How will Marlins utilize Christian Bethancourt's skills and experience?

"Journeyman" would be a good word to use for Christian Bethancourt’s baseball chronology. He’s played for his home country of Panamá in both the World Baseball Classic and the Caribbean Series, plus a stint in South Korea. Bethancourt pinballed around several minor league systems, and in the majors, he’s played for Atlanta, San Diego, Oakland, and Tampa Bay. This week, he donned the tools of ignorance for Miami.

Bethancourt arrived in what was Peter Bendix’s second trade after being hired as the Marlins new president of baseball operations, with only one degree of separation between Bendix and Tampa Bay in the trade (make of that what you will).

Bethancourt has shown a willingness to be creative in order to contribute to an organization. The Padres tried him as a reliever in 2017 before sending him down to the minors. Five years later with Oakland, he split time between catching duties and first base.

“At some point, I was like, maybe I’m never going to go back to the big leagues,” Bethancourt said (h/t SF Chronicle). “But I never put my head down. I’m a very positive person. I’m a believer that there’s always going to be another opportunity. You strike out three times today, but tomorrow, if you’re in the lineup, that’s your other chance.”

That type of attitude is simpatico with Skip Schumaker’s clubhouse in 2023.

During the Winter Meetings, Bendix spoke to some of the calculus behind the Bethancourt acquisition. This was ostensibly couched in the contextual nuance of frustration from…well, people seemed to just want him to sign Jorge Soler already. Bendix’s response in terms of why the organization was taking the perspective of preserving runs/preventing runs, rather than using the lens of getting offensive help, is more than a little Moneyball adjacent.

“In my mind, value is value—runs scored, runs saved,” Bendix said to MLB.com. “They all help you win games. There's a lot of different ways that you can get to being a really valuable player. And so it's never about replacing one for one so much as just building the strongest team possible…I think you can score runs in a lot of different ways: power, speed, average, on-base [percentage], all of that. Ideally, the more ways a team has to score runs, the better.”

He sounds like he’s diversifying a portfolio, but the point is not without merit. To the culture of the team, and the need for leadership and intangibles this season, Bethancourt is likely going to be a boon to the organization. Schumaker chimed in while he and Bendix were at the Winter Meetings.

“We are so pitching-heavy that you need to be able to throw to a guy that you love throwing to. The offensive part, obviously, we would love to have, but I think having a leader back there that’s—it's really, really important, that's done it before."

Hearing from Schumaker highlights, in part, why the club thought that going out and getting Bethancourt was a good idea. Bethancourt is also bilingual, and could easily be a solid mentor to catcher Nick Fortes in a year where there’s a ton of opportunity for Fortes to increase his catching IQ. The stable of pitchers the Marlins have is full of young arms, which translates into chances for Fortes to work mostly with raw talent, on the field and off.

Absolutely,” Fortes said emphatically last month when asked if he was looking forward to “picking [Bethancourt’s] brain. “He comes from an organization where they’re very analytical, so I’m very curious to hear his take on what they did over there and maybe stuff that we can bring over here to help…He’s a great defender, he’s got a cannon of an arm, so anything I can learn from him will always be knowledge worth knowing.”

There was clear enthusiasm from Fortes, and with that kind of bent towards analysis he’s talking about in this overall MLB cohort of catching talent, there seems to be ample opportunity for Fortes to personally thrive under Bethancourt’s wing. If that bears out, the ripple effect to the wider clubhouse can only help.

The Marlins have been starved for stability at the catcher position. It is obvious that it has more or less been musical chairs at backstop since J.T. Realmuto’s departure in 2019. Ideally the one-year, $2.05M contract won’t be a stopgap without value.

Coming into 2024 Bethancourt is a career .231 hitter. He strikes out about 25% of the time, but makes contact when swinging in or out of the zone 67% of the time (for some context, Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s contact% currently sits at 70%). It implies there is a smidge of room to improve and tinker, even with 10 years of pro ball under his belt. He wasn’t acquired for his offense, and has other means to help the team get wins.

In terms of fielding chops, Baseball Savant tells us he has an impressive pop time, ranking first or second in the stat between four seasons. Bethancourt’s framing has improved overall, too.

(via Baseball Savant)

On the flip side his blocking is nearly on the bottom rung, 64th place in the majors (among 68 qualified catchers overall). Between his pop time and ranking fifth in CS at second base, though, maybe some of the fielding stats with cancel each other out in 2024.

Tanner Scott "marveled at Bethancourt’s throwbacks to the mound" during their first bullpen session together, per MLB.com's Christina De Nicola. “I felt like he was great back there," Jesús Luzardo remarked after throwing to Bethancourt himself. Those are two key pitchers for the new guy to have in his corner.

Bethancourt is a gamer, tenacious but doesn’t seem to have a chip on his shoulder. While he comes from a downtown landscape in Panama City, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that during the COVID-19 pandemic, he and his brother-in-law purchased a 17-acre farm in the countryside. Hard work and sweat equity is necessary to make either a pro baseball or farming venture successful, so look for Bethancourt to stick it out and target producing results for both the pitching staff and the club as a whole.