Aw, I’ll miss Gustavey.

Jeter’s got mad hits like Rod Carew (almost).

[2] I thought he was done.  Mr. Jeter: I’m stupid. You’re smart. I was wrong. You were right. You’re the best. I’m the worst. You’re very good-looking. I’m not attractive.

He should finish in the top-20 in hits by the end of this season, and if he can come close to average production next year, he should flirting with the top-15.

All of a sudden a .300 BA and .400 slg for Jeter seem very much attainable. Combine those with his already respectable OBP and it makes for…get this…good production from SS.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/blog/archives/14231
“Catchers, WAR/G, Min. 1,000 Games Caught”

Rk   Player   WAR/G   WAR/pos   From   To   G   PA
1   Mickey Cochrane .03455   51.2   1925   1937   1482   6206
2   Johnny Bench   .03304   71.3   1967   1983   2158   8669
3   Mike Piazza   .03091   59.1   1992   2007   1912   7745
4   Thurman Munson   .03050   43.4   1969   1979   1423   5903
5   Bill Dickey   .03041   54.4   1928   1946   1789   7060
6   Roy Campanella   .02979   36.2   1948   1957   1215   4816
7   Yogi Berra   .02920   61.9   1946   1965   2120   8364
8   Gary Carter   .02889   66.3   1974   1992   2295   9019
9   Jack Clements   .02750   31.9   1884   1900   1160   4721
10   Carlton Fisk   .02693   67.3   1969   1993   2499   9853
11   Ivan Rodriguez   .02679   68.0   1991   2011   2538   10262
12   Gabby Hartnett   .02526   50.3   1922   1941   1991   7297
13   Jorge Posada   .02499   45.2   1995   2011   1809   7095

one of the comments to the post:

One thing I’ve noticed is that career WAR for catchers is significantly lower than for other position players.

60 is considered a rough cut-off for HOF enshrinement.

And yet, just 5 catchers (Bench, Pudge, Fisk, Carter, Berra) meet that particular benchmark.

By comparison, there are 12 3B, 12 SS, 11 1B, 13 2B, and 35 OF.

Kinda makes me think that the positional adjustment for catchers is a bit off.

Discuss.

Discuss.

A lot of teams move great hitting catchers to another position so they can play more and have a longer career?

How did Piazza end up with less than 60 WAR?

[5] That’s really interesting. I am no SG, but maybe the replacement level isn’t set low enough to account for the fact that catchers, for the most part, don’t play enough games due to the rigors of the position to rack up the showing up value that you can get elsewhere on the field?

[6] A lot of teams move great hitting catchers to another position so they can play more and have a longer career?

Good point.  It’s tough to quantify that because I don’t know how you could track guys who were maybe like Piazza (great bat, lackluster D), but were moved off C early in their minor league career.  But more to the point, it’s exceedingly difficult to get a premium offensive contribution from the C position (even if they’re not very good at C, just being able to play the position and not be terrible is a victory in and of itself).  It’s probably the case the positional adjustment for C is off by quite a bit and its a shame that catchers who have a good ML career are rarely considered for the HoF while marginally better OFers are.

Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Yankees have had scouts present at Rich Harden’s last two starts.

but maybe the replacement level isn’t set low enough to account for the fact that catchers, for the most part, don’t play enough games due to the rigors of the position to rack up the showing up value that you can get elsewhere on the field?

I think that’s the problem.  The position-adjustment for catchers relative to all other positions is 16.5 if they’re using Tango’s position adjustments, but that’s based on 700 PA.  I"d estimate the average starting catcher only gets about 500 PA a season, so they’re not getting that full adjustment.

On top of that, I don’t think any measure of catcher defense that we currently have is capturing all the nuances of a catcher’s defensive value.  I don’t know how much that is, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was worth another 10 runs a season in either direction.

WAR is a counting stat.  So you accrue WAR by playing more.  I think catchers need to be treated differently than all other positions.  So if you think 60 WAR is a HOF for any other position, maybe 50 WAR is the cutoff for a catcher.

Or just look at the average # of players at each position in the HOF, then set the WAR line at whatever it has to be to get roughly the same # of catchers in.

It’s not a rl problem - imagine the case of a position q such that a player only lasts one season then has to DH (e.g. q eq c where concussion risk is weighted heavily) - no q would make the hall.

Right, it’s not a replacement level problem per se.  It’s that WAR is a counting stat and you need to make a playing time adjustment for catchers.

The playing time thing is really odd, in that as noted, C’s tend to play fewer innings than other position players. Yet, they handle the ball nearly every play (less if AJ is on the mound). They have more opportunities to do something bad, but don’t get credit for not doing so. Defensive measures only come into play when you have the opportunity to record an out, of course C’s are exposed to more risk.

<watching the Mets game>

Holy comeback Batman!

Elderly men better stay away from the Brewers’ clubhouse tonight…