The Brewster

The Valencia front office made a decision in the 2061 draft to pick two catchers with the intent to have the tandem ready at the beginning of the 2063 season. Those two players included Bradley Russel who was selected in the first round with a supplemental pick and Bernd Helwich who was still hanging around in the seventh round and caught the eye of the front office.

Both catchers started the 2061 season after the draft with the A-level ball club in Redwood City and worked their way up to the AAA Mars club by the end of that season.

In 2062, Russel hit .228/.320 in AAA while Helwich hit .250/.283. While neither of those numbers were overly impressive, the trade of Luis Gonzales to Vancouver and the spring training release of the underperforming Porter Ebert led the Valencia brass to pull the rip cord and make a step to the future by starting out both Russel and Helwich as the only two catchers on the opening day squad.

Over the course of the 65 games thus far in the 2063 season, Russel has gotten the larger portion of playing time (138 at bats compared to 104 at bats for Helwich) as Russel has gotten two-thirds of the starts to this point. Helwich has the edge on on-base percentage and homers while Russel is a little more of a presence behind the plate throwing out 17.4% of base runners compared to 10.7% for Helwich.

A larger comparison of the performances between the two catchers are shown below: All-in-all, Helwich seems to be providing a little more value to this point (2.4 projected WAR compared to Russel's 0.7 projected WAR). Both are on minsal contracts for next season.

Rumor has it that the lineup next week will be flipped as Helwich will start getting two-thirds of the starts.

Helwich looks like the better player thanks to being a better framer.

BaseClogger wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 16, 2025 9:04 pm

Helwich looks like the better player thanks to being a better framer.

I am leaning that way myself.