Who's Going to Catch on with the A's?

Austin Allen, Jonah Heim have both gotten off to fast starts for the 12-7 Athletics in the competition to back up projected starting catcher Sean Murphy.

While second base showcases the biggest competition for a job and roster positioning in the Oakland A’s camp this year, it’s not the only jobs fair the A’s have going.

While Sean Murphy is ticketed to be the A’s starting catcher, he’s necessarily going to be limited to the number of games he can play both by the fact that he’s coming off October knee surgery that is limiting his playing time in the A’s Mesa, Ariz. camp and by the fact that catchers get beat up by the nature of their profession.

Murphy’s two prime backup candidates both got a chance to show themselves in the A’s 11-3 win over the Brewers in Mesa Sunday afternoon.

Jonah Heim started, caught the first half of the game, went hitless in two at-bats, then turned things over to Austin Allen. Allen played the second half of the game, got to the plate three times and collected two hits, both of them doubles, and a walk.

Allen would seem to have the inside track to the backup job. He’s a left-handed bat, a rare commodity in Oakland’s heavily right-handed spring camp. He’s had a great spring to date, including a .379 batting average and two homers to go with his first two doubles of the spring Sunday.

But Heim, even after going hitless Sunday, has a .343 average for the spring, and his eight RBI are just one shy of Allen’s nine. And he’s a switch-hitter, something that doesn’t come around all the time. Only seven switch-hitting catchers have started as many as 1000 big league games, of whom the Yankees’ Jorge Posada and Hall of Famer Ted Simmons of the Cardinals are the best known.

The A’s have on occasion over the recent past, carried three catchers, but it’s never been the norm. That might change this year, however, with the roster expanded by one to 26. It would certainly ease things for Murphy, for, in the words of manager Bob Melvin to the A’s media gaggle this week, “It’s not going to be Murphy in 150 games and somebody else starting 12.”

Heim is something of a longer shot to make the club. Allen hit .330 with 21 homers in the minors last year at Triple-A with San Diego. Heim had a .310 average split between Double-A and Triple-A in the A’s system last year and has experience issues - no MLB history and only 35 career Triple-A games.

Given their histories, it’s no surprise to see both men hitting now. What the A’s will be watching for in the next couple of weeks before the camp breaks and the club heads north is how well the two men handle pitchers. The A’s pitchers are new to Allen, so Heim, who has caught many of the younger pitchers coming up through the system, probably has the edge in that regard.