by Jerry McKennan @JerryMackinem

Mario Feliciano was recently re-assigned to Minor League camp. Earlier in the offseason, I was asked about why Mario wasn’t higher up in prospect lists. I was curious as well, so I got to watching some video on him.

Bat:

Hit: 45

Minor leagues

Of the 15 PA I watched, he saw 48 pitches, averaging 3.2 P/PA. However, 25 of those pitches seen came in 6 PA seen between 9/26-9/28 — where he seemed to be working on his patience. Furthermore, Mario swung at 7 out of the 15 first pitches. Of all the pitches I saw him take, he swung at 66% of them (32 out of 48).

Here’s a question though: despite him swinging a lot, is he a free swinger? My opinion: maybe. I’ll hit on that in a little bit.

Power: 35+

As far as contact is concerned he made some loud contact. However, I don’t believe he has a lot of power.  Most of what I saw him hit was typically on the ground. He clobbered a hanging breaking ball for a double, so he seems to have some XBH power, but maybe not much HR power.

Spring Training

Launch angle seems to be his largest problem. This spring, Mario put 12 balls into play and 6 of them were groundballs, 4 were line drives, 2 flyballs. Despite his average 94.0 MPH exit velocity, he only managed a 4.2 degree launch angle.

I’d like to circle back to the free swinger question I had, viewing some data from spring training that has been gathered. First, let’s look at this plot with pitches he’s seen that were borderline or outside of the strike zone this spring.

According to this, he does seem to like to swing at pitches that are outsize of the zone in the lower half, but not much in the upper half. 16 pitches in the upper half, he swung at just 3 of them. 10 pitches in the lower half, he swung at 8. Though, in his defense, most of them seemed to be borderline. Which is why I say maybe to being a free swinger.

With this plot being from the hitters perspective, he also wasn’t swinging necessarily at outside pitches. Only 3 of the 10 pitches outside was swung at.

Next, lets also enjoyed how he spread the ball around:

Ground balls he pulled primarily, in the air he went the opposite way or straight away more.

Defense:

Arm: 35

Caught 9 of 61 would be base stealers in AAA last season. I watched 9 of those, where his pop time was frequently between 2.1-2.3.

He dropped the ball a couple of times, making is, so he was not able to make the throw. On the throws he did make, he had an inaccurate arm. And they varied in inaccuracy, from bouncing twice to the bag to being well above the bag and the defender needing to jump to get it.

The lone exception to what I had seen was a throw that had a 1.9 pop time and was caught near the 1B side of bag, allowing the tag to take place.

Game calling: 45

I was able to watch one game from start to end, he seemed to do well calling the game, and it might be the part of his game I liked best. Frequently moved all around the zone and had a large mix of breaking/offspeed pitches called as the game went on. His pitchers didn’t help him much, as they would miss their spot. He is as able to help generate a number of swings on pitches that were just outside of the strike zone.

He did have a brief appearance in the majors last year and the eye test matched the stat test according to Baseball Savant.

Conclusion:

Overall: 40

Ultimately, I think that he should look to move to a different position. Despite his decent game calling and framing, he’s a bit of a liability at catcher with his well below average arm. Especially with the new bases seemingly bringing more stolen bases and attempts. The hardest part is whether he can bring the power needed to the other positions. To add to that, automatic strike zones and PitchCom could cause those skills to become slightly less important in the long run.

His bat does really intrigue me though. He really hits that ball hard, and he spreads it around the field, even if there isn’t a lot of home run power. It’s going to be exciting to see him work on everything in Toledo.

Photo Credit: Mike Watters-USA TODAY Sports