Quote:
Originally Posted by zukes
Kratz has caught a knucleballer before.
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Barely. I hardly think catching Charlie Zink in a Arizona Fall League stint makes him particularily qualified to catch R.A. Dickey at the MLB level. Arencibia caught Dickey at the WBC and he couldn't do it well come regular season.
Really that's what his lone chance of starting in the majors depends on... offensively Kratz is basically J.P. Arencibia (High Power with Low OBP) 2.0 his defense passes the eye test it's not anything really special but it's decent. Career wise he has a reverse split in his batting where he's awful against lefties but pretty good against righties so in a back up role you could partially shelter his bat. Thing is the team isn't going to carry three catchers so he has to demonstrate that he can handle Dickey's hard knuckleball.