Kudos to Yadier Molina on winning his first Gold Glove. In recent years, the shine of the Gold Glove has diminished in light of some highly questionable selections as well as some more-thoughtful alternatives, such as the Fielding Bible Awards. And if some of the commentary on Molina’s 2008 campaign, such as the dubious dispatch from the P-D’s Rick Hummel ("he was being rewarded, in part, for his previous accomplishments") or the blog post from VEB’s ChuckB ("the worst [year] of his career"), is to be believed, Molina is as deserving this year as Rafael Palmeiro was in 1999 (when he played all of 28 games in the field). Is the criticism justified, or was Molina, as Tony La Russa asserted, "the best catcher in the league"?

Hummel and ChuckB both cite Molina’s Caught Stealing rate as evidence against the Cardinal backstop. But, as we argued almost exactly a year ago, CS% is a stat fraught with noise, not the least of which are pitcher ability to prevent stolen bases and the quality of runners faced. At the time, we proposed that CS rates be considered in light of both of these elements, including something we called Quality of Runners Faced (QRF):

Take all of the runners who challenged a catcher, subtract their stolen-base attempts and successes vs. that catcher, and you’ve got a QRF factor for that catcher. You could refine it further: Of the runners that a catcher allowed to steal a base, determine their QRF — call it the catcher’s SB QRF. And get the QRF for all the runners that the catcher nabbed, and call it his CS QRF.

So, while Hummel notes that YaMo threw out only 16 of 50 base stealers (32%), it’s very possible, especially given his reputation, that the runners who challenged him skewed better in terms of their stealing ability. Was that the case in 2008? Here’s a log of YaMo’s opponents by successful steals and caught:

Removing the attempts against Molina, baserunners who tried to steal on him this past season had a 76.5% success rate. National League average was 73.0%. To convert that into something somewhat useful, such as adjusted OPS or ERA, Molina’s QRF is 105 (SB%/LgSB%). Molina’s competition was, as a group, better than league average. (Just for grins, we ran the numbers for backup catcher Jason LaRue. His competition was even tougher: 77.3% for a 106 QRF). Last season, Yadier’s competition had an 80.3% rate, giving the catcher a 106 QRF. If we had more time, we could determine how Yadier’s QRF ranks among his fellow catchers. Our guess is that it’s among the best.

Furthermore, the fact remains that Molina had the fewest stolen-base attempts per game, by a lot (25% better than the 2nd-best). And, after all, he allowed only 34 SBs, the fewest stolen bases of any qualified catcher in baseball (and that, despite facing better-than-average competition). As far as a catcher’s ability to prevent the running game goes, isn’t that the bottom line?

This entry was posted by Pip on Thursday, November 6th, 2008 at 3:43 pm and is filed under analysis. 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.