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I would've gone with Foreman Forman.
Great stuff, Sean.
Or Cliff Johnson, allowing 1 SB every 9 innings:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/j/johnscl01.shtml
Dick Dietz: 1 wp for every 23 innings behind the plate
Ivan Rodriguez: 1 wp for every 24
Russell Martin: 1 wp for every 28
Ted Simmons: 1 wp for every 30
Johnny Bench: 1 wp for every 32
Yadier Molina: 1 wp for every 37
Good stuff Sean.
I did a SABR presentation two years back on pitch blocking and Piazza is probably one of the best there was at blocking pitches. I-Rod and Deitz were among the worst. Unfortunately for Mike, the difference in value is probably a third to a fifth that of the difference in throwing between I-Rod and Piazza.
Brings them closer, but I-Rod is still very valuable as a defensive catcher and Piazza is still poor.
Some comments: the Fielding Register lists might be better sorted by Innings than by Fielding Percentage. And now you really need to construct those leaderboards :)
Have you ever given any thought to working with the guys like Eric C. and Chris Cobb and the other guys doing research on Latin American Leagues and the Negro Leagues to try to put something up for the Negro Leaguers? Maybe all known researched stats and then their MLE's or something like that? I would definitely sponsor player pages of a few Negro Leaguers if it would help! It's just endlessly frustrated trying to look up stats and research for Negro Leaguers as their isn't a central depot for them that I know of. Being able to go to BB Ref and find the MLE's or collected stats for Chet Brewer or Lenny Pearson or Dick Seay would be fantastically satisfying and fun. Anyway, I appreciate all the great stuff you do at BB Ref. I can't imagine life without it anymore.
C and 1B are sorted by FP. The other positions by RF. I could go either way on that.
There may be some movement on this front finally this summer. I've heard of a dataset wending its way down the pike that might be available. We'll see what we can do. I figure MLE's would fit our neutralize feature almost perfectly.
Ah, cool. Makes sense. I did not scroll far enough down to note the change ...
Holy sh!t. That is awesome news.
If I weren't at work, I'd be masturbating furiously right now.
I'm just kidding!
Kind of.
I think there are two things to consider: which pitchers they caught and the likelihood that some pitchers would be more confident throwing their breaking pitchers to better defensive catchers.
The second is hard to figure but the first is not. Just looking at Dietz, he caught Gaylord Perry (spitter), Hoyt Wilhelm and Phil Niekro (knucklers). This may have some effect on their wild pitch blocking opportunities (more/less chances based on the pitchers). I think a blocking % may be a better indicator than rate after adjusting for "opportunity".
I think that's a major consideration, definitely, for a given year, or in looking at the career numbers of a catcher who's only been in the league a few years, but for an entire 10-15-year career I would imagine that a lot of that would even out, both by catchers having a broad range of pitcher types (including "change-of-speed/location" types who'd I imagine would be easier to catch) as well as the more "difficult" pitchers throwing to a number of different catchers over the years...
1) if they threw the knuckleball
2) their HBP, SO and BB rates to get an estimate of WP and PB rates.
3) then compared it to the actual for the catchers
Here are the results.
Full talk: http://www.baseball-reference.com/sabr2006/
Worst: http://www.baseball-reference.com/sabr2006/slide24.htm
Best: http://www.baseball-reference.com/sabr2006/slide26.html
By rate: http://www.baseball-reference.com/sabr2006/slide25.html
We have pitcher splits by catcher.
Dietz caught Perry more than anyone else: http://www.baseball-reference.com/pi/psplit.cgi?n1=perryga01
but he only caught Wilhelm for one batter and never caught Niekro.
He was bad, bad, bad.
It would be useful to know how many knuckballers each catcher had to deal with though as a guy who is, say, Tim Wakefields personal catcher is bound to have more PB & WP than anyone else in the majors today. Same with a catcher with Atlanta in the 70's vs a catcher with, say, Baltimore. Has anything been shown to have as large an effect as knuckleballers on WP/BP's?
I still think Cool Papa Forman is the way to go.
Nolan Ryan
I hear he can flip the lightswitch and have new features added to BB-ref before the lights go out.
And how is it possible that we've had a Dick Dietz-related thread and no Steve Treder sightings?
His SB/CS totals aren't all that bad: yeah compared to his contemporary rival Bench he is inferior (66% for Simmons, 57% Bench), but he basically kept the opponents' running games from being a positive sum game. In the run happy 70's that wasn't a bad thing at all. [I can only imagine that many of the attempts vs. Bench were failed hit-and-runs, because nobody in their right mind would do a straight steal-or would they? Baserunners weren't as valued back then as they are now.]
But his PB data-eicchsh: 182, almost twice as much as Bench. Odd thing: a sudden dropoff from 1975-76. Checking the Cardinal's staff in those years, Ron Reed and Bob Gibson both left after the 1975 season; Gibby's WP totals were never excessive. Maybe Simmons did some offseason work on his footwork or something.
Jorge Posada, lauded by Michael Kay and other Yankee supporters as having a great ability to block the ball: 1 wp for every 27
Jason Varitek: 1 wp for every 42
And for some context: Doug Mirabelli who has caught Knuckleballer Tim Wakefiled for effectively half his career: 1 wp for every 27.
other "defensive" catchers:
Brad Out-smus: 1 wp for every 33
Mike Matheny: 1 wp for every 33
and for kicks: carlton fisk: 1 wp for every 43. and think, that's a ton of innings...
I can't recall anyone every lauding Posada's ability to block pitches. He's awful at it. He's had WPs on strikes.
This article which looked at 1972-1992, was expanded to look at ALL the Retrosheet years (1957-2006, excluding 1999) in The 2008 Hardball Times Annual.
I-Rod was 29th worst in WP+PB out of 170 catchers. Piazza was 53rd worst. Dick Dietz was worst.
Your work doesn't take into account pitcher difficulty, right? Piazza had Candiotti to catch some of those years and some other tough ones.
Dietz may have been the worst, depending on what inning cutoff you use. Dale Murphy is at the very bottom of my list, though he did have to catch Niekro so it's not quite fair.
Pudge is +9 runs per year and Piazza is -5.
Our differences are best exemplified with Charlie Hough's catcher, Geno Petralli, who I have as +3 and AROM has as -7.
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