch framers in all of baseball just before it became the new big thing to pay attention to and try to quantify. And then for reasons I still do not understand to this day, the Sox non-tendered him. This alone was not a backbreaking mistake. But replacing him with the strange platoon of a 32-year-old Dioner Navarro and the balsa wood-boned Alex Avila effectively turned one position from a quiet strength to that of a glaring weakness. After failing to come even close to making the playoffs yet again, the Sox would ultimately decide on their current path and blew up the roster, kicking off the rebuild we endure to this day.

There was one potential bright spot at catcher in 2016 though.  Unheralded former minor league Rule 5 draft pick Omar Narvaez came up towards the end of the season and managed to hit .267/.350/.337 over 34 games. Nothing amazing, but not far below league average for a player who was more or less an afterthought. 2017 showed that cup of coffee to have not been a fluke, as his odd skill set of no power but great plate discipline improved his line to .277/.373/.340 with 38 BB to only 45 K over 90 games. While the lack of power in a season where almost everyone seemed capable of hitting at least 10 home runs was less than ideal, it’s hard to be too upset about such a robust on-base percentage. It looked like maybe Chicago had stumbled into a pretty useful backup catcher at the worst, or maybe a decent platoon candidate if all things shook out right.

Welington Castillo was brought in from Baltimore to carry the lion’s share of the load for 2018 and was doing a decent job until catching an 80 game suspension in late May due to testing positive for EPO. Not the best way to start a two year deal, but it’s not like the team was actively trying to compete this season anyway. Besides, this just gave the Narv Dog more time to shine and he did not let his adoring internet public down. Through 92 games so far, Omar has been almost the same player he’d shown himself to be over the previous two years: batting average of .273, OBP at .362. But one thing changed that may have shifted the platoon dynamic for next season: Omar learned how to hit for power. After only hitting three home runs in his previous 364 major league plate appearances, Narvaez managed to quadruple his career totals, hitting nine home runs through play Tuesday. His slugging percentage at the time of typing this article is .434, almost .100 points higher than last season. His OPS+ is 121 which is a team high for anyone who has played in more than 50 games.

That being said, there are definitely reasons for concern. While his bat has blossomed into a very useful one, his defense continues to lag behind. Narvaez has allowed 12 passed balls and 44 wild pitches (third most passed balls in baseball). 65 base runners have successfully stolen a base against Omar, second most in the league and only four behind Jonathan Lucroy (who has played in 30 more games). These are legitimate concerns about if the White Sox can afford to play Narvaez more and trying to find the sweet spot between getting his bat in the lineup more without giving too much back defensively. But with his main competition being an aging Castillo coming off a lengthy suspension, the older-than-you-think Kevan Smith, Zack Collins and his even greater defensive struggles, and Seby Zavala whose bat may never translate past Triple-A and it looks like Omar might just be the man for the job for the foreseeable future.

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Kopech didn’t have his best stuff — something he was up front about to reporters after the game — as his velocity was down a bit and his command of his breaking pitches wavered, but he still managed to induce 10 swinging strikes and most importantly didn’t issue a walk. His next walk allowed will be the first at the major league level and he hasn’t issued one at either level for the entire month of August.

The fact that he hasn’t allowed a walk is the most notable thing about Kopech’s eight major league innings. Evaluators have never doubted his stuff, but his ability to command each of his pitches is what many believe will be the difference between him living up to his potential as a starter. Even in Sunday’s uneven start, Kopech pounded the zone, throwing 61 of his 86 offerings for strikes. It was just the Tigers (a common refrain throughout this article) but it’s another passing grade for Kopech.

His next start is expected to come Friday and be a much tougher challenge — the league-leading and his former franchise Boston Red Sox.

