Omar Narváez: The Seattle Mariners’ most underrated offseason acquisition

With all due respect to Mike Zunino, the Mariners haven’t had a catcher who can consistently produce at the plate in some time. This Winter’s acquisition of Omar Narváez may have changed that.

It’s been exactly two months since the Mariners acquired Omar Narváez from the White Sox for relief pitcher Álex Colomé. As one of Seattle’s first bigger moves of the offseason, the deal has ultimately disappeared in the long shadow cast by the rest of Jerry Dipoto’s trade extravaganza.

It’s completely understandable, but definitely unfortunate as Narváez represents one of the few young Major League pieces Dipoto has brought on board and could potentially be the team’s catcher for years to come. That is, if the defense improves, of course.

When it comes to the catcher position, defensive productivity greatly outweighs what the player accomplishes at the plate. Despite the well-documented inconsistencies of Mike Zunino‘s bat, defense kept the University of Florida alum in an everyday starter’s role for his final season in Seattle.

Meanwhile, Narváez is on the complete opposite side of the spectrum, being an offense-first catcher with a lot of room to grow defensively, particularly with pitch framing. But Narváez’s overall presence at the plate has kept him afloat for the first two-ish years of his career, slashing a career line of .274/.366/.429 with 12.3 walk percentage.

Narváez should benefit from entering the Mariners organization, one of the more progressive-thinking groups in the sport. Fans should expect to see at least some defensive improvement from Narváez from the jump, following Scott Servais’ recent comments about introducing the 26-year-old to “some things” Servais believes he’s “not been exposed to before.”

The only thing that may be more beneficial to Narváez than heading to Seattle is departing Chicago, an organization with a reputation of poorly developing young catchers. In an interview with our friends at Lookout Landing, former M’s catcher Mike Marjama had this to say about his time with the White Sox and how his transition to the Rays organization opened his eyes modern day catching concepts:

“In the White Sox organization, I didn’t know much about catching. We strapped on gear, and we talked about some basic stuff, but I had never caught. I played a lot of first base and DH’ed, but I had never really caught. So with the Rays, my first year, I didn’t catch a lot, I kind of played DH and first. And then Paul Hoover, the catching coordinator there, he divulged the inner secrets to me. Like I never knew that we got rated on receiving, I never knew that we got rated on blocking, pitch framing; I didn’t know any of that stuff. I didn’t know that we got pluses and minuses, and I’m sitting there going, what are you talking about? I thought we just caught the ball and tried to get strikes.”

Admittedly, Marjama’s comments don’t appear too damning as they downplay the extent of which the now-retired catcher actually went behind the plate. However, in his time within the White Sox organization, Marjama caught a total of 1,575 innings with zero awareness of modern catching practices. That’s… not great.

Ironically, while Marjama made his way from the White Sox to the Rays in 2015, Narváez went from Tampa to Chicago in 2014 and thus had previous exposure to a more analytical approach. But considering the timeline, the lack of advanced knowledge passed down to Marjama doesn’t bode too well for the program Narváez underwent over the past four seasons.

It may take some time for Narváez to fully adjust to what the Mariners desire from their catchers, but he carries some nice tools – such as an explosive arm – that should help along the way. Given his offensive capabilities, any defensive improvement from Narváez will be a win for Seattle, and could bring him one step closer to reserving a seat at the table when the Mariners intend to compete within the next three years.

Looking to the immediate future, the first half of 2019 will be a great indicator of where Narváez is at his developmental process. In the past, I’ve suggested that the Mariners sign a veteran catcher such as A.J. Ellis to further assist Narváez and offset some of the pressure laid upon him to handle and, in turn, assist the progression of a young pitching staff.

Simply, Narváez may be just a few adjustments away from being one of Dipoto’s best acquisitions of not only this offseason, but perhaps his tenure. The path is laid out for Narváez, and it’s a relatively smooth one at that. Now it’s up to him and Mariners staff to put everything together and see how far he can go.