With the Rangers' surprising season in the books, let's take a look at the season on a position-by-position basis.
2015 catchers
The guys: Robinson Chirinos, Chris Gimenez
Contributors: Carlos Corporan, Bobby Wilson
The forgotten: Tomas Telis
The Rangers haven't had a star catcher since the days of Pudge Rodriguez, though you could maybe make a case for the 2013 season of A.J. Pierzynski, but most likely not. In the meantime, the Rangers have had a bunch of "guys" behind the plate. This year was no different, but they did seem to make it work for them.
The Rangers' top two catchers were projected starter Chirinos and then Gimenez, who took over with Wilson when Chirinos and Corporan were injured right about the same time during the summer. Telis played six games for the Rangers during that time before being dealt to Miami at the trade deadline for reliever Sam Dyson (that worked out well for Texas).
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In all, the five players combined to hit .222 in the regular season (117-for-526) and hit 19 homers (led by Chirinos' 10) and drive in 75 runs — decent production at the plate from the catcher position. Behind the plate, they threw out 25 of 107 base-stealers, which wasn't particularly strong especially when you consider how great Chirinos was in 2014 at throwing guys out. This year, he was 12-for-41, but was also playing injured a lot.
Overall from an offense perspective, it is hard to be too disappointed with what the Rangers got at catcher, but for long stretches of time with Chirinos out, they struggled defensively.
Overall, we'll give the catcher position a C+.
