The Short-Term Future of Caleb Joseph

Caleb Joseph after he made contact in the April 4 Tides game. Photo courtesy of Christopher McCain / Norfolk Tides.

A superficial look at Caleb Joseph, whom the Orioles recently promoted from Norfolk to help cover the catching position while Matt Wieters recovers from an elbow injury, might lead you to believe that he could be a good player for the Orioles. He had a great year for the Bowie Baysox in 2013, plays a key defensive position, and even if he's no Matt Wieters he could be a solid backup or a useful trade chip. Jon has shown convincingly that Joseph really isn't much of a long-term prospect, but what about the short-term? What kind of player is Caleb Joseph? What can he be expected to provide the Orioles during his time with the team?

Joseph began the year at Norfolk, and was one of the better hitters for the Tides at .261/.284/.402 (keep in mind that Norfolk, even with the new fence adjustments, tends to depress offense.) He's another player who doesn't get on base much, which is exactly the type of offensive player the Orioles don't need. I worked seven games in which Joseph played - 29 plate appearances - and I'll take a more detailed look at what he did and what we might expect.

I recognize that seven games isn't much of a sample, although it is almost one-third of Joseph's 22 games played with Norfolk. As a result, I'm going to look for any extreme patterns in the performance I've seen, which are less likely to be flukes and more likely to reflect his true tendencies.

In the 29 plate appearances, Joseph had eleven base hits, good for sixteen total bases. He drew no walks, was not hit by a pitch, did not reach first on catcher's interference, and had neither a sacrifice bunt nor a sacrifice fly, and so all 29 of his plate appearances resulted in at bats. Hence, his slash statistics were .379/.379/.552, substantially better than his entire performance at Norfolk.

Joseph hit more balls in the air than on the ground, which is good because he was much more successful when he hit the ball in the air:

	AB	H	BA
Ground Ball	7	1	.143
Air Ball	16	10	.625

The "Air Ball" line reflects both contact I recorded as fly balls and as line drives. This breakdown should not be very surprising. As a catcher, Joseph is not very fast, so he's not going to be beating out many ground balls to the infield. And because he's not fast, infielders can play slightly deeper and not rush throws. However, it also reflects the fact that when Joseph did hit the ball on the ground, it wasn't notably hard-hit. Despite the limited sample size, I think we can conclude that Joseph has to hit the ball in the air to be successful and if he doesn't, he won't be.

Joseph saw 99 pitches. Here is the breakdown of those 99 pitches:

Ball	35
Called Strike	14
Swinging Strike	12
Foul	15
In-Play	23

A couple of interesting things here. He seems to be able to recognize pitches out of the strike zone; of the 49 pitches he didn't swing at, 71% were balls. He was also generally able to make contact when he did swing; of the pitches he swung at, only 24% were misses. This leads me to believe that he has reasonable strike-zone judgment.

More interesting is the number of pitches he saw at different counts:

0-0	29
1-0	16
0-1	10
2-0	6
1-1	8
0-2	6
3-0	0
2-1	3
1-2	8
3-1	0
2-2	9
3-2	5

Joseph clearly isn't working deep counts to gain an advantage, he did not see a single pitch at either 3-0 or 3-1. Also, he put three first pitches and at least six second pitches into play, which indicates that he's not a patient hitter; he will swing at the first good pitch he sees.

So, Joseph gives the Orioles yet another impatient right-handed hitter - joining Adam Jones, J.J. Hardy, Manny Machado, Jonathan Schoop et al. If Joseph is able to hit balls in the air, he might perform well enough to keep the backup job even after Matt Wieters is recovered. If he struggles, or if pitchers force him to hit ground balls, he'll likely return to Norfolk and continue his probable career as an AAA lifer.