Alejandro Kirk is a right-handed hitting catcher from Tijuana, Mexico, who is 26 and has played with the Jays for the last 4 seasons, plus 9 games of a fifth.
He’s played 434 MLB games, hitting .264/.344/.391 with 36 home runs, 160 walks, 180 strikeouts and a 9.0 bWAR.
We thought Kirk would be a bat-first catcher, but his glove has been far better than advertised (while his bat has been a bit disappointing). This season, his arm improved a lot. He threw out 31.0% of base stealers (league average 21.7%), the second-best in the AL.
And he was very good at framing pitches. He gained us 10 runs with his pitch-framing skills (fourth in the AL, and the three above him caught many more innings).
Jays pitchers seem to like throwing to him. The Jays pitchers had a 4.21 ERA throwing to Kirk and a 4.69 ERA throwing to Danny Jansen.
Offensively, he’s been just under league average the last two seasons. His best year with the bat was .285/.372/.415, a 127 OPS+. Last year, he hit .253/.319/.359 with 5 home runs. He doesn’t strike out much, just 13.2% last year.
I figure that his bat will pick up at some point. I tend to give young catchers a break regarding their bats. They spend a lot of time getting to know their pitching staff and time talking about pitching strategies before games, so they don’t get to work on their hitting as much as other positions.
And he’s slow. I get told how slow he is all the time. I get told he can’t be an MLB player because he’s too slow. I find it funny that people ignore everything he does well to focus on one flaw.
Baseball Reference has him 3.5 runs worse than the average baserunner, the 21st worst in baseball of batters with 350 or more PA.
Steamer feels Kirk will play in 103 games, .271/.349/.412, with 11 home runs and a 3.9 fWAR.