Could Austin Wells be better than Posada? Because he's already better than Sanchez.
Austin Wells was always known for his bat, and his march to the majors seemed inevitable.
He rose from Low-A to Double-A over the course of the 2022 season, finishing with a line of .277/.385/.512 with 20 home runs to give him a sparkling OPS of .897. He followed that by hitting slightly worse in 2023: .230/.333/.442., seventeen home runs, and a .775 OPS. But what’s interesting is that he got better when he rose from Double-A to Triple-A. At Scranton, he hit .254/.349/.452, good for an .802 OPS. His bat could clearly play in the majors. The question was, could his glove?
Wells answered those questions and more with his rookie campaign. By August, both
FanGraphs and Statcast had him ranked as the fourth-best defensive catcher in the game. That, combined with his slash of .229/.322/.395, an OPS of .718, and 13 home runs in just 354 at-bats, made him third in Rookie of the Year voting.
All of this means Wells might be the most talented of the two men before him. Posada eased into the league, so there is no Rookie of the Year in play for him. But he did hit
.250/.359/.410–adding up to a .768 OPS–in 1997, when he only got 188 ABs. And both men are blown away by what Gary Sanchez did in his rookie year of 2016. He only played half the season, yet he hit .299/.376/.657 with an astonishing 20 home runs in only 201 ABs. He towered above the competition with his OPS of 1.032 and finished second in ROY voting.
He truly seemed like the second coming of Ruth.
Sanchez Never Got Defensive About his Play
Sanchez, however, never had the defensive skills or the work ethic to maximize his prodigious skill set. Today, instead of wearing championship rings he might have driven the Yankees towards, he’s the backup catcher for the Orioles. Posada also lacked elite defensive skills, but he used his bat and his belligerence to drive his teammates to multiple World Series titles and a plaque in Monument Park.
Wells, right now, projects to be the best of the three. He can hit as well as Posada but catches better than him, while a one-armed blind man could defend better than Sanchez.
That brings us to Jasson Dominguez. But what will he bring to the Yankees? Find out in Part Five.
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