Browse entire “40-man, Player by Player” series here.
Previous entry: Sean White.  Next up, Adam Moore.

Rob Johnson is a polarizing figure among Seattle Mariner fans.  You either love him or you hate him.  In the blogosphere especially it can feel pretty anti-Johnson at times.

And I get some of it.  He was embarrassingly bad at the plate for much of last season, and was thought to be blocking Jeff Clement from a major league job early on.  Behind the plate he had a helluva time corralling routine pitches at times despite his job having the word “catch” right in the title.  The defensive struggles were magnified as he had been built up as a Dan Wilson-esque receiver by the fans based on a few seasons worth of possibly misinterpreted scouting reports.  And he is lauded for his intangible ability to lead a pitching staff and call a good game, which can irk the stat heads.

That stuff is annoying, but I have no hate for Johnson.  I have actually come to like him a little bit.  At least, as much as I can like a guy who is taking reps away from Adam Moore, who I have had a giant mancrush on for the last 2-3 seasons (but more on him in the next segment).

I see no reason why Johnson can’t become a solid part-time catcher, with a little wiggle room for him to become a bit more than that.

There are reasons for optimism on both sides of the ball going forward.

Health is a big one.  Johnson famously spent every minute of his offseason on an operating table of some sort.  He had labrums in both hips repaired, his wrist worked on and laser surgery on his eyes.  He was apparently quietly hurting much of last season.  Beyond the injuries he had surgically repaired, he also had some elbow trouble (that originally was thought to require surgery) and towards the end of the year a sprained ankle.

Obviously, there is a very good chance that a healthy Johnson is going to look a lot better.  Loosening up his hips should be the biggest help to him, as he’ll have more mobility behind the plate and be able to turn on pitches better at the dish.

He was limited with what he could do physically, which definitely hurt him because, beyond the pitcher-catcher relationship stuff, Johnson’s whole schtick on defense before the 2009 season was his athleticism behind the plate.  There is a good chance that we see less of a cardboard cutout back there in 2010.

And you’ve got the think the LASIK can’t hurt on either side of the ball either.

Natural progression is another one.  It feels like Johnson has been around forever, but he’s only accrued 325 big league plate appearances.  Last season he only caught about half the games.  He’s still just 26 years old.  He still has plenty of development in him.  He’s certainly not a .213/.289/.326 hitter, and there is a shot he can be at least an average hitter at catcher.

Johnson spent the bulk of three seasons with AAA Tacoma between 2006 and 2008.  His offensive progression over those three seasons was intriguing.  His first year he OPS’d just .579.  Terrible, but the guy had skipped AA, so it’s understandable.  The following season he bumped that up to .703, and finally .804.  That doesn’t necessarily mean anything– quad-A players often do the same thing– but it could show that he is able to make the adjustments when in over his head.

Johnson showed some improvement at the plate as the season went on, despite being banged up.  His walk rates and power especially perked up as it got warmer out, and his strikeout rate dropped in the latter months as well.  Without having to look over his shoulder at the richly paid Kenji Johjima, playing hurt (beyond the normal catching lumps), and having to learn the pitching staff, hopefully he can settle in and those rates can stabilize at an acceptable level.

While we can’t quantify a catchers effect on the pitching staff, when the pitchers all prefer pitching to one particular guy you have to assume they’re doing something right.  A comfortable pitcher is probably going to be a little better than a pitcher who is aggravated by the catcher’s gameplan.  Does Johnson call a good game?  Is he a zen master out there when he visits the pitcher on the mound?  I have no idea, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.  The pitchers like throwing to him, so I like the pitchers throwing to him.

But I have to wonder how much of that is Johnson being good, and the pitchers just preferring him to Johjima.  There was no shortage of pitchers annoyed with Johjima’s lack of interaction and stubbornness with regards to executing a game plan (even if it was not working), and not to mention any language barrier there might be.  It’ll be interesting to see if Moore is able to develop that same relationship with the staff and eat away at Johnson’s playing time, assuming he outperforms Johnson offensively as expected.  But more on the later.

I like Johnson.  He’s solid.  He was pretty bad last season at everything that didn’t have to do with managing the game.  That is, he was terrible at all things tangible.  But I think we’ll see improvements on both the offensive and defensive sides of the ball.  I think we’ll see a pretty solid backstop.