2. Is it time to start believing in Lucas Giolito again?

Saturday’s 6-inning, 1-run performance against a moribund Detroit Tigers team might not be enough to convince you just yet, but the White Sox young starter turned in perhaps his best start of the season in a 6-1 win. It was his seventh quality start in his last nine outings and the fifth time in his last six starts where he induced 10 or more swinging strikes. He’s lowered his ERA to a still bad but improving 5.85 in the process, and has seen a significant uptick in his velocity.

The fact that Giolito has survived in the rotation throughout the season is more a product of the White Sox place in the standings than anything else, but the ability to afford a young and important piece of the team’s future the opportunity to work through his struggles could prove integral in the long-term.

3. Another White Sox prospect has been shut down for the season. But this time, it’s OK!

Dylan Cease is almost undoubtedly the White Sox minor league pitcher whose taken the biggest step forward in his development this season. And that’s saying something for someone who was already generally considered a consensus Top 100 prospect in the game entering the season. Cease, who had never topped more than 93 innings pitched in any professional season, ended his minor league season a few weeks early at a career-best 124 innings pitched, flawlessly jumping from Advanced-A to Double-A without missing a beat.

After dominating the lesser level for the first half of the season, Cease was even better upon his promotion to Birmingham, putting up a 1.72 ERA with 78 strikeouts against 22 walks in 52 1/3 innings at Double-A. The talent that made him one of the top pitching prospects in the Cubs’ organization despite a limited workload and one of the White Sox targets in their trade of Jose Quintana a year ago is starting to be realized, and the 22-year-old has positioned himself well to perhaps be in line for a major league call-up by late 2019, if things continue to go as planned.

4. Omar Narvaez now has about half of a season’s of plate appearances worth of significantly above-average offensive production. In 248 plate appearances, his 126 wRC+ entering Sunday would be good for fifth best among catchers with enough plate appearances to warrant consideration, behind only Francisco Cervelli, Wilson Ramos, Yasmani Grandal, and J.T. Realmuto.

The problem continues to be his defense, at least according to some. Narvaez ranks dead last in BP’s FRAA_ADJ stat, which is a catcher-specific version of FRAA that takes into account framing. Because of this, WARP grades Narvaez as essentially a replacement level catcher (0.51, to be exact). It’s a pretty significant difference from versions of WAR that judge defense differently — bWAR has him as worth 1.4 wins and fWAR has him at 1.7.

The biggest surprise offensively for Narvaez has been his power. While he’ll never be mistaken for prime Mike Piazza, his six home runs are double his career output entering the season, and his .430 slugging percentage entering Sunday is 90 points higher than last year.

What the White Sox believe they have in Narvaez will obviously depend on how much their internal numbers regarding his defense and framing match up with the numbers we have. Either way, the catching position is an interesting one to watch, particularly with Welington Castillo’s suspension ending. The White Sox transferred Castillo to the disabled list last week and he’s currently rehabbing in Charlotte, and he’ll presumably rejoin the team once rosters expand next week. Castillo is also under contract for the next two season (2020 is a team option) so one would assume the starting position is his for the foreseeable future.

Still, Narvaez’s offensive breakout gives the White Sox options they likely didn’t envision having entering the season. And while the performances of both Zack Collins and Seby Zavala this season are reasons for optimism about the future of a position the White Sox have struggled to find production at for a long while, the combination of Narvaez and Castillo give them present production much more serviceable than expected.

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1. Jose Abreu was voted as the starting first baseman for the AL All Star team, the first White Sox player voted to start the game since Frank Thomas in 1996. Ironically, it comes as he is having the worst year of his career, but given that there aren’t really any other standout years of consequence, it’s perfectly fair to give the nod to the steady and much-loved Abreu.

2. Dylan Cease and Luis Alexander Basabe were also selected for the Futures Game. Basabe has cooled off somewhat in the weeks before his promotion to Birmingham, and continued to scuffle in Double-A.  Still, he is an exciting athlete who got off to a good enough start, and one can easily imagine him putting together a highlight or two in the game itself.  As for Cease, five more innings and he will match his single-season career high in pro ball.  After being brought along very cautiously by the Cubs, Cease carved through his first look at High-A and has gotten off to a strong start in Double-A.  That Cease is putting himself in the picture for a big league arrival in 2019 is a pleasant surprise, particularly given how many other White Sox prospects have been derailed by injury.

