Houston Astros Rumors: Four key storylines to follow in Spring Training

Which catcher pulls ahead?

The Houston Astros catcher position was settled for the past two seasons. Prior to the 2017 season, the team flipped some prospects for Brian McCann to be their defensive anchor and game caller for the pitchers.

However, McCann went down with a knee injury early in the 2018 season that sidelined him for months. So, the team turned to youngster Max Stassi to be their primary catcher. Stassi started off the season on fire offensively but the veteran pitching staff became frustrated with him and his offensive died out and so did his playing time.

So, they traded for Martin Maldonado to be that solid defensive catcher for the team down the stretch. Maldonado was very solid for the team but this offseason they opted not to bring him back. Instead, they signed Robinson Chirinos to compete with Stassi for the primary catching job.

This is an interesting pairing because Stassi isn’t great offensively but is an elite pitcher framer with a pretty good arm while Chirinos is more known for his offense than his suspect defensive game. There are pluses and minuses to each of their games so this will be interesting to watch.

Stassi has experience with the majority of the staff even though he wasn’t able to call a consistent enough game last year. I’d wager that Stassi gets the first shot as the main catcher due to his defense and history with the staff. But, this could also end up being more of a 50-50 split with some set pitcher-catcher pairings.