Giants Backstop Has Been One of Baseball's Best Defensive Players This Season

Catcher is probably the most unique position on the baseball diamond for a number of different reasons.

There's no other player on the field that has more responsibility placed upon them on a pitch-to-pitch basis than the man behind home plate.

Given this immense defensive pressure, it's also probably the only position in the game where a player can get away with putting up subpar numbers at the plate if they can simultaneously be an elite defender.

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There's nobody else in baseball this year that represents this interesting dynamic better than the San Francisco Giants' Patrick Bailey.

The former top draft choice for the Giants was anointed by many as the team's next great backstop following the retirement of team legend Buster Posey.

This was always going to be a high bar to reach for anybody, and it's become very apparent that, at least offensively, Bailey is a far cry from the former three-time World Series champion.

He has been one of the worst hitters in a San Francisco lineup that has been characterized by offensive inconsistency, currently holding a woeful .202/.267/.298 slash line entering Sunday.

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At any other position on the field, these stats would normally be grounds for benching and/or demotion. But fortunately for Bailey, he has been one of the best defensive players in the game at the position where defense is of the upmost importance.

According to FanGraphs, Bailey actually currently holds the best defensive rating of any qualified player this season at 20.4.

This mind boggling figure means the elite catcher currently posses a 1.8 fWAR despite also holding an abysmal 61 wRC+.

For comparison, a wRC+ that low in a vacuum would typically translate from anywhere between minus-1.0 to minus-1.5 fWAR on it's own.

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This fact alone shows just how elite Bailey has been behind the dish, and why the Giants have been willing to deal with his poor performance with the bat in his hands.

The 26-year-old will have to figure out how to get past the slump he's been enduring at some point, but he'll likely have a pretty long leash in that regard as long as he continues to be the best defender in the game.

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