Is Cardinals legend Yadier Molina the greatest defensive catcher ever?

At ballgames, schoolyards, online, bars…anywhere across the country – people like to debate who is the “best.” I’m no different! It’s an impossible task, but we do it anyway. Why? Maybe it’s because we like to debate, or maybe it’s our natural curiosity. I don’t quite know; I’m not a psychologist! But what I can do is make a reasonable argument for which catcher is the “best” defensively. And, most importantly, whether Cardinals great Yadier Molina is that guy!

For comparison purposes, I’m going to keep it to catchers within the last 50 or so years. We can say “best modern” catcher. There are a couplen of reasons for this:

1. Catching has changed A LOT over time. Looking at a player who had little to no equipment as opposed to a modern catcher is an apples-to-oranges comparison.

2. Defensive metrics are less reliable the farther back we go. Our confidence level is higher looking at Yadier Molina’s defensive metrics as opposed to a player in the 1940/1950 timeframe like Yogi Berra or Roy Campanella.

The most common measure fans use for comparing defensive prowess: Gold Gloves. This is not the worst starting point, but it is essentially a popularity contest and not a great statistic for any final determination. It does give us a good framework for popular opinion though. Guys who win Gold Gloves get a lot of shine! To have a manageable list to analyze, I’ve whittled it down to 6 modern catchers. 

All these players logged 14,000+ innings behind the dish. There are other Gold Glove winners and great defensive catchers who deserve some praise but ultimately are excluded due to lack of longevity. (My apologies to Salvador Perez, Charles Johnson, Steve Yaeger, and Rick Dempsey, among others.) 

There! List done! Rodriguez is the best, followed by Bench, and Yadi takes home the bronze. 

Not so fast…that would be the worst analysis ever. I’m aiming for “decent” – maybe even “good.” And the measurement that will get me there…TOTAL ZONE! (It has more gravitas in all caps, but, for brevity’s sake, we will just call it TZ from here on out.)

TZ uses play-by-play data from Retrosheet and is the preferred defensive metric for comparing players historically according to FanGraphs. For catchers, this incorporates defense on balls in play. It also includes important considerations such as stolen bases allowed, caught stealing, errors, pickoffs, passed balls, and wild pitches.

The one thing it can’t measure, and is probably immeasurable, are pitcher/catcher dynamics for calling a game. Catchers from previous generations had more responsibility in this regard, whereas modern catchers rely on available data provided to them. Regardless, I think this immeasurable quality is more under the heading of a catcher’s responsibilities as an on-field coach. It is important but (to me at least) seems like a separate category from defense.

Here are how our six great modern catchers compare using TZ for their time spent at catcher:

Rodriguez and Molina are clearly ahead of the pack. TZ uses their entire career to estimate “runs saved.” There is no doubt that all these catchers had great longevity, so it is also useful to see what their TZ is per season. This measure eliminates any penalty some of these players get for slightly shorter careers behind the plate. (I’m trying to help you out, Johnny Bench!)

Here is the comparison using TZ/year:

Molina comes out a little ahead of Rodriguez when you average the defensive metric out per season.  Once again, these two rank towards the top.

Another consideration could be how many “great” defensive seasons each of these players had. You can think of this as a way of measuring their peak. According to FanGraphs, a “great” defensive season is a TZ of 10 or more for a single season. I’ve also included how many seasons they led their respective league at catcher in TZ, in case there is some unseen bias against a particular timeframe.  Like maybe TZ hates the '70s!

Once again, Yadi comes out on top for the number of “great” defensive seasons but is a little behind Rodriguez for years leading his league. The other four are clearly a notch below the top two again.

The verdict: Yadi is the best…modern catcher…or at least tied with Ivan Rodriguez. 

All those qualifiers make it seem less exciting. Molina and Rodriguez stand out among the rest when looking at defensive metrics. 

There is a modern defensive metric called DRS (Defensive Runs Saved) that attempts to incorporate pitch framing in their data. Molina is the all-time catching leader there as well. Unfortunately, Rodriguez played most of his career before this data was collected, so it’s an incomplete comparison. Also, there are still a lot of questions around the importance of pitch framing data and how to incorporate it into these metrics. It’s a heated debate among mathematicians that must involve MANY strongly worded letters! 

Back to the question at hand: “Who is the best defensive catcher?”

The answer?  “There is nobody better than Yadier Molina.”

(All data sourced from baseball-reference.com)