3. Between James Shields always pitching at least six innings a game and the White Sox losing so much on the road, their bullpen is still only 17th in the majors in innings pitched. Still, as the season has gone on, Rick Renteria has leaned more and more heavily on Jace Fry and Xavier Cedeno.  They’ve acquitted themselves well, but Bruce Rondon, Chris Volstad, and Hector Santiago have struggled.  All of this brings me to Ian Hamilton, as the 2016 11th round pick continues his march to the majors.  After 25 dominant innings in Double-A, he has yet to allow a run in 6 2/3 Triple-A innings, boasting a K:BB ratio of 9.00. As much as I appreciate the White Sox giving run to a loyal organizational soldier like Volstad, Hamilton and others not far behind him may squeeze him out before we get to September.

4. After 2016, we thought we had a good idea of who Avisail Garcia was. Then in 2017 he went nuts and challenged for the batting title and seemed to cash in on his massive potential, although he did so in a different shape than we’d thought, as his raw power indicates a classic corner outfield masher rather than an off brand version of Tony Gwynn. So 2018 was a chance to get an answer to the question: Who is Avisail Garcia? We may still not know! He was horrible and then hurt … and then since he got back from the DL he just started hitting for all of that massive power we knew was in there but seemed inaccessible. Coming into Sunday’s game, Garcia had hit .333/.348/.803 with eight home runs in his 16 games post-hamstring strain. Sure. Why not?

5. Omar Narvaez has also thoroughly broken out, following a June where he hit .391/.440/.522 with a scorching start to July as well. Unfortunately, our framing metrics still have Narvaez as one of the worst in the majors, but this is the most power he has ever shown (a low bar, but still) and he’s coming up on 600 PAs as a .273/.360/.352 hitter. Neat trick for a catcher. Maybe he can pull a Welington Castillo and randomly fix his framing in his late 20s. Not the steroids thing.

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I’ll save the hand-wringing over the integrity and morality of Castillo’s deed for those who feel more inclined (although Rosenthal also confirmed the suspension is not for a steroid), but assuming MLB confirms the suspension Thursday, the White Sox will essentially be right back where they were prior to Castillo’s signing — with a glaring black hole behind the plate.

Omar Narvaez, who was more or less than starting catcher throughout 2017, is better served as a backup catcher (if that), and what he brought to the table last season (on-base skills) hasn’t carried over to his part-time work this year. Narvaez is hitting .180/.275/.246 through 70 plate appearances with twice as many strikeouts as walks. Castillo’s defensive numbers, which have dipped this year after a career-year in 2017, were more palatable considering the plus offensive skills he provided. Narvaez provides none of that, and poor defensive skills to boot. In his limited action, he ranks last in the majors in FRAA_ADJ at -5.7. And while he has thrown out 31 percent of attempted base stealers, he leads the league in passed balls allowed.

Behind Narvaez will presumably be a familiar face in Kevan Smith. The 29-year-old, who spent a majority of last season with the White Sox, was just placed on the minor league 7-day disabled list, although the severity of the injury is unknown. Smith provides a bit more offense than Narvaez, and has also received glowing reviews from pitchers for his game calling in the past, but features the same defensive shortcomings.

Outside of those two, there aren’t a lot of options. The only other catcher on the 40-man roster is Alfredo Gonzalez, who has received glowing reviews for his framing throughout his minor league career, but is a career .233/.319/.304 hitter at the minor league level, including .169/.278/.191 thus far this season with Triple-A Charlotte. The other catcher on Charlotte’s roster, Brett Austin, was Carlos Rodon’s catcher at N.C. State but has garnered just five at-bats this season and is also currently on the disabled list. 39-year-old Carlos Ruiz and old friend Geovany Soto are free agent possibilities, but it’s unclear if there is any interest or if either would represent much of an upgrade over Narvaez and/or Smith.

