La Russa wasn't trying the rank the catchers of all time, he was paying tribute to his catcher here and now and using hyperbole as his means. Being overly bothered by that is silly. Though I suspect that the writer is using the same rhetorical device as La Russa in this piece.

I usually wouldn't nit-pick over a one-liner, but considering the argument of the piece...

I think it's pretty clear Yadier Molina is the best catcher in his family.

Updated Standings!

Rings Won
1. (tie) Jose 2
1. (tie) Yadier 2
2. Bengie 1

Poor Bengie. And the Molina Clan is officially halfway to Yogi!

I think it's pretty clear Yadier Molina is the best catcher in his family.

I thought Bengie had the edge on career value for another year or so, but BBRef's WAR loves Yadier's defense, he crushes Bengie 14-8 in WAR/career already.

Since "the game" itself is not animate and doesn't have eyes, technically he's right. "The game" has never seen a better looking woman than Alice Pearce, either. Poor game.

And the Molina Clan is officially halfway to Yogi!

Dale Berra got one with the '79 Pirates, though I don't think he was on the postseason roster.

Rings Won
1. (tie) Jose 2
1. (tie) Yadier 2
2. Bengie 1

Shouldn't Bengie have two as well? 2002 Angels and last year because he was on the Giants the first half of the season. Remember all the hoopla about how he would get a ring no matter who won?

So it looks like a three way tie (for last)!

Do we really have to discuss this? In the euphoria of a WS win, a manager overly praises a key player. Big deal. It happens every year.

I think there's an interpretation of "best catcher" where you can ignore offense. I don't think he's saying "most valuable" catcher, which would have to include offense. When YM comes to the plate, he's a hitter, and when he's behind the plate, he's a catcher. I realize that's a stretch just to justify some obvious hyperbole, but that's the hyperbole that fits YM better than trying to compare him to a Piazza, etc, with a straight face.

Huh. I'm a Cardinals fan, so I didn't think my opinion would matter much, so I went over to BB-Ref. They agree with TLR. Yadi is ranked sixth all time in DWAR, behind guys who are retired or (IRod) just about retired. And Yadi has by far the least playing time of anyone anywhere near him. If he kept up his current defensive rate, he would easily eclipse everyone above him, unless IRod plays another decade. Of course, he won't maintain the pace as he ages, but he also has serious room to give against all five. I knew Yadi was good. The only catchers that I've seen (I've been watching baseball since 1954) that I'm sure are in Yadi's league are Johnny Bench (about even) and Bill Freehan (the best I ever saw). There are old AL guys from my lifetime (Jim Hegan?) who might be in the mix if I'd ever seen much of them. From what I've seen, I'd even take Yadi over IRod, although it's been a lot of years since I saw IRod in his prime. But for BB-Ref to verify his standing? That I did not expect, even knowing that they don't have decent rankings for catcher defense going very far back, so Gabby Hartnett and Charlie Bennett are not in the pool. Score one, I guess, for TLR. - Brock Hanke

Channeling Sparky Anderson, is he?

Channeling Sparky Anderson, is he?

Well, they are the only 2 managers with WS titles in both leagues, and both have 2 NL and 1 AL. And LaRussa has a secretary named Anderson.

Well, they are the only 2 managers with WS titles in both leagues, and both have 2 NL and 1 AL. And LaRussa has a secretary named Anderson.

And Sparky Anderson has a secretary who drinks.

Anderson died in Thousand Oaks, CA. LaRussa lives in Alamo CA. The original Alamo is famous for having a huge live oak.

Coincidence? Or conspiracy?

Sparky Anderson is dead?
How did I miss that!

Not to worry. Sparky missed the news, too.

As noted by bjhanke in #10, Yadier does appear to be one of the greatest defensive catchers of all time. Even the most recent attempts to break down catching defense into its component parts (blocking pitches in the dirt using Pitch-FX data, calling games, framing pitches etc.) finds Yadi near the top of all the lists. He's a very complete defensive catcher.

I thought the advanced metrics were pretty damn poor with respect to measuring catchers? To the point of being useless. Even so, I don't see how Molina is close to Bench or IRod on defense.

From what I've seen, I'd even take Yadi over IRod, although it's been a lot of years since I saw IRod in his prime.

Rather than six of one half-dozen of the other, without looking at the numbers, I'd give it 7-5 to I-rod; because from watching him in his prime, the speed of his catch-and-throw looked positively unworldly.

Catchers born since 1973.

One of the curious things about baseball and the imbalance in the importance of offense vs defense is that sometimes world class defensive talents can't break through to the starting lineup. Watching the Mets, three backups pop out to me as guys that could easily have won 5+ gold gloves if their hitting was better: Endy Chavez, Tsuyoshi Shinjo, and Charlie O'Brien.

