Yadier Molina singled in Albert Pujols to put the Cardinals ahead for good in Saturday’s win against the Marlins. The game-winning hit was Ya Mo’s career-high 56th RBI this season. It’s the most RBIs by a Cardinal catcher since Tom Pagnozzi’s 57 in 1991. It stands to reason, though, that Molina has produced a lot of RBIs because he’s had a lot of opportunities: With around 92% of his plate appearances from the sixth and seventh spots in a lineup that features four players ahead of him with an OBP of at least .365 (Schumaker, Pujols, Ludwick, Glaus), he’s had a career-high 215 plate appearances with runners on base this season. One way to more normalize run production is to use Runs Created. Let’s see where Molina’s 2008 campaign — so far — ranks among the other catchers of the La Russa era, which has been characterized by a preference for defense over offense in backstops:

Surely it is a high point for La Russa’s tenure in St. Louis that he has witnessed a catcher with both defensive and offensive superlatives (a la Terry Steinbach with the A’s). Indeed, Molina is fourth among the league’s catchers in RC27 . (Interestingly, the best season of longtime La Russa catcher Mike Matheny’s career, RC-wise, came when he played for the Giants in 2005 and created 51 runs.)

Historically, with the franchise’s legacy including some fine catchers, Molina’s season is a different story — Cardinal catchers (defined as those who have played the plurality of the team’s games at catcher or played all his games at catcher) since 1892 with at least 50 runs created:

^Achieved after steroid ban but before reliable steroid testing

The first thing that struck us about the list was how dominant Ted Simmons was in the historical-franchise context: There’s Simbra, and there’s everyone else (not a small consideration when it comes to the Hall of Fame). Also, not to take too much away from Joe Torre’s magnificent 1970 season, but in addition to playing 784 innings behind the plate, he also played 645 innings at third base. At any rate, the team’s periods of great success — 1926-1934, 1942-1946, 1964-1968, 1982-1987 and 2000-2006 — have all been overseen by catchers who produced with the lumber as well as the leather: Jimmie Wilson, Bill DeLancy and Spud Davis in the ’30s, Walker Cooper in the ’40s, Tim McCarver in the ’60s, Darrell Porter in the ’80s and now Molina in the ’00s.

This entry was posted by Pip on Monday, September 8th, 2008 at 11:21 am and is filed under by the numbers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.