What this means for Castillo’s future is perhaps even more unclear. When the White Sox signed him to a two year, $15 million deal with a team option for 2020 in the offseason, it was seen as a level-headed move for a stabilizing veteran meant to bridge the gap between the present and when Zack Collins was presumed ready to take over.

80 games is demoralizing for a team, not because they’re trying to contend, but because that stability is now lost. Castillo will presumably rejoin the team following the suspension and play out his contract in 2019, but what comes next for both him and the White Sox catching position is now up in the air.

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Throughout his time in the minors, Omar Narvaez demonstrated that he could make contact and draw walks. After a partial season in his major league debut in 2016, the skill apparently translated against the highest level of pitching. Another ~300 PAs of .277/.373/.340 hitting showed he clearly owns an on-base ability that is well above average in a league where catchers collectively posted an OBP of .315.

Indeed, Narvaez achieves this despite the complete non-existence of any power whatsoever. Anyone who has watched him hit shows how he pulls this off, with his good eye, ability to spoil pitches, shorten his swing, and approach with a goal of nothing more than reaching first base. And thus, we have a triple slash line that accurately conveys exactly the type of player Narvaez is on offense, and what we can reasonably expect to see moving forward.  After all, if pitchers could just get him out by going straight at him, one imagines they would have already done so.

So far so good — we have a lopsided, but valuable offensive profile from a left-handed bat that plays a valuable position in his mid-20s. The problem isn’t here. The problem comes on the other side of the ball.

By our metrics, Narvaez ranked as 87th in framing runs and 94th in overall catcher defense. Between that and his power, the ceiling here is low. One reason for optimism is that Narvaez is quite young, framing is something that can be improved with coaching, and in some, but not all, instances, the White Sox have managed to coach up framing.

The White Sox don’t have to make any decisions about Narvaez right now. Unless they want to try to sign a reclamation project like Jonathan Lucroy this offseason, the other catchers on the free agent market are all much older than Narvaez and offer similarly one-dimensional production, if any at all. Teams aren’t really in the habit of trading away usable catchers, either, seeing how few of them there are to be had.

Internally, Zack Collins is the only prospect with a chance at being an impact player at the position, and that is hardly a given, nor is it imminent. In other words, with Narvaez here, the White Sox have a player who pairs well with the more numerous, right-handed options at catcher for a platoon situation, and may be able to shore up his weaknesses on defense such that he is something resembling a second division starter.

If nothing else, for zero investment, he is a nifty find, and certainly an unusual, interesting player to watch.

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The one piece that threw a bit of cold water on the excitement Tuesday came from ESPN’s Keith Law, who wondered if the White Sox committed too much money to someone who might wind up more like the Cuban imports who failed (Rusney Castillo, Hector Olivera) than those who succeeded (Yoenis Cespedes, Yasiel Puig).

Law is a respected evaluator and admits he’s yet to see Robert in person — instead relying on info he’s received from scouts who have — but while the concern that Robert won’t live up to the money the White Sox committed to him is valid, the risks that come with a player of his ilk are not unlike basically any other prospect.

No young player, whether he’s a draft pick or international signee, is a finished product. Robert is no sure thing, just like any Global Top 100 or even Top 10 prospect isn’t a sure thing. But in order for the White Sox to build a competitive core and find long-term success, they need to be able to take risks like committing multi-million dollar contracts to 19-year-old players.

So while Robert isn’t a sure thing, he’s a smart, calculated signing from a team that hasn’t been willing to commit those kinds of resources all that often in the past. A necessary and important step in the right direction.

2. Dylan Covey left Tuesday’s 5-4 loss to the Diamondbacks with an oblique injury after giving up four runs in 2 1/3 innings, and the White Sox somehow stayed within striking distance while Chris Beck, Gregory Infante, and David Holmberg survived the next 4 2/3 innings.