I was in absolute awe of Charlie O'Brien's defense. (In reality, this was probably because I saw him pick off one guy at first base when I was 11, and the memory stuck.) But according to B-R's dWAR, he was every bit Yadier Molina's equal. According to fangraphs, he's even better than Molina. In addition, he was famed as a great game-caller, and in this quick SI article, Tim Belcher calls him the best pitch-framer he'd ever seen.

Maybe Charlie O'Brien was the best defensive catcher in history? Or maybe there was another guy that was an even better defender, but an even worse hitter?

Dan

But.......but where is Jeff Mathis???

(C'mon, SOMEbody had to take the shot)

Yadier Molina's arm is probably the best in baseball history.

Drunk guy says dumb things. Film at 11.

Just for fun. Please realize this isn't a serious case for O'Brien:

Passed balls per 9:

IRod: .056
Molina: .056
O'Brien: .032

Yadier Molina's arm is probably the best in baseball history.

Has anyone ever used anything to reliably measure MPH to 2B, 1B, and 3B for various catchers?


Passed balls per 9:
IRod: .056
Molina: .056
O'Brien: .032

Fun. What's the sample size, how many innings per catcher?

Has anyone ever used anything to reliably measure MPH to 2B, 1B, and 3B for various catchers?

Yet another reason the Home Run Derby should be replaced with a skills competition. Let's see who really runs to first base the fastest!

Post 23

Sure, if baseball started 10 years ago

Poor Bengie. And the Molina Clan is officially halfway to Yogi!

Yeah, but Yogi still goes first to third faster than Jose and Benji.

Fun. What's the sample size, how many innings per catcher?

It was something like 6,000 for O'Brien, 8,000 for Molina, and 20,000 (!) for Rodriguez.

Deleted, wrong thread!

Molina's not even the best catcher in the National League.

The only guy who's quaffing the Chateau de Pinhead is the guy who posted this in the first place...

Looking over Yadi's fielding data, as incomplete as that still might be in terms of our total understanding of defensive value, reveals some stunning information. Has anyone done a tabulation on relativized CS percentages? (I don't see any way to easily do that from available sources.) Yadi's overall average has a real good chance of the being the best ever (though it must be said the way the data is collected/combined might lead to some distortions, since pitcher pickoffs seem to be added into the CS percentages and not adjusted for in terms of what the catcher actually does on his own).

Quickly adding up the catcher baserunning data at bb-ref for the NL from 2005-11 shows that the Cards have the highest CS% over that span--37%--which includes the more league-average backup catchers on the team. Yadi himself, despite having an off-year in '11, is at 44%. [EDIT: Yadi's percentage is 57% higher than the league average over those years, which is a bit better than Pudge's lifetime relCS of 53% above league average.] The Cardinal catchers have permitted the fewest number of "runner bases advanced" in 2005-11 by a sizable margin, and it represents just 73% of the league average over those years.

Cardinal catchers have picked off baserunners at over 250% of the league average over 2005-11.

Now we can go back as far as the data permits to see which other catchers have similar profiles. You will find catchers with as high or higher CS%, but these need to be relativized for the baserunning environment--people do run smarter these days, and that's reflected in the decline in CS%. From a quick perusal of that data, it doesn't suggest that Freehan is someone anywhere near Yadi's level. Bench? Yes, quite possibly, but only from 1968-74; Johnny's great pickoff totals are highly concentrated in the first 4-5 years of his career.

So Tony is not quaffing anything except champagne (which, by the way, doesn't come from the part of France where they have that high concentration of chateaux--that's Bordeaux). And his comment about Yadi, taken as a comment on his field leadership and his overall work behind the plate, stands up as being entirely plausible, even if it's just a little bit premature.

EDIT: #21 is a terrific comment.

Molina's not even the best catcher in the National League.

You can't be selling McCann as defensively better than Molina, can you?

You can't be selling McCann as defensively better than Molina, can you?

As Preserved Fish has mentioned, I don't think you can separate the two completely. In all likelihood the best defensive "X" ever was some backup or AAA lifer that couldn't hit enough in the bigs to start.

When we traditionally talk about Bench and Berra as #1A and #1B, it's at least 70% bat we're talking about, even though both were excellent defensive players.

Even though you may claim to be basing it on defense only, what you're really doing is saying Yadier Molina is the best defensive catcher to hit well enough to start. You've still got offense in there.

You can't be selling McCann as defensively better than Molina, can you?

Not defensively, no. But a catcher has to hit too.

