Former White Sox catcher Omar Narvaez traded to Milwaukee

Omar Narvaez

The Milwaukee Brewers moved to fill a hole at catcher Thursday, acquiring former White Sox backstop Omar Narvaez from the Seattle Mariners in exchange for pitching prospect Adam Hill.

Yasmani Grandal was Milwaukee's primary catcher last season, and obviously, he is now with the Sox. Enter Narvaez, 27, who is coming off a stunning offensive year with the Mariners in 2019.

In 132 games and 428 at-bats with Seattle, Narvaez batted .278/.353/.460 with 22 home runs and 55 RBIs. I never anticipated that kind of power coming from Narvaez's left-handed bat -- over parts of three seasons in Chicago he totaled 12 home runs in 634 at-bats.

Maybe this power surge from Narvaez can be attributed to the juiced ball, but he did hit 20 of his 22 home runs and had an .836 OPS against right-handed pitching last year, so the Brewers are hoping he'll be the left-handed half of a productive platoon with Manny Pina.

I don't envy the Milwaukee pitchers, however, because Narvaez is a huge defensive downgrade from Grandal by any measure. Narvaez's -20 defensive runs saved ranked second-worst among MLB catchers in 2019, and he threw out only 18 percent of would-be basestealers.

Over the past five years, the Sox have had their share of catchers who give away strikes, but perhaps none were worse framers than Narvaez. He's among the worst I've seen in that area.

But, Narvaez was the fourth-best catcher in baseball in terms of weighted runs created plus (119), and he wasn't too far behind Grandal (121) in that area.

The Brewers need to hope Narvaez keeps knocking balls over the fence to make up for his lackluster defense.