Measuring catcher defense

by
August 21, 2009

Here is a thoughtful read by Brian Joseph of Baseball Digest Daily. Brian’s top 5 among full-timers: Yadier Molina, Ryan Hanigan, Gerald Laird, Omir Santos, and Ramon Hernandez. His bottom 5: Jason Varitek, Josh Bard, Nick Hundley, Jorge Posada, and (last) Mike Napoli.


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Rob McQuown
14 years ago

Brian is too kind to me in this article, but the idea of measuring the impact on GDP’s by catchers is something I’ve used in my Strat-O-Matic card ratings for years, and I was happy to talk through putting it into a real-life metric with him. I think he’s come up with some good stuff here – much has been done before, but this is well-compiled and weighted.

Separating out pitcher influence is obviously the hardest part of measuring catcher defense, but the San Diegeo example he uses in his article points up that even with pitchers who have an extreme impact, the difference in catchers can be seen, though it’s not often you get to compare two guys as far apart on the spectrum as Blanco and Hundley.

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