I am perhaps Phillips' BF here at the HOM

3. Hilton Smith

Jaack, I wrote about the value of Phillips' multipositional versatility and its potential impact here.

I buried the lede, but at the bottom of the piece is this:
Anyway, let’s guesstimate that at a minimum half of Phillips’ games in his salad days involved his facilitating a platoon, which means four or five PAs a game times 75 or so games. Just to spitball it, let’s say that Phillips allowed his teams to put an average player into the lineup instead of a replacement player for those 100 games. The difference between replacement and average is about 20 runs over 150 games. In 75 games that’s 10 runs that Phillips facilitates. Or 1 win. Maybe we can’t give it all to him, I can’t think it through quite that far, but it doesn’t seem far-fetched that Phillips might have enabled his teams, through his versatility, to pick up an extra 5 wins over an 18 year career.

This seems worth our talking about as a group. The rest of the article kind of explains how I got to this initial SWAGuesstimate.

BTW: I am perhaps Phillips' BF here at the HOM, and he isn't making my ballot lately due to enough other higher-ranking fellows at their respective positions.

14. Buehrle (new) - superior to John in era context.

Catcher was the first position on my list. In the course of my work, I noticed that Ivan Rodriguez does very poorly in both pW-L and eW-L. Could you comment on why that would be. I didn't notice any structural underrating of all catchers but I-Rod low numbers really stuck out to me. Do you have any thoughts on why that would be?

Here is my first take at the newbies.

I think as a whole the electorate leans a little too much on BB-Ref WAR. It's basically the only major metric that doesn't think Tommy John is a very strong candidate.

Year  Place OnBallots
1995    44     5
1996    44     6
1997    44     6
1998    41     6
1999    35     7
2000    41     6
2001    44     5
2002    39     6
2003    41     6
2004    37     7
2005    34     8
2006    29     9
2007    30     8
2008    35     7
2009    39     5
2010    40     5
2011    35     5
2012    32     5
2013    30     5
2014    33     4
2015    30     4
2016    25     5
2017    21     7
2018    22     6
2019    23     5
2020    19     8

When you total it up for the LHP games and the RHP games, the sum comes to 1.8 Runs for the year in those 55 games. Probably in some years he'd do it more often and in some years less. But at two runs a year, he'd tack on a win or three to his career. Of course, this doesn't take into account the specific platoon differences of him and the players who came and went from the lineup. That's a job for a databaser, of which I am not one.

Rob, could you possibly add Josh Hamilton to your list of newbies for 2021?

                 CPASR
Tim Hudson        .785
Mark Buehrle      .758
Torii Hunter      .552
Dan Haren         .493
Shane Victorino   .460
Alex Rios         .446
Josh Hamilton     .430
Grady Sizemore    .429
Barry Zito        .418
Aramis Ramirez    .337
AJ Burnett        .316

3B - Bell, Bando, Cey

1. Andy Pettitte, SP, PHOM 2020
He's by far the best pitcher available in my system, ranking 43rd overall among pitchers. I'm not quite sure why others are so down on him to be honest.

Finally, as with most metrics, I think you need to give catchers some kind of boost - I've typically used 15% - 25% - to give them fair representation in any kind of Hall / ranking. Which, of course, doesn't affect Rodriguez's ranking relative to other catchers.

I want to echo what Jaack and Kiko have said about Tommy John. If you look at metrics other than bWAR, he appears to be an all-time pitcher. #21 all-time by fWAR for example. That's *seriously* up there in all time ranks. I also understand the stance of favoring peak over longevity, but John did have a peak, that depending on how you create a metric to measure it, may get diluted by the fact that John pitched *a ton of innings and seasons.* If a player is getting dinged simply for playing really long, that's not ideal. Longevity is a plus, not a minus, all else being equal.

1. Andy Pettitte, SP, PHOM 2020
He's by far the best pitcher available in my system, ranking 43rd overall among pitchers. I'm not quite sure why others are so down on him to be honest.

Some telling comparisons:

ERA +

Santana 139
Tim Hudson 120
Mark Buehrle 117
Tommy John 111

WAR7

Vic Willis 49.8
Santana 45.0
Roy Oswalt 40.3
Tommy John 34.6
Jack Morris 32.5

If catchers play less than players at other positions

Yes, I meant Kiko. Thanks for the redirect.

Kiko, if you haven't turned 40 yet, don't do it. Stay at 39. This is what middle age does to brains.

If you count Tony Lazzeri as a 2B, he slides just ahead of Marvin Williams. Lazzeri feels impossible to pick a position for me, though.

Catchers are obviously MORE involved in what happens during a game than any other position besides the pitcher. Left fielders mostly just stand around watching. If you think 150 games of standing around watching is more valuable than 120 games being involved with each and every pitch, well then I think you've never actually tried to play catcher.

Catchers are obviously MORE involved in what happens during a game than any other position besides the pitcher. Left fielders mostly just stand around watching. If you think 150 games of standing around watching is more valuable than 120 games being involved with each and every pitch, well then I think you've never actually tried to play catcher.

The catcher "boost" is largely a philosophical phenomenon. Many people/voters give catchers a boost since they play fewer games in a season and over the course of a career relative to other positions.

I have never nor will ever give a catcher "boost". I simply do not believe it is justified. If playing catcher is really tough on the human body, well so be it. That doesn't in and of itself make catcher more "valuable". Being hit by innumerable foul balls and getting down into a squat thousands of times over the course of a season is part and parcel of being a catcher. That those things, among other things, cause a catcher to be less "durable" (and degrades their offense) compared to other position players is patently obvious. But I cannot fathom how that makes being a catcher for 120 games a year for 10 years comparable to an outfielder, say, who plays 150 games a year for 15 years.

