Zach Buchanan

zbuchanan@enquirer.com

GOODYEAR, Ariz. – There are nine pitchers in the mix to be in the rotation for the Cincinnati Reds on Opening Day. Devin Mesoraco has caught one of them. For six innings.

Before his 2015 season was derailed by a hip issue that limited him to a pinch-hitting role, Mesoraco caught all six frames of right-hander Anthony DeSclafani’s first start as a Red. Until veteran Homer Bailey returns from Tommy John surgery sometime in May, that’s all the experience the 27-year-old backstop will be able to draw upon.

The Reds project to have a young, largely unproven rotation, and Mesoraco will be charged with helping its members adapt to the big leagues. But before he does that, he has to figure out who these guys are.

“There really is a question mark on who will be the 12 pitchers to make our staff on Opening Day,” manager Bryan Price said. “It’s about as wide open as probably any team in baseball. It’s just a challenge for Devin.”

Mesoraco has at least seen some of Cincinnati’s starter candidates in live action, albeit from the bench. He was around for the rookie debuts of Raisel Iglesias, Michael Lorenzen and Jon Moscot, and has a good idea of what each does well. He acquired a familiarity with left-handers John Lamb and Brandon Finnegan after they were acquired at the trade deadline in the Johnny Cueto deal.

Jon Moscot to start Reds' Cactus League opener

More recent acquisitions like Jonathan Sanchez and on-the-cusp prospects like Robert Stephenson, Cody Reed and Tim Melville remain more of a mystery. Not to mention the flotilla of other starter prospects in camp like Amir Garrett, Rookie Davis and Nick Travieso, who are further away from the majors but could be counted on sometime this season.

“The younger guys I haven’t seen, the guys who have been in the minor leagues, those guys I’m trying to feel out,” Mesoraco said. “I’m not trying to push something onto them or give them too much information too fast.”

At this point in camp, Mesoraco is looking at stuff and temperament. He wants to know what each pitcher does well and what each doesn’t, and also wants to get a pulse on temperament. He has to know if making a suggestion in-game will cause a young pitcher to snap back to form or spend too much time in their head.

With the ones he’s more familiar with, he’s already taken on a more vocal role. When Lamb tried out a new change-up during an early bullpen session, Mesoraco persuaded him that the old change-up wasn’t broken in the first place.

“I said, ‘John, your change-up is really good. There’s really no reason you should try to do something different. Your change-up was very successful last year,’” Mesoraco said. “I printed out a sheet of paper and gave it to him. He said, ‘Yeah, that kind of makes sense.’”

Taking on such a leadership role certainly is a new feel for Mesoraco. The last time he was behind the plate full-time, in 2014, he was the guy learning how to survive in the big leagues.

Reds' Mesoraco, Lamb and Bailey on the mend

Cueto, Mike Leake and Mat Latos weren’t old, but they certainly didn’t need Mesoraco to teach them how to get big-league hitters out. That’s exactly what he’ll be asked to do in 2016, though.

“Devin’s experience should allow him to steer these young guys away from throwing the wrong pitch at the wrong time,” Price said. “The thing about youth is youth quite often learns their lessons through experience. Some of the knocks we took last year was learning the hard way. I think Devin will allow us to shortcut the maturity process a little.”

That includes the continued maturation of Mesoraco as a catcher. He was thought of as just an average receiver was listed as the top prospect in the Cincinnati system after the 2011 season by Baseball America, and a year away from catchers gear is sure to have a toll of some sort.

But Mesoraco has been doing catching drills since the beginning of January, and thinks he’s knocked off whatever rust he’d accumulated. He’s working on a new way to block to protect his hip – too often in the past he’d prematurely go down to one knee – but otherwise is focused on the same sort of incremental improvement that every other player seeks during spring training.

That includes becoming a better pitch framer, though he has issues with pitch framing statistics, which have generally rated as an average strike-stealer. Mesoraco thinks stats like Baseball Prospectus’ Framing Runs Above Average (FRAA) don’t put the proper weight on the variance of pitchers and umpires.

“It’s more difficult to frame some pitchers, like (Aroldis) Chapman,” Mesoraco said. “Who’s going to frame Chapman? It’s impossible.”

FRAA does actually account for differences in pitcher and umpire, although the proper importance to give both variables continues to be a subject of debate in the sabermetric community. Chapman is certainly an outlier among pitchers – MLB.com’s Statcast created a Chapman filter last year so the former Reds fireballer didn’t skew velocity numbers.

Still, Mesoraco knows it’s important and has worked on it with catching coach Mike Stefanski, who teaches him to beat the ball to the spot. The idea is less to pull the ball back into the strike zone as much as fool the umpire into thinking the ball hit where the glove was set up all along.

It’s all part of Mesoraco’s mission of self-improvement. His young battery mates will thank him for it.

“He’s still a young guy from an experience standpoint,” Price said. “He’s got some great days ahead of him.”