From a short-term perspective, that trio surviving the evening was important for a team playing its ninth of 10 straight west coast games. But while Covey hasn’t showed much in terms of progress during his eight starts, the White Sox pitching rotation depth is growing increasingly thin if Covey joins Carlos Rodon and James Shields on the disabled list.

If Covey does miss time, the White Sox options pretty much boil down to another quad-A placeholder like Chris Volstad (and his 6.55 ERA in Charlotte), the low ceiling but at least somewhat enticing Tyler Danish, or the anticipated ascension of Reynaldo Lopez. While the White Sox have a much needed day off Thursday, a doubleheader Friday complicates things. Whether they decide someone like Lopez is ready or not will likely be known by whether or not they opt for him or another short-term fix.

3. Speaking of injuries, Rick Hahn gave an update on the host of disabled White Sox Monday, and while no timetable was given on the return of Rodon, the fact that he is continuing to throw every fifth day and ramping up his workload is obviously a good sign.

We’re past the point of expecting Rodon to post the breakout season that was hoped for before the season began, and at this point him just proving he can look like his old self for a few months would be a step in the right direction. We’re still a ways off from him joining the rotation, but if he’s able to do that successfully, it’ll go a long way toward this injury becoming more of a minor road bump in his career than a major issue.

4. Omar Narvaez entered the season as one of several young players looking to prove they belonged on a major league roster. Thus far, he’s been about everything he was a year ago, which is to say his defense neither stands out nor offends, and he gets on base a ton while hitting for practically no power.

FRAA still doesn’t like him much — he grades out at -1.1, which is 14th out of the 21 with at least as many framing opportunities as him this season. But he was -4.1 a year ago in nearly as many opportunities, so there have been signs of improvement.

Offensively, his walk rate would be among the Top 10 in the league if he had enough plate appearances to qualify, but he also has all of two extra base hits, slugging a paltry .264, somehow about 70 points lower than a year ago. While Narvaez still has only a little more than 200 plate appearances to his credit thus far in his career, a pretty solid performance baseline seems to have been set.

5. One of the fun things about outscoring a team 26-3 over a three-game span, as the White Sox did over the weekend in Seattle, is that you wake up and your mediocre baseball team suddenly has the best run differential in the division.

The American League Central is proving to be about as average as everyone expected this season, with only the Royals looking like a hilarious train wreck thus far and Cleveland failing to separate themselves early on. Minnesota is off to a surprising but almost certainly unsustainable good start, and the Tigers are neither good nor bad, which is pretty boring.

Things will almost certainly stabilize, and the smart money is still on Cleveland running away with things before long (their odds of winning the division is 76 percent), but it’s easy to get wrapped up in the day-to-day of the White Sox rebuild and forget just how terribly average most of their main competition is as well.

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First and foremost, the decision was made with increasing offensive production in mind. Flowers hit an abysmal .239/.295/.356 with a wRC+ of 79 in 2015. With patchwork being done elsewhere on offense, the White Sox simply didn’t believe they had any path to success with Flowers in the lineup on a daily basis. That’s certainly a fair assessment. However, Flowers went on to have the best offensive season of his career in Atlanta in 2016. Perhaps the automatic reaction is that Flowers went to a somewhat weaker National League, and the White Sox had no way of predicting that a breakout was coming.

That is not necessarily true. While Flowers wasn’t great during the 2015 season, he showed some shockingly good improvements in areas that sometimes go unnoticed. From 2014 to 2015 some serious improvements were made in his contact and swing rates. He lowered his swing percentage on pitches outside the zone from 34.1 to 29.5 percent while keeping his swing percentage on pitches inside the zone relatively the same. Laying off the garbage helped him raise his contact rate on pitches inside the zone by 7.9 percent. Even more noticeable was the drop in strikeout rate from 36 to 28.8 percent. That adjustment seemed to stick around in Atlanta where he held a 28 percent strikeout rate while raising his walk rate a bit to become an above average hitter, which is not often seen from catchers.

