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Evan Gattis Would Be Winter-Trade-Market Steal for an AL Contender

By Zachary D. Rymer, MLB Lead Writer 

Nov 21, 2014 SHARE

USA TODAY Sports 

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Since Evan Gattis is an American League player trapped in a National League uniform, we may never know how good he can be as long as he remains the property of the Atlanta Braves.

But if the Braves were to trade Gattis to an American League team, on the other hand...

That's less of a real possibility now than it was a few days ago. With right fielder Jason Heyward having been traded to the St. Louis Cardinals, Bob Nightengale of USA Today has reported Atlanta may make its slugging catcher into a slugging left fielder, with Justin Upton taking Heyward's place in right.

Word is, however, that a Gattis trade isn't totally off the table. 

The Braves darn well should still be open to trading Gattis, as his value on the trade market is arguably higher than the value of them keeping him.

As a trade chip, Gattis offers two valuable things: controllability and power. He's a pre-arbitration player with four years of club control left. And even with his hitting ceiling limited by an aggressive approach that produces, via FanGraphs, too few walks and too many strikeouts, his power has been good enough to produce 43 dingers over his first two seasons.

That isn't surprising given what we know about Gattis' power, which is that it looks more or less like this: SHARE

•  TWE

Obviously, Gattis' controllability and power appeal to the Braves, too. But if keeping him involves playing him in the outfield, the positives of keeping him will be weighed down by at least one big negative.

The last time the Braves played Gattis in left field was in 2013, andFanGraphs says he racked up minus-10 Defensive Runs Saved in only 342.1 innings. Knowing Gattis' body type—he's listed at 6'4" and 260 pounds and looks even bigger—it may not get any better than that.

Further, asking Gattis to patrol the outfield probably wouldn't help his durability. That's something he's had trouble with, as injuries have helped limit him to just 213 games in his two seasons.

If the Braves choose to hold on to Gattis even despite these red flags, it would admittedly be hard to blame them. They'd be putting limitations on his value, but his bat could make it worth their while.

But it would be equally hard to blame the Braves if they chose to tradeGattis instead. His defense and injury question marks would do their part to limit his value, but his controllability and power would ensure a respectable return.

With Russell Martin, the only good catcher on the open market, spoken for and prices for free-agent sluggers like Hanley Ramirez and Nelson Cruz sure to go through the roof, it would be worth it for a National League club to part with a "respectable" trade package for Gattis. Relative to open-market prices, "respectable" might as well mean "cheap."

But for an American League club, it would be even more worth it. 

Nick Wass/Associated Press

Gattis shouldn't be an everyday catcher, but he shouldn't stop catching altogether.

The one thing American League clubs can offer Gattis that the Braves and other National League clubs can't is obvious: the designated hitter.

That much has been noted in all sorts of Gattis trade-speculation pieces, with some even going so far as to say that he's an ideal fit for the AL because he could serve strictly as a designated hitter.

For example, here's Jeff Schultz of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "He is young, cheap and can hit for power. He isn’t arbitration eligible until 2016 and free agency until 2019. He is an ideal candidate to be a designated hitter in the American League."

Gattis as a full-time DH is a possibility. But at a time when AL clubsseem wary of employing full-time DHs, it's more likely that Gattis' AL role would be akin to the one Mike Napoli occupied between 2009 and 2012: that of a part-time catcher, DH and, eventually, first baseman.

Gattis deserves his reputation as an iffy defensive catcher, but the 33 caught-stealing percentage he authored in 2013 and his solid framing in 2014 (at least according to Baseball Prospectus) are reminders that he's not a total liability. He also already has some major league experience at first base and definitely has the bat to be a DH.

If Napoli's history is any indication, Gattis becoming more of a versatile player would increase his durability rather than harm it. After injuries played a part in limiting Napoli to an average of 84 games as a full-time catcher between 2006 and 2008, he averaged 119 games as a catcher/DH/first baseman between 2009 and 2012. 

The benefit of Gattis transitioning from a full-time catcher to a Napoli-esque hybrid player could therefore be twofold: It would be easier for him to stay healthy, and his versatility would be a means to keep him in the lineup on a regular basis.

As a result, we'd get to see what Gattis could do in much larger sample sizes than the merely 100-odd games he was able to play in 2013 and 2014. And while we don't have a crystal ball to tell us exactly what he could do, we do have indications that his power production could get quite the boost.

One is Gattis' Steamer projection for 2015, which comes courtesy ofFanGraphs. The other is the 162-game projection based on his career output, which comes from Baseball-Reference.com. Take a look:

Evan Gattis Over a Larger Sample Size?

	G	PA	HR
Actual Average	106	392	22
Steamer 2015 Projection	135	566	26
162-Game Average	162	596	33

FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference.com

Put Gattis in more games, and you're signing up to watch him go from a 20-homer hitter to more like a 25-30-homer hitter. And that he'd be doing this from the right side of the plate only adds to the intrigue.

Right-handed hitters who can hit upwards of 25 dingers have become rare. Whereas there were at least 24 righty swingers with 25 or moredingers every year between 1996 and 2012, there were only 19 in 2013 and only 17 in 2014.

“It’s hard to find power,” then-Braves general manager Frank Wren toldGrantland's Joe Lemire in June, “and it’s really hard to find right-handed power in today’s game.”

So for American League clubs, here's the attraction of Gattis in a nutshell: trading for him would mean paying the price for a controllable slugger, but it would mean a chance to transform him from a mediocre catcher with durability question marks into a versatile player with increased durability and power.

Take that and combine it with the four years of club control Gattis has left, and we're talking about a potentially huge return on investment for any AL club willing to pay the price.

This is assuming the Braves are willing, of course. And after dealingHeyward, it bears repeating they might not be.

But if they are, it may not be long before Gattis finds himself in the right place for him.