Soto Out Until Next Weekend; Jake Fox To Be Back-up Catcher

Geovany Soto’s MRI found some minor damage in his left oblique and it will keep him out of the series against the Cardinals. The Cubs are hopeful they won’t have to DL him and are waiting to re-evaluate him next week. Koyie Hill will take over the everyday catching duties in his absence and at least for the time being Jake Fox is the back-up catcher. Considering there is a doubleheader on Sunday Fox is likely to get a start in one of those games. At the end of March, berselius put a post together on his site comparing Jake Fox to Soto and Hill as a catcher. It’s not pretty. The defensive value is calculated using Colin Wyers’s catcher defense valuations, which used data from the major league level rather than the minors to figure out averages. To get the correct minor league ones we’d have to look at all the minor league data, which I don’t have/am too lazy to generate. But, this is just a rough cut, and the same errors should appear in all three of their data sets. PlayerInnings at CSbCSSBA/9CS%WP+PB/9Defense Score/150Jake Fox1380137531.23928%.9650-18.5Geovany Soto2192.3197601.05523%.5049-3.16Koyie Hill1509.310246.882531%.49461.54 You can see why Fox was moved away from catching. He’s pretty bad at it. Soto isn’t a great defensive catcher by any means (a bit below average in the minor leagues though he was a bit above last season). Hill is slightly above average, but he is 20 runs better behind the plate than Jake Fox over 150 games. That’s huge. You also have to consider that Fox hasn’t caught regularly for a few years so those numbers are probably generous. Let’s hope Soto can get back next week because nothing good is going to come out of Jake Fox getting an occasional start behind the plate. I’d seriously consider letting Koyie Hill start both games of the doubleheader given that there are 3 days off after the 2 games.