The success of Flowers only compounded the issues that the White Sox saw from their decision to change things at catcher. While they were looking to make an offensive improvement, neither Avila nor Navarro held up their ends of the deal. Navarro’s slash line was horrifying. He hit .207/.265/.322 with a 56 wRC+. He was disastrous at the plate, which was where he was supposed to excel. Avila faired slightly better, mostly due to his ability to take a walk. Avila had a walk rate of 18.2 percent, which helped him reach above average wRC+ (104). The offensive production was bad and disappointing. However, the White Sox can be mostly forgiven for that part of it. They expected success at the plate (although perhaps that’s a poor reflection of their scouting department), but they got failure. Where the White Sox were really burned for their decision was behind the plate.

Tyler Flowers was coming off his best defensive season, in which he had an FRAA of 11.0 and ranked third in framing runs with 15.2. The misconception appears to be that the White Sox weren’t even aware of this impressive framing ability, especially in the year before his release. Rick Hahn put those suggestions to bed with his comments during a conference call in March.

“I think there’s an unfortunate perception out there that we let Tyler Flowers go because we don’t believe in or perhaps are even not aware of framing data,” he said. “Hopefully people realize it was a little more of a sophisticated decision than that. We certainly have, I believe, owned the fact that it did not pan out with (Dioner) Navarro and (Alex) Avila the way we had hoped.”

Hahn makes two things clear with this statement. First, the White Sox do consider and value framing data. Second, he owns up to the fact that the decision to move from Flowers to Navarro and Avila was not a success. He went on to talk in a little more detail about framing and the things the White Sox consider when pursuing a catcher.

“We do very much value catcher defense,” he said. “We spend a great deal of time on framing and teaching framing at the minor league level … In fact, you will recall that Tyler made great advances as part of our organization in his framing metrics. When it does come to evaluating a catcher’s defensive ability, we don’t limit it strictly to framing. We would like to also have their ability to control the running game be evaluated, their ability with lateral movement to handle passed balls in the dirt, to a lesser extend wild pitches and the effect a catcher has on that, as well as their ability to work with a pitching staff and manage a pitcher’s compliance with their game plan as well.

“So it’s easy to look at the decision on Tyler and think it was us not understanding or appreciating framing data, however, nothing could be farther from the truth.”

First off, he’s right about the fact that Flowers learned his framing skill in the White Sox minor league system. When he was acquired, he was actually considered an above-average hitter with questions about whether he could stick behind the plate. (Sound familiar?) What is more interesting is that he goes on to describe the other aspects of defense that they do value. Specifically throwing runners out and blocking.

Using numbers from Baseball Prospectus, Flowers had -2.8 blocking runs and -0.6 throwing runs in 2015. Being in the red on any defensive metric isn’t a great sign, but certainly those small negatives are outweighed by the +15.2 runs he produced by framing. It becomes even more questionable when the unimpressive -0.8 blocking runs and -0.6 throwing runs from Navarro in 2016 come into play. His numbers before the addition were very similar, so there wasn’t a drastic change year to year after joining Chicago. Avila wasn’t much better in 2016 with 0.0 blocking runs and -0.6 throwing runs. It’s easy to deflect the displeasure over framing away by mentioning other aspects of defense. After all, framing just happens to be the in vogue stat. However, neither Avila nor Navarro was an upgrade defensively outside of framing.

Add on the poor framing from both Avila and Navarro and the decision becomes even more mind-boggling. It’s not often that an inability to frame is readily seen day to day via the eye test. Navarro made that possible. His -18.8 framing runs in 2016 only backed up what the eyes told us right away. It would’ve been hard to be worse than Navarro behind the plate. In fact, nobody was worse. Avila, however, did his best to catch up by producing a -6.5 framing runs.

