Catcher tandem led by Jose Trevino giving Yankees exactly what they need

The Yankees are now 90 games into their season, one that began with them overhauling their catcher position. Gary Sanchez went out, Ben Rortvedt came in, and just six days before the season began, so did Jose Trevino.

Rortvedt has been a non-factor so far, playing only in the minor leagues, with an oblique injury and knee surgery robbing him of any sort of consistent playing time. As such, the catching duties have been handled pretty much exclusively by Trevino and Kyle Higashioka (Rob Brantly started one game in May). The duo has combined for 12 home runs — just two more than Sanchez has for Minnesota — but their production is showing up in big ways at other spots.

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Per FanGraphs, the Yankees’ are fourth in the league in Wins Above Replacement from their catchers. The raw offensive numbers don’t look great (.218/.264/.379), but that is somewhat by design. The Yankees went all in on catcher defense, not offense, and boy is it working.

Jose Trevino earns a spot in the Midsummer Classic with his stellar work behind the plate with the Yankees. (Steven Senne/AP)

There is no defensive position on the field that’s harder to evaluate with the naked eye. But with the help of fancy numbers and computers, the impact of the Trevino-Higashioka tandem really starts to sing. By FanGraphs’ Defensive Runs Above Average, the Yankees are lapping the field. That statistic has the Yankees at 23.0, nine runs ahead of the second-place Arizona Diamondbacks. On an individual level, Trevino is the best in the business.

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The first-year Yankee has been worth 16.6 Runs Above Average, the most of any catcher. Combine that with his .422 slugging percentage and 106 wRC+ — good if not spectacular numbers — and you get an All-Star in the age of poor hitting catchers.

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“One of the reasons we’re in this position right now is because of you,” Aaron Boone told Trevino in the video where the 29-year-old learned he had made the All-Star team. “There’s a little break in the championship run next week. I think you should go to L.A. to be in the Midsummer Classic.”

The magic carpet ride for Trevino, who grew up rooting for the Yankees, is all the more impressive when considering he basically had to learn his pitching staff on the fly. He played all of one game with the Yankees in spring training after getting traded from Texas. Through his 62 games of action in the regular season, he’s the second-most valuable catcher in the American League.

“If you had told me a year ago I wouldn’t have believed you,” Trevino said of his All-Star nod. “A New York Yankee, and then an All-Star? I wouldn’t have believed you.”

Higashioka will not be an All-Star. His .171/.214/.318 slash line is fairly obscene, and cost him a hefty amount of playing time, which has rightly shifted to Trevino. Higashioka has a 47 wRC+, meaning he is 53 percent worse than the average hitter. But his defensive acumen is part of the cocktail that sent Sanchez packing, and that is still prevalent even as he’s getting worse at the plate. Higashioka’s 6.2 Defensive Runs Above Average puts him in the top 15 of MLB catchers, as both he and Trevino have excelled in the fine art of framing.

Statcast tracks catcher framing — essentially the practice of stealing strikes by making pitches outside the strike zone appear like they aren’t — and quantifies the amount of runs a catcher saves by doing it. Trevino is, yet again, at the very top of the leaderboard. He has been worth eight runs by that metric while converting a league-best 54.2% of pitches in the areas just outside the zone into called strikes.

He’s been particularly adept at fooling umpires at the bottom of the strike zone. A staggering 65.1% of pitches in that region that hitters don’t swing at have become strikes thanks to Trevino’s soft hands. In keeping with the theme, that is the best rate in MLB.

Higashioka is not in the same stratosphere as Trevino in those categories, but very few are. What Higashioka is good at is also getting those calls at the bottom of the zone and throwing out runners. In fact, both catchers are good at shutting down the running game. The Yankees have allowed just 26 stolen bases this year, the fewest in MLB, and while the pitchers deserve some credit there as well, it’s yet another tangible piece of evidence that replacing Sanchez’s power bat with two pristine gloves was the right decision.