Recovering Ballplayer Vol. 2: The Ballad of John Jaso

Recovering Ballplayer is a recurring baseball column written by Fernando Perez, 2008 ALCS Champion with the Rays, and an ambassador and instructor for MLB International. Follow him on Twitter.

Not very long ago, new Pittsburgh Pirates first baseman John Jaso was a catcher. He was a catcher when I first met him in the minors, and despite constantly being told he wasn't cut out for the position defensively, he stayed a catcher for five major league seasons. Now, he's being asked to learn a position he's never played in the Majors, and only handled for five innings as a professional baseball player. But John has always been told he couldn't do certain things. And it hasn't mattered. He's still in the majors.

Last season, John was Tampa Bay's designated hitter, though John isn't a typical power-hitting DH. Rather, John is a classic Moneyball type: not a scout's dream, but a guy who frequently reaches base by virtue of consistently competitive at-bats. This has been the secret to his staying power in the majors; it's why, for a time, he was the rare catcher who batted leadoff. John is the kind of guy who is a pleasant surprise on every team he's on.

If he succeeds at first base in Pittsburgh, the transition will just be another unlikely success for John, one of a few handfuls of major leaguers who can actually blend in with society.

My earliest memory of John is of our first road trip as teammates in rookie ball in 2004. John tapped me on the shoulder and told me I had to find another seat on the bus. He wasn't effusively polite, but certainly wasn't rude either. Although John made history last year with the Rays as the first Caucasian player in MLB history with dreadlocks, at the time I met him, he was razor-bald. The baldness accentuated the prominent ridge in his furrowed brow when he explained that he, as a second year player, had seniority over me because I had just been drafted.

After being drafted out of Southwestern Junior College in Chula Vista, California the year before, John's first season in rookie ball was unimpressive enough to earn him that second trip to the same team next year—the baseball farm system's version of being held back a grade in school. Still, I moved to the front of the bus and John moved to the bottom of my internal depth chart of favorite teammates.

John has that pretty left-handed swing, but back then, he had a batting stance so cartoonish it would have been mercilessly ridiculed if it wasn't obviously working so well. He used to get into a relatively low squat with his legs at least twice shoulder width apart and shift his weight back and forth while waggling the bat. It looked like David Byrne doing a Gary Sheffield impression, if David Byrne was a sculpted six-foot-two and 205 pounds.

That year, we lived across the hall from each other in a seedy apartment building in Battle Creek, Michigan, which was frequently visited by local law enforcement. Battle Creek is home of Kellogg's, and the musk of Kellogg's products emitting from the factory hung over the town and the stadium, where we typically played in front of one or two handfuls of fans, the majority of whom were our faithful team boosters who boosted us, nobly, with leftover Halloween candy.

Throughout John's career, his offensive skills were considered more advanced than his defensive skills. At some point in the minor leagues he acquired the reputation of being a bad catcher. In baseball, labels are difficult to shed. The slow pace of the game allots too much time for gossip, and the subjectivity of baseball's results provide a fertile environment for speculation to stick.

A great scout once told me, "if you're looking for something in a player, you'll probably find it." John is mild-mannered and humble. He had pet hamsters in his mid-twenties and wears Tevas. He is, to this day, adorably frugal for a multi-millionaire. As a prospect, this personality didn't inspire confidence in talent evaluators who prefer more vocal leaders.

"I always felt if I was more rah-rah that it would come off as fake to everyone. That's just not me," he told me recently. "I'm not sure if you really need to be that way to be a good catcher."

John was also not a catcher interested in coddling nor enabling fussy, spoiled, pitchers.

("Pitchers can be divas. They're so high maintenance.")

John was accused of not caring about catching enough early in his career, though John maintains that he thought about catching just enough and that he was unfairly maligned because his offensive skills exceeded his defensive skills.

"In 2009 they told me I wasn't a good enough catcher to catch in the big leagues and that I was not a good enough hitter to be a DH—I was basically told if I didn't reinvent myself somehow, I wouldn't play in the big leagues…I daydreamed about pitching."