The decision to move from Flowers to Avila and Navarro was a bad one. It was made even worse by an inability to identify improvements from Flowers on the offensive side of the ball. The biggest discrepancy, however, was on defense. While Avila and Navarro failed most excessively at framing, they weren’t good in any aspects of defending.

Does this matter anymore? Hahn has owned up to the lack of success they saw from the move. Hahn has expressed a desire to have catchers excel behind the plate. It really shouldn’t matter anymore. However, it continues to leave a bad taste in one’s mouth. Flowers wouldn’t have cost much at all for the White Sox to retain. They failed to see that he was on the verge of a good offensive performance in addition to his consistent ability behind the plate. While Flowers is long gone now, the impact of this catching decision will continue to reverberate.

Rehashing the details of the catchers added last year can be painful, but it perhaps gives us an insight into the mindset of the team going forward. Omar Narvaez appears to be the guy the White Sox are going with for now. At least until Zack Collins can work his way up in the next few years. Narvaez isn’t egregious behind the plate like Navarro and Avila were. However, he’s not going to help his pitchers out nearly as much as Flowers did. The White Sox must deal with the consequences that has for their pitching staff. They must also consider how that affects their decision making in regards to the catcher position going forward. It doesn’t appear as though Narvaez or Collins is going to be impressive on defense, so what are the White Sox going to do if they continue to fall behind the league in catcher defense? The answer to that question remains to be seen. It is, however, certainly a question that must be answered.

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The White Sox’ recent saga at catcher is well-known by now. In an effort to boost the offense, a platoon of Alex Avila and Dioner Navarro was acquired after the 2015 season, with Tyler Flowers non-tendered. Predictable issues arose–Avila got hurt, and Navarro was ghastly as a receiver. Slightly less predictable was Navarro’s bat disintegrating as well while Flowers would have a career year at the plate.

But, during the churn of catchers due to injuries and ineffectiveness, Omar Narvaez got his shot once the playoffs were already long out of reach, and showed that the odd profile he demonstrated in the minors would translate to the majors. Narvaez has basically zero power, with only seven home runs in almost 1,800 career minor league plate appearances, to go along with a .336 minor league slugging percentage.

The problem with hitting for no power at all, beyond the lost value of not getting extra base hits in and of itself, is that pitchers have no reason to pitch you carefully. If the worst thing you can do to them is hit a single, why would they walk you?

So far in his career, however, that hasn’t mattered for Narvaez. He walks anyway. He walked more than he struck out in the minors en route to a .353 OBP and so far in 151 major league plate appearances he has walked more than he’s struck out.  Indeed, at the outset of 2017 his statistics reflect a sort of exaggerated version of his purest form, with a triple slash line of .250/.382/.286.  Watching him hit, you can kind of see how he’s able to pull this off, as he has excellent knowledge of the strike zone, willing to take close pitches, and with his 90% contact rate, he is able to either put strikes in play or spoil them.  If anything, it appears that his primary goal at the plate is to walk above all else, with getting a hit as a fallback.

Whether Narvaez can sustain his strangely-shaped production bears monitoring. It seems unlikely that such a player will be the rare catcher that you run out there for ~475+ plate appearances a year (last year only 10 players did so).  However, crucially, Narvaez has improved his pitch framing from his debut in 2016, as FRAA has him in the black for 2017.  And given that the average OBP last year for all players was .322, having a catcher who simply makes pitchers work and gets on base at a .330-.340 clip while providing solid defense is nothing to sneeze at.  In fact, he may be such an improvement on the 2016 White Sox catching situation* that Narvaez represents one of the many reasons the rebuilding version of the team may win roughly the same amount of games as the contending one did.

*The 2016 White Sox were the worst team in the majors in pitch framing, and Navarro alone was worth -2.5 WARP.

It is increasingly looking like Narvaez is usable as the big half of a platoon or a plus backup, and that’s a pretty excellent result for a minor league Rule V draft acquisition. It’s early, but 2017 has been a good year for the prognosis of the White Sox’ potential supporting cast moving forward.