Giants Talk: Why Jesús Rodríguez's breakout performance creates catcher dilemma
"Giants Talk" hosts Cole Kuiper and Alex Pavlovic discuss San Francisco's catcher dilemma after Jesús Rodríguez showed out vs. the San Diego Padres.
Giants Talk: Why Jesús Rodríguez's breakout performance creates catcher dilemma originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
Video Transcript
It, it's a good question, who shows up Monday at Dodger Stadium?
And, you know, are there three catchers?
who's starting that first game?
And, it's not a comfortable time to be Patrick Bailey.
Yeah.
So.
Yeah.
He's almost considered to be one of the faces of the team right now, and just cannot get the offense going.
And it's not an offense, as we've discussed, that we expect a lot at.
Yeah.
It's You know, there's a line, and we make a lot of jokes about the MVP thing, like the bold prediction.
And my whole point in that was that he is so valuable defensively that if he just hits 220 with nine home runs, like- Mm-hmm his advanced stuff is gonna be off the charts in terms of the value he brings to your team.
now the flip side of that is there's a, there's a line on the other side where if you're hitting 140, like at some point there's just, you can't stomach the defensive value anymore.
But there's two 24 year olds behind him now, and Rodriguez I did, I did think you saw a couple times.
Like it, it's gonna be, there's gonna be growing pains defensively, but he can really hit.
And, you know, as, as long as you're not like a I, I don't What's a comparison?
Like he, he's a better defender than Blake Sable was, you know?
Yeah.
So like another guy where we're like, "Well, the bat's intriguing."
Bat's intriguing.
He can, he can play non-catcher roles if needed.
Yeah.
But is there ever a world where the Giants send Patrick Bailey back down to the minors to work on his hitting?
I believe I mentioned this on the last podcast, because for the first time really in his career, I think it's like not just a stupid question.
Mm-hmm.
Like it And I don't think it's likely.
I asked some people this week.
I ne- you know, didn't really hear from anybody who thought it was likely.
but I, I think, y- you know, and the one thing about Patrick, we did see Monday, like when they had the lead, he came in defensively in the eighth inning.
Like it was, like here's our defensive closer as well.
Like here, here's the guy that we trust back there for the final two innings.
So there, there is some of that, and there's some value.
and there's things about that that Tony likes.
And I do think carrying three catchers when one of them's so versatile does allow them to use Patrick for his defense.
Um- Mm-hmm it allows them to use Susak as a pinch hitter.
I keep going back to like how excited Tony gets when he talks about the one time when Jung Hoo Lee was on the bench, and he, he had like an actual like option back there.
So I think carrying three catchers and having the two right-handed guys who can hit a little bit gives them some better options late in games.
But yeah, you know, it's gonna If, if it does turn into a thing where, where Bailey's not even starting that much, like you start to wonder like what's, what's best for his future?
What's best for- for the future of the catcher position in San Francisco?
I, I don't think it's likely, but I do think for the first time really since he got called up, you can have a real conversation about it.