Though John made a short September debut with the Rays in 2008, he spent all of 2009 in AAA Durham posting solid but unspectacular numbers that didn't push him over Major League incumbent catcher Dioner Navarro, who was coming off an All-Star season. It seemed then, that his career might be stalling out.

"In 2010 I went to spring training thinking it might be my last year playing—I was ready to quit if things didn't change," he told me. "I was thinking a lot about giving the real world a go. A few years later Andrew Friedman actually told me that they were really close to taking me off the roster that spring but they eventually decided to give me another shot."

Later that season, John and I were sharing a hotel room in Gwinnett County, Georgia when our manager, Charlie Montoyo (now Rays third base coach) called and informed John that Dioner Navarro had injured his knee and the Rays needed John Immediately.

I was in the habit in those days of recording dad-narrated home videos of our team, and turned the camera on John. John was so weary, so tired of being mistrusted as a catcher, that he assumed this would be one of those short band-aid stints in the majors.

The following is a transcription:

JOHN: "It could be for a week, it could be for 20 minutes, who knows…you never know up there, I might not even be on a roster."

FERNANDO: "You may not ever come back."

JOHN: "And I may never come back. This could be my last day in minor league baseball for the rest of my life."

He never came back. That really was John's last day as a minor leaguer. Less than a week into his breakout season, John was batting cleanup in the DH position in Yankee stadium, which he was supposedly not good enough to do.

What did he do differently behind the plate in the majors?

"I didn't do anything different. Sometimes you get scouted at your worst for a short stint and you don't get the opportunity to show people how consistent you are. I've never been a Molina, but I've always been good enough to get the job done."

In his next season in Tampa, John struggled, and before 2012, he was traded to Seattle where he'd have his best year as a pro, hitting .276/.394/.496. On August 15th he caught Felix Hernandez' perfect game against his old club, the Rays.

In the offseason, he was shipped down to Oakland. He was the perfect Billy Beane player, and Beane just had to have him. With Derek Norris, John formed the best catching platoon in baseball, appearing as the DH when he wasn't catching. He grew out his hair like a true Oakland Athletic, though things got psychedelic for John in the worst way. His two productive seasons in Oakland were cut short due to concussions John sustained from foul tips striking his facemask. While the "Buster Posey is too handsome for roughhousing" rule is in effect to protect catchers from collisions at home plate, nothing can protect them from this sort of head trauma.

John recalls many of these catching experiences in vivid detail, though they're often congealed deep in his memory, causing him to confuse dates and timelines. But he does remember July, 24 2013 as the day the catcher position changed for him, mentally.

I took three bad shots in the same inning. I had never taken so many shots off the mask in a row like that. I was just expecting to shake it off like you would if you just took one or two and the next inning I go out to catch and I literally couldn't see the ball coming out of A.J. Griffin's (the pitcher's) hand. I wouldn't see the ball until it was like halfway to me. When he was standing on the mound getting ready to pitch, my eyes couldn't focus on him, it's that feeling where you're blinking and blinking but everything is still blurry…it felt like I was trying to catch the pitches with my peripheral vision…My heart is racing back there because I was barely catching these balls. They pulled me out of the game. I didn't play for the rest of the season… I had migraines and vertigo…It's hellish…I can't even imagine what the NFL guys go through. I was hitting in autopilot most of the time….which is kind of good for hitting if you aren't also nauseas…I hit a homerun that day in Houston, oppo, that I don't really remember hitting.

The next year, he passed all the concussion tests in Spring Training, but the club physician told him that he was not necessarily in the clear. He could work out without feeling like he was going to throw up, and he had recovered his vision and his reaction time, but his brain was still fragile: if he suffered more trauma he'd be right back where he was last year.

