Derek Norris Struggling Under Weight of San Diego Padres Workload

The tools of ignorance weigh heavy on the man behind the plate, and Derek Norris is showing signs early this year of the weight being too heavy over too long a haul. Johnny Bench once famously said “A catcher and his body are like the outlaw and his horse. He’s got to ride that nag till it drops” and that may have been exemplified last year when Derek Norris caught the 4^th most innings in the National League. The result of last year’s long ride is that this season he has slumped out to a .167 AVG with a .275 slugging percentage, good for dead last in the NL in batting average and 4^th from the bottom in slugging, amongst batters with 3.1 plate appearances per game, the prerequisite to be considered for the batting title. Dead last in batting in the NL. If you expand to look at all of baseball he is ahead of Chris Coghlan of the A’s, but still behind Chase Headley, who has 15 hits this year and ZERO extra base hits. 15 hits, all singles. Thank you AJ Hinch!

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This season Norris has gotten eight days off where he didn’t catch or it was a scheduled day off for the team. 8 days in 38 days of work. The average reader of this column works M-F, so in 38 days, or five and a half weeks you likely had 10-11 days off. In the games following those days off this year, Norris is 8 for 31, with both of his home runs yielding a .258 batting average, still below the median batting average amongst qualified hitters (Trevor Story at .269), but far above his overall numbers. That means in the other games, where he is playing back to back to back games, he is 12 for 82, which yields a .146 average.

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However, this discrepancy is likely not solely from this year. Last year when you look at his splits between games after a day off and other games, there is no difference. He went 29 for 119 in rested games and 100 for 396 in other games, meaning he actually hit at a better clip when playing on no rest, .253 to .244. However, he also caught the 7^th most innings of all catchers in 2015, and saw a large rise in his defensive innings from 2014 to 2015, going from 870 while with Oakland to 1040 in 2015 with the Padres. That’s nearly 19 more games caught in a year. I don’t think it’s the usage this year that is hurting him, it’s the cumulative usage of the last three seasons, including this year where he is again 4^th in the NL in innings caught.

Kurt Suzuki offers a strong comparison for Norris. Suzuki saw his innings caught plummet in 2013, dropping from 1014 to 748. The next year, in 2014, he had his best offensive season of his career, hitting .288 as his innings jumped back to 1017 in 2014. The next year, in 2015, his average came back in line with his career norms at .240 and this year he is hitting .200 for the Twins. It’s not the immediate response of Johnny Bench’s Horse to a workload, it’s the long term effect of not letting the horse recover for any length of time.

Bethancourt offers some upside, and it might be wise to use it more often. He threw out 9 of 20 would be basestealers last year, is generally considered to have a very strong arm, and has matched the home run output of Derek Norris this year, albeit in a small fraction of the at bats.

I think the Padres would be well served to give Norris some time off, maybe even pair Bethancourt up with James Shields. Bethancourt is from Panama, and none of the active Padres pitchers are from Panama, so there is no natural homeland fit for him, but Shields is a veteran who could work with a young catcher and has proven apt to do so in the past. In 2013-2014 Shields paired with then 23 year old Salvador Perez to yield his lowest two ERAs of his career while Perez was learning the major league game.

Whatever the solution is, I think the writing is on the wall that the long term effects of Bud Black and Pat Murphy overusing their Horse means this outlaw may need to find a new position or be ridden less to regain his offensive strengths.