A + B aren’t equalling C
Among everyday starters, no Cleveland Guardian is coming off a more disappointing 2024 season than Bo Naylor. Coming out of a bad 2023, the biggest bright spot for the Guardians was Bo Naylor. Over the final two months of that season, Naylor was the best hitting catcher in the entire league, posting a 145 wRC+ over his final 140 plate appearances with a slash line of .272/.379/.513 and seven home runs. The future felt so bright, but 2024 came around, and with him assuming everyday catching duties, it felt as if Bo forgot how to hit. From a 122 wRC+ and 2.1 fWAR in just 67 games in 2023 down to a 74 wRC+ and 1.6 fWAR in 123 games in 2024, the drop-off cratered the bottom of an already bad bottom third of a Guardians lineup. Naylor’s walk rate dropped from 13% down to 7.5%, and his strikeout rate leapt up to 31.4% from 23%.
However, despite taking a major step backward, projections systems such as ZiPS, Steamer, and ATC all see Naylor making at least a 20 point leap in his wRC+, creeping back towards a league average bat. As we move along here, we’re going to take a look at why those projections could make him one of the team’s more valuable players if he reached them, but also how he can get there.
Here are Bo Naylor’s projections laid out on his FanGraphs page:
There is one major factor to Naylor’s 2024 production drop-off from his rookie season, and it all revolves around his swing. His swing flattened out a ton in 2024, and it was incredibly noticeable. That singular change caused a couple trade offs that cratered his bat. His ground ball rate went up from 30% to 35%, a noticeable increase, and his pulled ground ball rate eclipsed 20% and surpassed his pulled fly ball & line drive rate of 18.6%. In 2023, he was pulling fly balls and liners at a slightly higher clip than groundballs.
Another noticeable side effect of his flattened swing was his zone contact rate and how much he was swinging and missing. Per Statcast, Naylor’s zone contact (Z-Con%) rate plummeted from 88.6% in 2023 to 82% in 2024. His zone swing-and-miss rate went from 10% up to 14%, the highest mark on the team. The trade-offs don’t make sense on paper, and they certainly didn’t translate on the field. One has to wonder what on earth Chris Valaika was doing with Bo Naylor and his swing.
However, a new hitting coach is in, and the aforementioned projection sites see Naylor climbing back to around league average, so what does that look like for WAR? There’s no real concrete way to look at that, but just seeing Naylor defensively makes me bullish on what a plus defensive catcher with a league average bat could look like in 2025.
A very similar comparison for Bo Naylor is Alejandro Kirk. In 2024, Kirk was a plus-plus defensive catcher who hovered around a league average bat. Kirk’s major advantage over Naylor behind the dish is that he threw out more runners, but overall, they posted similar pop times, equal blocking stats, and both are great framers. On top of that, their bat speeds are nearly congruent with both hovering within the 70.1 to 70.6 mph area.
So, what did Kirk do in 2024? He posted a 94 wRC+ in 386 at-bats in 103 games, good enough for a 2.8 fWAR. Naylor’s 2023 season would have been good for a 4-win catcher had he reached 450 at-bats. Kirk’s 2024 season would have been a 3.3 fWAR in a 450 plate appearance range. Between those two seasons is a near 30 point difference in wRC+ as Naylor’s 122 wRC+ was much higher than Kirk’s 94. The average of all the projections essentially puts Bo at a smooth 100 wRC+; perfectly league average. If Naylor could clean up his swing and tap into that 100 wRC+ bat, that’s a player who could not just give you great defense, but he could push 17-20 home runs as well, and that certainly feels like a guy who could get you 3+ wins behind the dish, something Cleveland has not had since Roberto Perez’s awesome 2019 campaign.
Suffice to say, I’m bullish on a Bo Naylor resurgence, but it all starts with his swing. Naylor doesn’t supply a ton of plus tools power-wise to have his swing fight against his ability to pull the ball. The more that ball gets in the air to the pull-side, the better those results will get for him. A major positive behind the plate in Cleveland could make for a more optimistic season than anticipated.