I can't help but think that the 11-player trade involving the Tampa Bay Rays, San Diego Padres and Washington Nationals wasn't so much about the Rays acquiring Steven Souza as much as it was about getting Rene Rivera.

Based on how much the Rays once coveted Jose Molina, I'm guessing they value Rivera far more than the basic metrics might show.

Rene Rivera

Catcher
Tampa Bay Rays

2014 STATS

• GM103

• HR11

• RBI44

• R27

• OBP.319

• AVG.252

Rivera is basically a hair below Molina when it comes to pitch-framing, and hey, he can hit, too.

There's been a lot of movement on the pitch-framing front this offseason.

The Padres were viewed as having two good pitch-framing catchers (Rivera and Yasmani Grandal), and they traded both players. The Cubs made a massive upgrade from Welington Castillo to Miguel Montero.

The Pirates, a year after going with the ex-Yankees combo of Russell Martin and Chris Stewart, will now go with an ex-Yankees combo of Francisco Cervelli and Stewart. The Astros acquired Hank Conger from the Angels. And, by the way, Martin got $82 million from the Blue Jays.

The Rays took a catcher (Ryan Hanigan) who was viewed as a good pitch-framer and upgraded him to a catcher who is a really good pitch-framer, but one who can do other things.

Using our Pitch F/X data and internal tools, our pitch-framing evaluation ranks Rivera as sixth-best in the majors in terms of called strikes gotten above average per nine innings. Molina ranked second (and Hanigan ranked 13th).

Most Called Strikes Above Average
Per 9 Innings (2014 Catchers)

As an aside, just to note what we're talking about with pitch-framing:

We're not just looking at a catcher's ability to steal strikes on pitches taken out of the strike zone. We're also looking at the ability to secure strikes -- to make sure that pitches in the strike zone are actually called strikes by the umpire.

In Rivera's case, he's good at both, ranking sixth in stealing strikes and seventh in securing strikes among the 42 catchers who caught the most pitches last season.

Rivera also excels at deterring base-stealing threats. He threw out 29 of 87 would-be base stealers, which padded his defensive runs saved total to third-best in the majors (nine).

Hanigan, Molina and Curt Casali combined for minus-0.8 wins above replacement for the Rays last season, per Baseball-Reference.com's numbers. Rivera was worth 3.1 WAR (and that's without considering the pitch-framing differential, which is probably a slight overall edge to Rivera).

Offensively, Rivera ranked in the top 25 percent in the majors last season in hard-hit average, with an 18 percent rate.

He hit 10 of his 11 home runs last season away from Petco Park, and although Tropicana Field isn't a hitter's haven by any means, he may be able to hit a few more out of the park there and in the other American League East ballparks (Camden Yards, Yankee Stadium, Rogers Centre and Fenway Park) than he did in the National League West (where he had to deal with the challenge of something like AT&T Park, in particular) this past season.

Rivera should look a lot better than last year's combo of backstops for the Rays. There was no position worse than Rays catchers last season in terms of overall OPS. Their .524 OPS was easily the worst in the sport for any spot on the diamond. (Only one other team, the Dodgers, was below .620, and this offseason it added a catcher, too.)

I'll admit that I'm very skeptical of this trade from a Rays perspective, mainly because they gave up Wil Myers so quickly. Doing that doesn't make baseball sense to me.

But now I think I've got a handle on what the Rays were trying to do. Regardless of they're ahead of the game on this, keeping a close eye on Rivera will be worth doing throughout the 2015 season.