Defending Cervelli's Defense

There seems to be a wide range of opinions regarding back-up catcher Francisco Cervelli. Many individuals, such as Mike Axisa, have been criticizing Cervelli's play, even the backstop's defense. Axisa attempted to quantify how well Cervelli prevented opposing baserunners from advancing via steals, wild pitches, and passed balls. Axisa found that Cervelli did not compare very favorably to other Major-Leaguers (I'm not entirely certain of the validity of Axisa's analysis, but it seems to be fairly legitimate). This indication of poor defense, coupled with Cervelli's fairly subpar work with the wood (.338 OBP, .328 SLG, .304 wOBA), seems to paint a picture that Cervelli is not suited to being a starting catcher, let alone Jorge Posada's oft-used understudy. On the flip side of the coin, people continue to be fans of Cervelli, including the Yankees' Front Office. Inside this piece written today, 660 WFAN's Sweeny Murti indicated that "several in the Yankee organization now believe [Cervelli] can be....an everday guy." In addition, Cervelli had built a reputation for defensive prowess throughout his minor-league career, being anointed the best defensive catcher in the Yankees' farm system for three consecutive years before his promotion to the big leagues.

I get the feeling that that Cervelli's true talent lies somewhere between "detriment to the team" and "everyday catcher." Firstly, his defense may not be as bad as it appears to be at this point in time. For one thing, quantifying catcher defense is notoriously difficult to do; Fangraphs' UZR does not even count UZR for catchers. While the Total Zone metric (which can be found on Baseball Reference) is rating Cervelli very poorly this year (-4 Fielding Runs Above Average, -9 FRAA/1,200 inn), it was singing his praises last year (in 241 and 1/3 inn., an admittedly smaller sample than you would like to have, Cervelli compiled 5 FRAA). Baseball Info Solutions' Defensive Runs Saved Above Average has Cervelli at 1 DRSAA in 2010 (and 3 DRSAA last year). Not exactly awe-inspiring, but is it not a condemnation of Cervelli's defense. In addition, I asked Baseball America's Jim Callis in his chat on July 28 (yesterday) about what he thought of Cervelli's defense, speculating that his defense was heralded in the Yankees' minor league system because the Yanks did not have depth at the catcher position. He had this to say:

Cervelli's defense is his strong suit. All the WP and SB this year are surprising. Most of the Yankees' many catching prospects are bat-first guys, but Cervelli's reputation for having good catch-and-throw skills was well-deserved.

Could Cervelli's defensive ability have suddenly eroded in the majors? I find that difficult to believe. While yes, some of these defensive statistics are rather discouraging (including his awful 17% caught-stealing %), there seems to be a little bit of disagreement between the numbers. Back-up catchers should be able to field, and in the past, Cervelli has shown the ability to be a capable defensive catcher. I don't see any good reason why he cannot continue to be a good defensive catcher and a serviceable back-up in the future.