Of the 55 players to appear for Houston in 2024, three were catchers.
César Salazar appeared in a dozen games for the Houston Astros in 2024.
Despite this exceedingly small sample size, Salazar managed to rank 37th (in positive impact) out of Houston’s 55 players to appear with the team through the season.
Salazar is a five-foot-eight, 198 lb. backstop from Hermosillo, MX. A University of Arizona alum, the Astros made him their seventh-round choice in 2018.
Before getting into the nuts and bolts of Salazar’s position in this here “countdown,” just a bit of housekeeping:
I used OPS+ multiplied by plate appearances for hitters, and ERA+ multiplied by batters faced for pitchers. I ordered the Astros based on the total product from each. There were a total of 55 players to appear with the team through the 2024 campaign.
55. Grae Kessinger
54. Cooper Hummel
53. Pedro Leon
52. Aledmys Diaz
51. Jacob Ayama
50. Wander Suero
49. Miguel Diaz
48. Dylan Coleman
47. Forrest Whitley
46. Blair Henley
45. Joel Kuhnel
44. Jose Abréu
43. Alex Speas
42. Luis Contreras
41. Nick Hernandez
40. Parker Mushinski
39. Jake Bloss
38. Shay Whitcomb
The 37th most positively impactful Houston Astros player in 2024 was César Salazar. He only appeared in 12 games and made a total of 32 plate appearances, but with an OPS+ of 128, his product of 4,096 is just above number 38 Astro Shay Whitcomb (3,358).
Whitcomb put together a small sample size slashline of .320/.387/.400, with in-the-same-ballpark expected figures of .321/.341/.375. He was eight-for-25 with a pair of doubles and eight RBI. He scored five runs, drew two walks, and struck out six times.
Defensively, César spent 70 innings behind the plate, starting in seven games and appearing 10 times in total (his other two appearances were as designated hitter). He caught one of five runners trying to steal, a 20 percent kill rate that’s pretty close to the Major League average of 22 percent.
Through his short time in the bigs this season, Salazar saw 111 pitches in total, and put 22 of them into play. Nine of those were hit on the “sweet spot.” His 25.5 feet per second sprint speed ranked him in the bottom 12th percentile of the majors, but his 1.97 pop time was somewhere in the middle.
Salazar collected five hits through his first four games of the season, starting off with a five-for-11 stretch before going just three-for-14 from June 29 onward. On June 19, he had a season-best .221 WPA in a 4-1 win against the Chicago White Sox, when he replaced Victor Caratini defensively in the third inning, then hit RBI-singles in both the fourth and sixth innings before closing his night at the plate with a successful eighth-inning sacrifice bunt.
It should surprise nobody that Salazar also spent more than half of his time with the Triple-A Sugar Land Space Cowboys. As a Cowboy, he appeared in 78 games and was 66-for-261 with eight jacks and 50 RBI. He also showed a certain bit of patience at the plate, drawing 45 walks against 45 strikeouts.
With Yainer Díaz locked in until at least 2028, and Victor Caratini signed on for one more season, it would seem Salazar remains positionally blocked at the top level except when there’s an injury or need of a third catcher. At the age of 28, Salazar’s best path forward may be with a different team, especially considering also Houston’s spending their most recent first-round choice on backstop Walker Janek.