Earlier this month the Blue Jays signed 27-year-old free-agent catcher Tony Sanchez to a minor-league deal with an invitation to spring training. A former first-round draft pick, Sanchez played all of three games in the big leagues last season and is likely headed to Triple-A Buffalo. It was just one of several depth moves every team makes in the off-season to guard against injury.

But the signing was met with an unusual amount of excitement from the more astute segments of the Jays’ fan base — those who recognized the black hole behind Russell Martin on the team’s catching depth chart.

The Jays also have 36-year-old backstop Humberto Quintero in Dunedin on a tryout. He didn’t play in the big leagues at all last season, but journeymen like him and Sanchez are vying for jobs at major-league camps across Florida and Arizona right now because — at least according to some observers — of the dearth of catching talent in baseball today.

“It’s as thin as it has ever been,” one major-league scout told The Star.

An unnamed AL executive expressed a similar sentiment to the San Francisco Chronicle recently: “The state of catching in the whole industry is scary.”

Gregg Zaun agrees. The Sportsnet analyst, who carved out a 16-year catching career, including five seasons with the Jays, said he has been watching the position’s steady decline over the last decade.

“There’s definitely a lack of good catching in the game,” he said. “A lot of it has to do with the fact that industry-wide organizations just don’t take the time to properly develop players, period.”

Prospects are rushed, Zaun said, and the consequences are borne most by catchers, whose craft requires the most time and experience to develop. That’s why older catchers with experience can hang around so long, even if their raw talent isn’t as impressive.

But not everyone agrees with these dire assessments — or at least the notion that this is a new phenomenon.

“There has never been enough catching,” says Keith Law, an ESPN analyst and scout who used to work in the Jays’ front office. “The scarcity has existed forever.”

The reasons are varied. First of all, it’s the most demanding everyday position on the field, both physically and mentally. Not only are catchers expected to have an intimate understanding of their team’s entire pitching staff and every opposing lineup — steering the most important in-game strategy by deciding which pitches are thrown when — but they also take a regular pounding behind the plate from foul tips and missed pitches (“You trade flesh, basically, for money,” Zaun says).

Meanwhile, the combination of skills required of a catcher means a rare few can do it all. They need soft hands, quick feet, a strong arm, heightened baseball acumen and an understated leadership style that coaxes the most out of pitchers. These days they are also expected to master the nuanced art of pitch framing. Oh, and they have to hit, too.

Catchers last season collectively posted the lowest on-base-plus-slugging percentage for the position in the last 20 years. But where catchers are lacking today, according to those surveyed by The Star, is with regard to defence.

“The nuts and bolts of it, it takes forever, and they’re not taking the time and they’re not teaching it properly,” Zaun said.

The craft is under-coached, both at the amateur level and in the minors, and it’s difficult to practice. While a shortstop can take 200 ground balls every day to work on his fielding or throwing, a catcher can’t get nearly as many reps without wearing himself down.

Plus, there just aren’t that many coaches. The Jays don’t currently employ a minor-league catching instructor, though Sal Fasano has previously served in the role and remains in the organization as a pitching co-ordinator.

“There’s not enough guys who can teach it,” said Charlie O’Brien, another former Jays catcher. O’Brien — who caught four straight Cy Young winners, including Pat Hentgen and Roger Clemens in Toronto — played 15 big-league seasons largely as a defence-first backup. He says teams don’t seem to value defence or game-calling the way they once did. “They used to put a lot of value on a guy who could run a pitching staff and I’m not sure how much value is put on that now.”

Another obstacle Zaun and O’Brien mentioned is the fact that in high school and college, coaches now commonly call games, rather than catchers. “The kids that are coming up to the big leagues now never called their own games until they got to the big leagues, or at least pro ball.”

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Zaun grew up calling his own games and he says he learned from his mistakes along the way. “That doesn’t happen any more.”

Catcher is also a notoriously unglamorous position that, with few exceptions, also doesn’t pay particularly well. So budding prospects will often shift off the position — like Brett Lawrie and Josh Donaldson did, for example — either to avoid injury or because another position offers a quicker path to the big leagues.

That depletes some of the position’s talent as well. “So there might be a scarcity of developed catching prospects,” Law said. “But I see no shortage of catching prospects with the potential to be big-league regulars.”

Read more about: