(Kathy Willens/AP)

During the three and a half years of RAB’s existence we’ve gotten excited about a number of prospects. At our inception it was Phil Hughes, and it quickly turned to Joba Chamberlain (and even Ian Kennedy). The latest in the prospect craze is Jesus Montero.  He is considered by many talent evaluators, including Baseball  America’s Jim Callis, to be the game’s best hitting prospect. The only  question is of whether he can catch in the bigs.

At the end of the regular season I answered a mailbag question about the Yankees catching situation in 2011. Ideally they’d carry Montero, Jorge Posada, and Francisco Cervelli.  That would allow Montero and Posada to rotate between catcher and DH,  with Cervelli serving as a true backup (i.e., plays once a week). But we  know that ideal situations don’t often come to fruition. Plenty stands  in the way of the Yankees and their heavy hitting catcher rotation.

Reader Mike writes in with an interesting question about the situation:

Isn’t 2011 the make or break year to use Montero? I mean lets say  the Yankees want to go with Posada/Cervelli at C and someone else DHing  that means Montero will end up in AAA again. But won’t that block Austin Romine‘s  development? Isn’t Romine due for a promotion to AAA, and you can’t  have both those guys on the same level considering both need to be  playing everyday in the minors.

I’m not sure it’s a make it or break it year, but it certainly will  mean something for Montero’s development. There’s a decent chance that  Montero breaks camp with the team and plays the role described above.  Yet there’s still a good chance that he opens the season back in  Scranton. That means Romine starts in Trenton again, since, as Mike  mentions, both players at this point need to catch full time. Romine  could then move up to AAA once the Yankees are ready to promote Montero.  Splitting the season between AA and AAA might be a good thing for  Romine, who still has plenty of development ahead of him.

That might not seem interesting; it actually sounds pretty normal.  What’s interesting is the question I asked myself after reading Mike’s  question: What happens if they trade Montero? He might be the team’s  best hitting prospect since Nick Johnson,  but he’s not untouchable. As the Yankees rebuild the pitching staff  this winter they might find that Montero helps them more as trade bait.  We can all make a list of what players the Yankees should target if they  trade Montero, but what I want to know is what the team plans to do at  catcher in that scenario.

Going with Posada and Cervelli again is a poor idea. Posada started  just 78 games at catcher, 10 fewer than in 2009. The Yankees simply  cannot count on him to provide much production behind the plate. I doubt  they sign a DH this off-season, in fact, because Posada will have to  fill that spot often. That leaves Cervelli as the starting catcher, a  role for which he is not suited. As a once-a-week back-up he’s more than  adequate. Even if he has to spot start while the starter goes on the  DL, you could do a lot worse. But if he’s the only one who can take on  full-time catching duties, the Yankees should look elsewhere for a  better alternative.

On the free agent market there aren’t many upgrades. Victor Martinez  is the best of the lot, but there are a number of points against him: 1)  He’ll cost a draft pick, 2) He’ll be 32 next year, 3) He has defensive  issues, 4) He’ll almost certainly be overpaid by a catching-starved  team. There are a couple of free agent catchers, John Buck and Miguel  Olivo (should his option be declined), who can hit for power, but that’s  the only dimension to their games. Perhaps the Yankees could look to  one of these guys as a one-year stopgap, but I’m not sure that they  present that large an upgrade over Cervelli.*

While Olivo had 3.2 WAR and Buck 2.9, they did it with over 100  more PA — and there’s no guarantee that they can repeat that in 2011. At  the same time, I expect Cervelli’s defense to improve, since most of it  consisted of mental lapses, which is a correctable issue.

Another option is to work a trade. This would likely be for a player  coming off a down year, such as Mike Napoli, or a 2012 free agent. Again  there aren’t many attractive names there, though Ryan Doumit does stand  out a bit. The Pirates recently acquired Chris Snyder, who will likely  start behind the plate for them in 2011. That means the Pirates can  trade Doumit, who is one of their better bargaining chips. The only  issue is that he is also not a great defensive catcher. Neither is  Napoli. But, since Montero isn’t, either, I’m not sure the Yankees would  be losing out in this aspect.

There will be temptation this winter, particularly if Cliff Lee signs  elsewhere, to trade Montero in order to upgrade the pitching staff. But  doing so would leave the Yankees in a bind of sorts. The available  veteran catchers are not world beaters; Montero could potentially outhit  them all next year. He might not stick at catcher in the majors, but  he’ll hit anywhere, even if it’s DH. After looking at the alternatives, I  think it’s better to hold Montero and try to use other pieces, or just  cash, to upgrade the pitching staff.

(Paul Sancya/AP)

Real quick: take a look at Boone  Logan’s 2010 numbers. They look pretty spiffy, no? You can’t ask much more  from a young lefty reliever. What made Logan look even better was the value he  provided. Although he faced just 169 batters in 40 innings, he still produced  0.4 WAR, which was 0.6 more than the other player the Yankees acquired from the  Braves last winter. Since Logan provided more value this year and will continue  to provide more in the future, we can accurately term this the Boone Logan Trade. But it  wasn’t always that way.

Because the Yankees started the season stocked with bullpen arms, Logan  started the year in AAA Scranton. He made his way to the big league club early  on, and made his first appearance on April 20. Things didn’t go so well during  that first stint. Logan faced 49 batters in 10.2 innings and walked seven  batters while striking out six. It led to six earned runs, a 5.06 ERA. The  Yankees optioned him, but then recalled him again in mid-June, though that  didn’t exactly go well either. This time Logan faced 33 batters in 7.2 innings,  striking out seven and walking five. The results were better, but he clearly  still had control issues.

Logan’s 3.93 first half ERA didn’t look so bad, but his walk issues made it  hard to trust him against tough left-handed hitters. He finished the half with  12 walks in 18.1 innings, leading to an opponent OBP of .390. He threw 314  pitches to 82 batters, almost four per. Clearly something would have to change  if he was going to stick in the second half. By the time the Yankees recalled  him for the third time in the season, something had.

The second half didn’t open ideally for Logan, as he allowed a run in 1.2  innings against the Rays. The good news is that he didn’t walk a batter, and he  threw 15 of 23 pitches for strikes (65%). He continued to throw strikes in  subsequent appearances, and it paid off. He walked just eight in 21.2  second-half innings, a marked improvement over his first half numbers. It led to  a mere .264 opponents’ OBP. Hitters also had trouble making solid contact, as  his BABIP went down to .235. This was due, in large part, to a mere 8 percent  line drive rate, down from 25 percent in the first half.

How did Logan accomplish this mid-season transformation? Part of it was  certainly throwing more strikes. In the first half he threw 60 percent of his  pitches for strikes, while in the second half that was up to 63 percent. That  might not seem like a huge increase, but it can make a big difference when  you’re often working one batter at a time. But it doesn’t account for the entire  difference. The biggest change, as most of us can probably intuit, was pitch  selection and effectiveness.

In the first half Logan was extremely fastball heavy, throwing it 70.9  percent of the time. He got a meager 8.9 percent whiff rate on it, leading to a  21.5 percent in play rate. In the second half he started leaning on his slider a  lot more, using it 32.4 percent of his time. Opponents put it in play just 10.2  percent of the time, while whiffing 27.8 percent of the time. The pitch ended up  being his best per FanGraphs’ Pitch Type Values, 3.8 runs above average overall,  and 2.34 per 100 pitches. All it took was him using it more and commanding it  better.*

*Looking at the PitchFX numbers, Logan got -0.07 inches of vertical break  and -1.13 inches of horizontal break on the slider in the first half. In other  words, it darted downward and towards a right-handed batter. In the second half  it was 2.02 inches of vertical break and -0.29 inches horizontal. That might  seem like less movement, but I have a pet theory on this. It basically goes that  Logan was letting the slider fly more in the first half and was a bit more  careful with it in the second half. He might have had more movement in the first  half, but he was wild with it. In the second half the lower break figures point  to a greater command over the pitch. Again, this is just a pet theory, but I’d  love to hear some point-counterpoint on this if anyone is interested.

Just so you can see the difference, here are Logan’s slider plots from the  first and second halves.

First half

Second half

Everything was away in the second half, and he buried plenty in the dirt.  It’s tough to pick out the subtleties, because he threw far more in the second  half than in the first. But I do think it’s clear that he kept the slider below  the zone in the second half, while he was low and away in the first half. This  probably led to the pitch being a lot more effective.

Given his second half performance, it’s hard to not like Logan as the primary  lefty in 2011. He showed great improvements, from his peripheral numbers — 10.38  K/9, 3.32 BB/9, 0.8 HR/9 in the second half — to his pitch selection and  command. Whether he can maintain these improvements remains to be seen, but  he’ll get every chance to do so. With Damaso Marte out for most  of, if not all of, the 2011 season, Logan becomes the primary lefty in the pen.  Six months ago that would have left me feeling queasy. Amazing what a little  improvement can do.