If you limit yourself to the B-R fielding runs (Play Index doesn't seem to let us access any of the other advanced fielding data available for individual players or single league years) you find that Yadi's average per 162 games is the highest at 13.9. Others that such a formulation puts up there near him are: Charlie O'Brien, Kenji Johjima (!!), Henry Blanco, Ron Karkovice, Pudge (Rodriguez, not Fisk!). [EDIT: yes, went down to 1500 lifetime PAs to look for outliers, and there was Johjima.]

That's the group that ranks at 10 FR/162 or higher. In the 9's you have: Charles Johnson, Jim Sundberg, Clay Dalrymple, Rick Wilkins (!!), and, when adjusted for games only at catcher, Johnny Bench.

Right under Bench are Steve Yeager, Jake Gibbs, Tom Pagnozzi, Jose Molina (!!), Mike LaValliere, Joe Mauer, and (again adjusting for games at catcher) Gary Carter.

Again, no claims that this is anywhere close to definitive, but it's a first cut. You'd want to look at the other available data and make some other comps using it.

TLR's statement about Yadi, if taken at face value, is clearly untrue: despite all the recent woo-hoo about defense, offense is still a higher proportion of what any player, regardless of position, brings to the table in terms of value. But if we give a guy who's been in baseball for fifty years a little credit for that, instead of assuming that because he's a long-time insider he's an idiot, we can probably assume that TLR was referring to Yadi's particular skills at his defensive position. We can quibble for a thousand posts over whether that's what he meant or not, but if we grant that possibility, that statement--made in the thrall of a very tumultuous victory--can be seen as not quite so outrageous, obtuse, or objectionable.

Catchers born since 1973.


Rk Player WAR/pos OPS+ Rfield Born PA From To Age G
1 Joe Mauer 40.4 133 48 1983 3911 2004 2011 21-28 918
2 Jason Kendall 38.1 95 -22 1974 8701 1996 2010 22-36 2085
3 Victor Martinez 28.1 122 -20 1978 4819 2002 2011 23-32 1149
4 Ramon Hernandez 23.1 98 17 1976 5450 1999 2011 23-35 1457
5 Brian McCann 20.6 122 -18 1984 3465 2005 2011 21-27 882
6 Mike Napoli 16.4 129 -14 1981 2236 2006 2011 24-29 619
7 A.J. Pierzynski 15.6 94 -33 1976 5707 1998 2011 21-34 1494
8 Yadier Molina 14.7 88 81 1982 3497 2004 2011 21-28 944
9 Russell Martin 14.0 100 8 1983 3189 2006 2011 23-28 792
10 Carlos Ruiz 10.6 98 19 1979 2164 2006 2011 27-32 619
11 Kurt Suzuki 10.3 90 12 1983 2509 2007 2011 23-27 628
12 Geovany Soto 9.9 108 -1 1983 1900 2005 2011 22-28 503
13 Bengie Molina 8.6 86 5 1974 5159 1998 2010 23-35 1362
14 Rod Barajas 8.6 80 31 1975 3419 1999 2011 23-35 1010

Seems like the A's are better at generating catchers then the Angels...fun!

If you limit yourself to the B-R fielding runs (Play Index doesn't seem to let us access any of the other advanced fielding data available for individual players or single league years) you find that Yadi's average per 162 games is the highest at 13.9. Others that such a formulation puts up there near him are: Charlie O'Brien,

Yes!

One of the curious things about baseball and the imbalance in the importance of offense vs defense is that sometimes world class defensive talents can't break through to the starting lineup. Watching the Mets, three backups pop out to me as guys that could easily have won 5+ gold gloves if their hitting was better: Endy Chavez, Tsuyoshi Shinjo, and Charlie O'Brien.

I think Endy is maybe the best defensive OF I've seen. That's probably not really the case, but he was incredible, at least before he got hurt in 07. In 2006, he played 240 innings in LF with a UZR/150 of 40, 264 innings in CF with a UZR/150 of 31.7, and 310 innings in RF with a uzr/150 of only 15.6. The sample sizes aren't large enough, and I'm sure no one is probably THAT good, but he was amazing.

But a catcher has to hit too.

Mike Scioscia disagrees.

It's crazy that Brian Jordan might have a case for Greatest Corner Outfielder Ever yet never won a Gold Glove, but had a top ten finish in MVP balloting and was famous for being a two-sport pro (though overshadowed by Bo and Deion). Did "old baseball men" loathe him, or something?

EDIT: #7 beat me, yeesh. Guess I'll try to come up with something else to say...

It used to be rare for a non-CF to win a Gold Glove. It's not surprising that many outstanding LF/RF were most likely passed over. The voters essentially just weren't looking for them.

I'm curious to see whether the new LF-CF-RF Gold Glove system does anything to change peoples' take on OF defense.

Oh, I do have one last, unrelated point: I feel like using "best [position] ever/in baseball" as meaning best defensively at that position was a fairly common sentence construction in the past. It is a confusing way to put it, and that's probably why people don't do it much anymore, but I believe they used to.

