Best Catcher Comparison

Best Catchers Comparison

Sorry for the delay in getting this article out, I’ve had most of it done for some time now, but one of the calculations didn’t present what I felt was correct data, but more on that later. Similar to Matt’s articles, I am starting out with catchers-the position I used to play back in my high school baseball days. I’m going to break it down a few different ways, with the main breakdown being against the AP (Average Pitcher. To see what that looks like, look here). We’ll also do the most valuable based on their expected weighted runs divided by their card points (need a suggestion for an abbreviation here-if anyone comes up with a good one I’ll dedicate to them), and finally a super fun one-if they had the advantage every time. I've occasionally noticed some errors in my charts as reported here so let me know if you see something funky-I'm hoping I was able to grab anything that seemed off. Here's the top Catchers and another chart to give you an idea of where the entire catching population falls.

I’m going to start with the best pure charts, then do against an average pitcher and finish out with the abbreviation to be determined based on Showdown Points.

Johnny Bench clearly is a dominant player regardless of how you dice it. With 7 Home runs and 3 doubles, plus 10 defense(!!!), his card is clearly a STUD. This fits in with his status as one of, if not the, undisputed best catcher of all time. Clearly the cards here tend to be on the lower end of the OB spectrum, however not so low as to throw away at bats against an average pitcher. There is definitely some value with Bench and Perez, the others may be a bit low OB for my liking. 

Now for the best catchers against an average showdown pitcher. I think you’ll figure out quickly something that we’ve seen in the majors over the years, the importance of getting on base. This highlights the importance of OB (clearly) and the lack of outs on a chart(I definitely didn't weight this highly enough). Mauer stands head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd, and proves why the Twins retired his number this off season. Second is Posey’s 2012 card with the Giants. It shows the value of doubles and how significant getting having 2 outs instead of 3, even when you factor in you’re facing a 4 Control pitcher.

I'm including the top 20 catchers, and you’ll notice that the top 5 players are all 10+ OB, only 4 of the top 20 cards are 9 OB and there are no 8 OBs.  Clearly facing a pitcher with a lower control would push them higher up on the list, but it’s not as much as you’d think.

Mauer is the only one in his range, whereas Napoli, Posey(s) and Varitek make up the second range, and everyone else on this list make up the third bar. The average catcher created 3.39 runs against an average pitcher (there were 202 in this list to give you an idea of the volume we are looking at here). Making this graph sparked an idea for another graph that I think will give the best answer to bang for your buck in regards to runs/point:

Player 3 above is Jason Varitek, who at 360 points provides incredible value. 10 OB, two HRs and three doubles is a great card.  Player 2 is Austin Barnes from the 2017 Dodgers set who rocks 10 OB, 2 HRs, 2 Doubles, 5 singles and 6 walks. The surprise here is the 6 outs on his chart-but I guess how low the points are is what makes him really stand out. The final player is Scott Hatteberg who was part of the 2001 Pennant Run set for the Red Sox. To get a 9 OB for only 180 points presents some great value. The real issue here is the 0 defense, which is definitely what caused his Points to plummet. I actually was about to post this article without this graph and last second made a graph to show you how far above the players mentioned above are, however I think this graph also does a great job of showing value (and where Mauer, Napoli, and some of the higher point catchers fall). If you have a question on a specific dot/player ask me and I can send you a grab of where their dot falls along this graph.

Finally, I struggled a lot with just Runs/points because it so heavily favors players worth 10-50pts( Now I know the above graph can help mitigate that problem). I tried to find a way to balance it and really struggled so until I find a way to do it appropriately I’m going to just give the Runs/Points (I then multiplied by 1,000 just so that it was a workable number and not a very small decimal point). I’ll have to readdress this method in the future because it clearly doesn’t present a realistic option on what the best bang for your buck is (thinking (points-average points)/(runs-average runs) but this created an issue for multiple position players).

As you can see this disproportionately favors super low pointed players. I’ll leave you with this and work on a better formula for true value and will put something out after I’m done with most valuable players at each position.

Happy New Year!