Mets: Ranking each Opening Day starting catcher of the last 10 seasons

The catcher is the smartest player on a baseball field where they are the ones watching the whole game and calling it for their pitchers. For the New York Mets, this has been an issue.

The New York Mets were blessed to have guys like Gary Carter and Mike Piazza, both Hall of Famers, spend parts of their career in a Mets uniform. Both were loved by the Amazin’ faithful and they put everything on the field every single game.

The Mets though of late have not had the best of luck with the catcher’s position in quite some time now. We’ve seen numerous players call games for Mets pitchers of recent time and each one had different flaws.

As we head into the 2021 season we are unsure of who the starting catcher on opening day is going to be whether it is a current player on the roster or if they decide to sign one of the available free agents.

Since 2011 the Mets have had six different players start at catcher on opening day. Six different ones in ten years! The most consecutive years any of the catchers had was only three years and here we are going to break each of them down.

6) Josh Thole

Josh Thole is at the bottom of this list for the Mets and with as bad as the catcher’s position has been, that is saying very bad for Thole. Thole spent four seasons with the Mets where he was named the opening day starter in 2011 and 2012.

In his first two years, he didn’t much play but in 2011 and 2012 he played 100-plus games in each season. Even with all that playing time those two years, Thole struggled to put up decent numbers.

In 2011, Thole hit three home runs, knocked in 41 RBIs, and had a .270 batting average. He then followed that up the next season to only hitting one home run, only twenty-one RBIs, and his batting average was below .235.

Following the 2012 season, the Mets traded Thole in the big RA Dickey trade that landed them Noah Syndergaard and two other catchers we will see on this list later on.

5) Kevin Plawecki

Kevin Plawecki also spent four seasons in Flushing and was named the opening day starter in 2018.  He was their first-round draft pick back in 2012.

Plawecki never played more than 71 games as a catcher in a single season but those were the couple of years where the Mets were platooning at the catcher’s position.

Take away the one season where Palwecki played in only 37 games, his batting average in the other three seasons never exceeded .219 and got as low as .197. Plawecki, in 2018, threw out only sixteen of the seventy base runners to attempt a steal on him giving him a twenty-three percent caught stealing percentage which was under the league average.

In 2019, the Mets shipped Plawecki off to the Cleveland Indians for Sam Haggerty and Walker Lockett.

4) John Buck

John Buck spent just one season with the Mets. He was traded to New York along with Noah Syndergaard from Toronto in the RA Dickey trade we brought up before.

Buck started in the majors in 2004 with the Kansas City Royals and throughout his career played for seven different teams. His one season in New York though he found himself as the starting catcher on opening day in 2013.

For the one season here in New York, Buck played decent for the Mets. He hit fifteen home runs, knocked in sixty RBIs but his batting average was just a mere .215.

Buck had a good arm behind the plate though when in 2013 he threw out thirty percentage of base runners that attempted a steal. That thirty percentage was above the league average.

Buck was traded at the trade deadline that same season with Marlon Byrd to the Pittsburgh Pirates who were battling for a postseason berth and they did just that while securing a win in the wild card round.

3) Rene Rivera

Rene Rivera has had a back and forth carer with the Mets. He first signed with the team in 2008 but was then released. He signed again with the Mets in 2016 and was released again during the 2017 season. Rivera signed with the Mets once more in 2019 and he is currently still on the team.

Now with all that being said Rivera still found a way to be the opening day starter in 2017. At the time Travis d’Arnuad was supposed to be the everyday starter but for a few years, he was dealing with constant injuries which opened the door for Rivera.

Rivera wasn’t a huge bat in the lineup even though in his short time he hit eight home runs and had twenty-three RBIs in the 2017 season. Rivera was more known for his play behind the plate.

In 2017, Rivera threw out thirty-six percentage of base stealers which was well above the league average that year at twenty-seven percent. Rivera always had a caught stealing percentage of thirty percent or higher.

With the good play behind the plate, the struggled bat of Rivera is what couldn’t make him an everyday starter but is a decent backup to have for some teams.

2) Travis d’Arnaud

Travis d’Arnaud was another piece of the RA Dickey trade that brought in Noah Syndergaard. D’Arnaud was talked about in the minors to be a good starting major league catcher for teams so acquiring him was a huge second piece at the time.

During his time in New York, he battled with injuries multiple times in his career so New Yorkers never got a full-blown look at the kid when he first arrived.

D’Arnaud was named opening day starter though from 2014-2016. His batting average was always around the .250-.260 mark tose three seasons but where he really killed the Mets was behind the plate.

Base runners took advantage of d’Arnaud every time they got on since he had a lot of trouble throwing runners out. Whether it was a good jump from the runner or not his throws were mostly inaccurate. Some would pull the shortstop or second baseman off the bag and others would go skyrocketed into center field.

Not easy to win when almost every time a runner gets on they could possibly be in scoring position on second base within seconds.

His biggest moment as a Met came in 2015 in Game 1 of the NLCS where he took Jon Lester deep to center field and hit it off the apple to extend the Mets lead late in the game. That was what all Mets fans thought we were going to see on a constant basis with d’Arnaud but we were not fortunate enough.

d’Arnaud was released by the Mets in May of 2019 and he now is part of the Atlanta Braves where he seems to have found his niche after winning a Silver Slugger award this past season.