43 posts into a greatest catcher ever thread and no mention of Matt

In all seriousness, though, Wieters might be a better defensive cather than Molina.

6 passed balls in almost 3000 career innings behind the plate. And a pretty good arm to boot.

Do we really have to discuss this? In the euphoria of a WS win, a manager overly praises a key player. Big deal. It happens every year.

It beats over-praising Disneyland.

I'm kind of surprised Molina's career WAR is so low. I know he used to be very bad at hitting, but he's been pretty solid (as catchers go) for several years now. Though I see he's given 4 wins back just from baserunning.

#37 Yeah but take the decline phase out of Rodriguez or Bench.

Also Don there are a couple of research papers at Retrosheet that I think look at the stuff you seem to be interested in.

According to Chuck Rosciam the top career CS% are Roy Campanella, Clay Dalrymple (who else) and Yogi Berra. Both Campanella and Berra's totals were incomplete at the time he wrote his article.


Jim Weigand get IRod, Bench and Elston Howard as the career best against the running game. (And he's comparing to league average). He gets Bench as the best against the running game every year between 1969 and 1975 (seems reasonable), second best in 1976 and fading fast after that.

He gets IRod (too confusing to have two Pudge's in this discussion) first 9 times and second another 4 times. Never turned in a season quite as good as Molina's two best though (the second and third best by Jim's method -- behind Del Crandall's 1956)

His top 17 seasons (too many too close to go to 20 I guess) have IRod 4 times, Molina 3 times (and counting presumably), Bench 3 times, and Crandall, Howard, Benito Santiago, Del Rice, Bob Boone, Mike Matheny and Wes Westrum all once.

So Molina has to be in any peak discussion already. Career, forget it. IRod was remarkably good for so long.

Thanks, Ron. Molina may have peaked already, his CS was only 29% in '11 and his pickoffs are down (though we have no reason to think that the two measures are especially correlated from what I can see). Also, I am simply baffled by Weigand's rankings for 1968--sure seems like Bench should be higher than #5 based on a quick look at the catchers that year. His methodology seems more than a bit counter-intuitive, actually.

PF will be happy to know that Charlie O'Brien makes it on the top 3 list via Weigand's method in 1995.

#18 Most of the advanced metrics are basically catcher versus the running game. There's been some good work on other aspects of catcher's defense, but I'm not aware of any metric that incorporates it directly (even Sean, who has done some of the important work doesn't seem to have incorporated it into TotalZone).

Passed balls and wild pitches are a) heavily influenced by staff (in particular knuckleballers and extreme power pitchers) b) mostly in the noise (for those who have been deemed able to catch at the major league level. Kind of like scooping at first)

Even when it comes to the running game, the weights are probably wrong. We know that in general the pitcher is about twice as important as the catcher (and the sum of these two has slightly less influence than the guy attempting to steal) in stolen base percentage. (I'm not aware of any work on stolen base frequency, beyond Dave Smith's that shows that stolen bases are far more frequent in the late innings of close games)

But that's the general rule. Only the absolute best pitchers against the running game could give some catchers any kind of a shot, and there are pitchers so bad at holding runners that the base stealer can walk into second standing up against Molina or IRod (or Bench ....)

So the state of rating catcher's defense is essentially that you've got a decent enough place to start and plenty of extra info to argue for specific exceptions. I'm actually happier with the way catchers turn out in TotalZone than any other position.

Has anyone made any attempt to measure leverage associated with SB and CS. It seems to me that this is one of few baseball stats that occurs due to a conscious decision on the part of manager or player. WHereas more typical stats like hits are produced continuously no matter what the game score. The last time I looked at this (10-12 years ago) it seemed that Total Baseball did not attempt to control for this (i.e. a SB in a tied ninth game should be more valuable than one in a blowout) and valued SB at something like 0.21 of a run. Which occurred to me was undervaluing it.

Has anyone done anything like that?

The funnier thing about La Russa's quote was that it came in response to a question about allowing Carpenter to bat in the bottom of the fifth, saying that it was Yadi who talked him into keeping Carpenter in because he knew Carpenter still had something left. Except that Carpenter gave up a double to the next batter he faced and was then immediately pulled from the game. But, hey, he just won the World Series, he's allowed to say whatever he wants for a while.

Not defensively, no. But a catcher has to hit too.

Molina actually outperformed McCann with the bat this year too, though of course I wouldn't expect him to keep that up.

while on the subject of catchers did anyone ever criticize Fisk for calling the change up to Perez that he hit out of the park. In the 75 highlite film Bill Lee made a big deal out of that, without calling his catcher by name. Was Fisk a good pitch caller? does anyone know?