I think that the positional adjustment associated with the WAR framework is sufficient. Anything over and above that seems "phantom" to me.

If this were true then some version of WAR would make an attempt to measure and reflect this "imaginary" value. This hasn't happened because there is no such value, only more effort expended, which has never been questioned.

In addition you would think that some catchers would be among the top paid three or four players in baseball, but they never are.

kwarren, how many catchers would you say belong in the Hall of Merit, and how does that compare to other positions?

Since catchers don't have as long careers, teams are going to be more hesitant to give them long term contracts after they've played six seasons.

This is precisely my point. Their careers are not as long, therefore their total value is less, therefore they make less money, therefor they should not get an upward adjustment to make their Hall of Merit case look better.

Both Fangraphs and Baseball Prospectus include catcher framing in their versons of WAR for the years we have it. For example, Buster Posey, for whom we have framing data for his entire career, is worth 52.7 WAR by fangraphs. BBRef, which doesn't include framing data, has him at 42.1. Yadier Molina gains 14 WAR from it.

But Mauer and Posey have both been give very large contracts as extensions.

No Josh Gibson?

You completely ignored the main point, which is that catchers are producing a ton of value in their short careers

Finally, as with most metrics, I think you need to give catchers some kind of boost - I've typically used 15% - 25% - to give them fair representation in any kind of Hall / ranking. Which, of course, doesn't affect Rodriguez's ranking relative to other catchers.

Just looking at the range of defensive contribution for catchers compared to left fielders, I would estimate that WAR is only accounting for at most half of the defensive contribution of catchers. The variance of catcher defense should be much higher than it is for left fielders simply because the number of chances for a catcher to make a defensive mistake are an order of magnitude higher than for left fielders. Instead the variance for catchers is much smaller than it is for left fielders which doesn't make any sense at all.

I don't think catchers produce any more value than players at other positions in their early years. In fact it is the opposite; they produce less value because they play fewer games.

Variance isn't just (largest value minus smallest value); that's range. This is variance. (Short version: It is standard deviation squared.)

The fact remains that catching is the lowest paid position, other than relief pitcher, and by a fairly large margin. See Post #59. This issue needs to be addressed before we start giving extra credit for things that we can't or don't measure.

I agree with Chris Cobb’s post #70. I do adjust catchers, and the reason I do is really simple: Fairness to all positions. That’s baked into our constitution, and FOR ME, I have a lot of trouble being fair in my cross-positional analysis without some kind of catcher bonus.

I agree with Chris Cobb’s post #70. I do adjust catchers, and the reason I do is really simple: Fairness to all positions. That’s baked into our constitution, and FOR ME, I have a lot of trouble being fair in my cross-positional analysis without some kind of catcher bonus.

The contention that the variance is much less for catchers than left fielders is not correct. That is all I was trying to point out. Guess I shouldn't of used any numbers.

Teams do give elite catchers big deals. There just hasn't been an elite catcher hitting free agency in his prime since... Carlton Fisk? The data just doesn't support your assertions.

Adjusted for chances, the variation IS much less for catchers. If left fielders had 1800 defensive chances in a season, do you think the range of their defensive values would still be +1 to -22?

If Posey and Mauer were as good as the best players at other positions then Minnesota and San Francisco got great deals for the contracts they signed them too. Unfortunately I don't think that either of these things are true. They were not as valuable as the best players at other positions, and the deals they were signed to were not bargains at all. Clearly they were the best catchers, but were nowhere near the level of the best players at other positions.

Catchers are the lowest paid position, other then DH & relief pitchers.

The problem is this: if catchers and LF have about the same distribution of defensive values according to WAR, then DL is arguing that something is broken here, because catchers have an order of magnitude more defensive chances than LF do. Therefore the spread of defensive values should reflect that as well. In the current iteration of bWAR it does not, thus the claim that their variance is too small, and the implicit argument that there is a good deal of defensive value (or un-value in the case of a Posada maybe) that is not being captured appropriately. Adjusted for chances, the variation IS much less for catchers. If left fielders had 1800 defensive chances in a season, do you think the range of their defensive values would still be +1 to -22?

For the top 20 players at each position this is not true.

The Def WAR variation among the top 20 LF is +1.0 to -21.7 a range of 22.7

The Def WAR variation among the top 20 LF is +29.6 to +0.7 a range of 28.9

The variance for catcher def WAR is 27.3% greater than it is for left fielders.

Anyway, in terms of salary, I think that kwarren is largely correct - catchers are underpaid relative to other positions to an extent consistent with their playing fewer games.

Front offices do seem to value HoM level catchers similarly to HoM level players at other positions. I don't think the lack of a mega contract for a catcher in 7 years is because front offices don't value catchers, it's because there haven't been any highly valuable catchers hitting the market.

I'm not saying that they are underpaid. I'm saying that they are being paid commensurate with their value.

that contract turned out to be a mistake on the part of the Twins. 184 Million for eight years and 20.3 WAR. Prior to that he was worth 34.7 WAR in seven seasons for 32 Million.

Debut since 1951, 1348 position players have at least 10 seasons, PA per position player WAR ...

Overall Catchers have pretty similar distribution to other positions at 2+ WAR per full-ish season but then have a bunch of extra backup Catchers with among the lowest rates of production among players who get a full pension from MLB.

(*) It looks like Fangraphs is only using framing numbers since 2008. They show Posada at -43.9 framing runs in the last 1,703.2 innings of his career. He played 11,172.1 innings at catcher before that, though. If he was equally bad throughout his career (and, if anything, framing seems like something you'd get better at as you aged / gained experience), that'd cost him an additional 288 runs and drop his WAR from 40.4 (current Fangraphs - BB-Ref has him at 42.8 w/ 0 framing adjustment) to something like 12.5 - which, by the way, seems completely absurd to me.