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Peer review
By egrissom | February 9, 2010
Last week I wrote that the Phillies allowed about 91.1% of the runs per plate appearance when Carlos Ruiz was catching that they did when some other player was catching. The table below shows how that compares to other teams in the NL for 2009. For each team, the table shows the player who caught the most (by batters faced) in 2009, the percentage of batters that the team faced that the catcher was behind the plate for and how the rate of runs per plate appearance with that catcher behind the plate compares to the rate of runs per plate appearance with all other catchers for the team behind the plate.
| Team | C | % of batters caught |
rate R per PA vs rate for all other C on team as % |
| STL | Y Molina | 81.0 | 74.0 |
| SD | N Hundley | 44.2 | 84.0 |
| ARI | M Montero | 63.2 | 85.6 |
| PHI | C Ruiz | 60.5 | 91.1 |
| LAD | R Martin | 81.1 | 96.3 |
| COL | C Iannetta | 52.8 | 97.9 |
| HOU | I Rodriguez | 52.1 | 98.3 |
| NYM | O Santos | 48.0 | 98.7 |
| WAS | J Bard | 43.9 | 99.1 |
| PIT | R Doumit | 43.3 | 99.6 |
| ATL | B McCann | 74.2 | 103.5 |
| CIN | R Hannigan | 45.4 | 106.4 |
| FLA | J Baker | 60.1 | 106.7 |
| CHC | G Soto | 56.3 | 109.2 |
| MIL | J Kendall | 81.1 | 110.7 |
| SF | B Molina | 72.5 | 121.6 |
Cards backstop Yadier Molina is on the top row of the table. During 2009, he was the catcher for 81% of the batters faced by St Louis pitching. By runs per plate appearance, the team’s result was much better when he was catching than when someone else was catching. St Louis opponents scored 486 runs in their 4,931 plate appearances with Molina catching, or about .0986 runs per PA. In the 1,156 plate appearances when someone besides Molina was catching, St Louis opponents scored 154 runs or about .1332 runs per PA. Overall, St Louis opponents scored about 74.0% of the runs per plate appearance when Molina was catching as they did when someone else was catching for St Louis.
At the other end of the table, Giants opponents had much better results in terms of runs per plate appearance when Bengie Molina was catching than when some other San Francisco catcher was behind the plate — with Molina behind the plate they scored 121.6% of the runs per plate appearance that they scored when someone else was catching.
The Dodgers and Brewers were the teams that had a single catcher behind the plate for the highest percentage of plate appearances. For the Dodgers it was Russell Martin and for Milwaukee it was Jason Kendall. Each of those teams faced about 1,200 batters with other catchers behind the plate — 1,168 for LA and 1,198 for the Brewers.
This says that the Phillies have signed two left-handed pitchers, Shigetoshi Yamakita and Naoyo Okamoto, to minor league contracts.
This says that they haven’t and reports that they have are not accurate.
Topics: catching |
February 9th, 2010 at 9:03 am
Perhaps I should’ve been rooting a bit harder for the Mets to sign B. Molina. Geez.
February 9th, 2010 at 9:17 am
Yeah. Don’t know what to make of that. I think Molina winds up where he does on the list just because Giant pitchers were freaky good pitching to Eli Whiteside last year. Opponents hit 228/298/355 in 1,292 PA with Whiteside catching. The numbers with Molina catching were still pretty impressive for Giants pitchers, 239/316/379, but worse than Whiteside’s so it brought Molina’s numbers way down. That line for batters while Molina was catching was still way better than Ruiz’s, for example. Opponents hit 262/328/424 while Ruiz was catching.
February 9th, 2010 at 11:41 am
It also helps that Giants pitchers are “freak”-y good in general.
February 9th, 2010 at 12:57 pm
I can’t believe you would talk about Rodrigo Lopez like that. After all he’s done for us.
February 9th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
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