Russell Martin
He had an atrocious offensive season, posting a .250/.352/.329/.680 line with a pathetic .079 ISO. Martin's career low .285 BABIP was partially to blame for his low batting average as he set a career high in line drive percentage (20.5%) this year. While his batting average should have been closer to .270, and his OBP should have been closer to .370, there's nothing to excuse the disappearance of his pop.
While there are a lot of theories as to his offensive struggles, I believe the inability to hit the fastball is the main culprit. He hit .309 on fastballs last year, but this year he hit only .265. Martin's run value on fastballs was 8.9 in 2008, but plummeted to -0.8 in 2009. The common trend is an erosion in ability to hit the fastball consistently.
Fortunately, his peripherals maintained, as he walked 12.0 percent of the time and struck out 15.8 percent of the time. Martin chased pitches outside of the zone only 11% of the time before two strikes (19% Average), he chased pitches with two strikes only 29% of the time (38% Average), and chased on pitches significantly out of the zone only 12% of the time (20% Average). Traditional contact and chase percentages seem to support this assessment.
Regardless, the bottom line is that he had a clear regression in offensive skill this year, and he's going to have to rebound in 2010.
Defensively, he was about as good as last year. Martin's caught stealing percentage was better, but that's not really that important, because it doesn't reflect how horrid the Dodgers pitchers were at holding runners. Similarly, the passed balls and wild pitches allowed look bad, but the Dodgers staff is extremely wild. In previous catcher defense studies that I believe are the best we're going to see in a while, Martin has proven to be one of the better defenders in the league, and I didn't see much this year that dissuades me from continuing to go with that evaluation.
Overall, I think it's obvious that Martin didn't have his best year in 2009. However, looking forward, even if Martin never fully bounces back and instead settles in as a .270 hitter with a .370 OBP and good defense, he's going to be an asset to the team. In fact, I think this year was a wakeup call for many fans, as they finally got to see what a league average catcher really looks like.
There have been lots of calls to trade Martin recently, and while I am more frustrated with him than most because I have always liked him, I still believe it would be the worst time to deal him. After all, in what world does it make sense to trade an asset after its value has cratered? There's no upside in that because the trading partner is in a win-win scenario while the best you can do is break even.
Personally, I believe that Martin did suffer significantly from losing too much weight after he tried to change his off-season routine, and while he may never reach his peak years in 2007 and 2008 again, he should be more than worth his contract going forward.
Brad Ausmus
He performed about as well as you could expect a reserve catcher to perform. He was an adequate receiver and hit .295/.343/.368/.712 in limited time. Of course that line was primarily powered by an extremely lucky .370 BABIP, but he did produce.Though for all the talk about him handling pitchers, the staff did better with Martin behind the plate than Ausmus. Granted, that could be just luck, but I don't think there's much to the notion of him being some magic worker as a game caller.
Like Martin, his surface defensive statistics of caught stealing and blocking were poor, but that's mainly a factor of the Dodgers staff than anything. He blocked balls better than Martin did, but his days of stopping the run game are long gone.
The chances of Ausmus repeating his 2009 season next year are extremely low, at least from the offensive side of things, but the Dodgers could do much worse at backup in 2010.
A.J. Ellis
In his limited time with the team, he looked pretty bad at the plate and behind it. That doesn't mean that's going to be the story of his big league career, but there's not much positive performance to analyze.It seems like he would be a fine reserve should Ausmus retire or demand too much money, but the notion that he could be another Paul LoDuca is far fetched. Compare their minor league lines and then consider that LoDuca was only truly notable because he was on steroids in the majors.
It's true that Ellis has good on-base skills and makes solid contact at a good rate, but he has no power and struggled to thrive even in some of the most favorable conditions in the minors. Plus, he'll be 29-years-old next season, which is a bit late to be hoping for some kind of skills breakout.