For much of that year, the foul tips that John took off his mask were the typical glancing fare. "Usually foul tips off the mask look a lot worse than they feel…usually they fly off the mask and into the backstop, but that one against the Twins was the worst one of my life. The ball rolled back toward Kaz (the pitcher). That never happens. It felt like an overhand right from Foreman. When Nick (Head trainer Nick Paparesta) asked me if I was ok, that was the first time in my career I ever said, 'I don't know'. They took me out.

About two weeks later I'm warming up Samardzija in the bullpen and that sick feeling was back just from squatting and standing up. I ran into the tunnel and threw up in a garbage can. I felt better after I threw up and I was being an idiot trying to be tough so I don't tell anyone and I sort of convinced myself it wasn't my head until I got hit with another foul tip later in the game. At this point I'm battling, like when you're trying to hit pitches and you don't know what's coming but I'm calling the pitches and I'm barely catching some of them…I remember not seeing a pitch until someone hit it. Post-concussion John became noticeably more cryptic. He grew increasingly obsessed with religious history, and asked me if I would be interested in being on his crew for a sailing voyage around the world after his playing career ended, hinting at the possibility the trip might be very soon. Teams were wary about signing him as he now profiled as lacking durability. He had spent years trying to break free of the label of being a bad catcher, but instead of breaking free, he just broke.

When he wondered, humbly, "maybe I could DH", it was unclear whether or not he was being delusional. Could he be a DH?

"I had no idea if I should catch anymore. I definitely would have given it a shot if someone wanted to sign me to catch. Teams usually want DH's who hit more homers—Oakland already had Norris and Vogt behind the plate so I was hoping I did enough to be the DH and third catcher but then they signed Billy Butler as the everyday designated hitter."

Always rummaging through the clearance aisles for distressed assets, his old team, the Tampa Bay Rays, traded for Jaso. Rays GM Matt Silverman told Jaso he wasn't going to catch anymore, and that he would be the team's primary DH. There is technically, no greater honor as a hitter.

Catchers make great physical sacrifices for the most intimate experience of game immersion. While pitchers and catchers have reported, John is at the Pirates facilities taking part in optional workouts, learning his new position, which he says is made easier, mentally because of the sense that "a catcher does a more difficult version of everything the infielders have to do." His challenge is swapping a catcher's physical habits for infielder physical habits. For instance, he has to train himself to do something as simple as keeping his fingertips facing the ground while preparing for each pitch, which is the opposite of what he did as a catcher.

"I don't miss bullpens. I don't miss the feeling in your hips, and your lower back in the first weeks before the rest of the team even shows up. Catching is a love hate relationship for any catcher. It's like mountain climbing, who would do it if you didn't get the view from the top? Catching a 1-0 win or a complete game…it's such a strong sense of accomplishment…it's shared…I'll miss working with guys like Felix Hernandez, he's an artist…he makes you feel like you're playing a video game…you're like a conductor.

"Catching helped me stick around in the big leagues," he added. "I'm grateful but I'm happy to be safe from concussions and shoulder stuff."

As hard as it is for catchers to remain in the position for lengthy periods, there is certainly a worthwhile debate to be had about whether it's worth asking a marquee hitter to also shoulder catching duties. Among baseball's best hitters just a few years ago, the Twins' Joe Mauer is still struggling to return to form, citing blurred vision as a result of repeated concussions. Shouldn't that impact the debate over what the Cubs decide to do with Kyle Schwarber?

I asked John, if he were a GM, what he would do with a catcher who had a chance to be an impact bat.

"Catching isn't for everyone, it's a lot to ask of a player. Look at how Josh Donaldson's career took off when he stopped catching, I don't know if that would have happened if he stayed behind the plate. If I was a GM and I had a catcher who had a chance to be a really great hitter I'd make him change positions. Why put those miles on his body? What are the chances you'll get a catcher who'll be Yadier Molina behind the plate and also hit like Yadi?

"I wasn't the best catcher…I was actually one of the worst in the league at throwing guys out, but we actually won a high percentage of the games I caught. If you're not a great catcher, you're not necessarily a bad catcher."