The Mets invited four non-roster catchers to camp last year (Nick Meyer, Kevin Parada, Michael Pérez and Hayden Senger). Last season, they had five different players play behind the dish, with Pérez being the non-roster spring player seeing playing time with the big league club. This year, the Mets are inviting four catchers to camp to fight for depth chart positioning behind Francisco Álvarez and Omar Narváez. Austin Allen is the only catcher of the four who has never been in Mets camp before.
Austin Allen was drafted by the Padres in 2015 and made his major league debut with them in 2019. At the end of the 2019 season, Allen was traded to the Athletics for Jurickson Profar. He saw some time in the majors over three seasons with the Athletics each season until mid-way through 2022, when he was traded to the Cardinals. After a year with the Cardinals organization, he signed a one-year deal with the Marlins.
Austin Allen played in 34 games in 2019, getting 71 plate appearances, hitting .215/.282/.277 with a 51 OPS+. The following year, he played in 14 of the Athletics’ 60 games, getting 32 plate appearances, hitting .194/.219/.323 with a 49 OPS+. Since then, he has played in only nine major league games. Allen was defensively solid during his time in the majors. He has a career caught-stealing percentage of 24%, and in 2020, he was in the 82nd percentile for blocking.
Last season with the Marlins Triple-A team, he got into 91 games, hitting .225/.311/.409. Allen slammed 23 home runs, and it was the fifth time he had more than 20 homers in a minor league season. He has some serious pop, and it just has never translated in the major leagues (two homers over 57 games compared to 125 homers over 690 games in the minors).
As of writing, I would put Allen fourth on the Mets catching depth chart, behind non-roster invitee Tomás Nido. We’ve seen over the last couple of years how many catchers the Mets use in a season, and Allen’s major league experience puts him over Hayden Senger. This spring, we’ll look to see which pitchers Allen works with and how he handles the bat against major league pitchers.
