Baseball Chat

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Steal on Molina? Only his Gold Glove
By Bernie Miklasz
11/06/2007 5:01 pm

News: The LA Dodgers’ Russell Martin wins the 2007 Gold Glove as the NL’s best defensive catcher in a vote of the league’s managers and coaches.

Martin beat out the Cardinals’ Yadier Molina.

Views: This is incomprehensible.

This is one of the dumbest results in the history of Gold Glove voting, and it makes you wonder if managers and coaches actually pay attention to the games they’re involved in.

“I was floored,” said Joe Sheehan of The Baseball Prospectus, who was a guest Tuesday on our 1380-AM radio show. “We can nitpick some of the other Gold Glove choices, but this one isn’t even a debate. Yadier Molina is the best defensive catcher in Major League Baseball.”

Among NL catchers, Martin had the most errors (14). According to STATS LLC, Martin threw out only 28.7 percent of those who attempted to steal bases against him. That was only the fourth-best rate in the NL, and ninth-best rate in MLB among full-time catchers.

As for Molina: he led all MLB catchers in nailing base stealers, throwing out 23 of the 46 who challenged him (50 percent). He also led NL catchers in putouts per nine innings.

That only 46 steals were attempted on Molina tells us everything we need to know. Teams fear Molina’s arm. They’re very reluctant to run on him.

When Molina wasn’t catching for the Cardinals in 2007, teams ripped off 30 steals in 35 attempts. That demonstrates, in a profound way, the difference that Molina makes defensively.

Fear of getting caught isn’t in play with Martin. Teams tried to steal on him 115 times in 2007 – though I should point out that Martin caught 1,254 innings compared to Molina’s 861. But Molina caught enough to qualify for all defensive ratings. And when teams succeed at stealing 71.3 percent of the time against a catcher, as they did versus Martin in 2007, shouldn’t that count heavily against him?

Here’s what’s particularly crazy about this: if managers and coaches are afraid to run on Molina, then why don’t they vote for him? If you respect a catcher so much that you shut down your running game because of him, then doesn’t he deserve your vote? It makes no sense.

Molina also got screwed out of the Gold Glove in 2006, when it went to Houston’s Brad Ausmus – even though Ausmus threw out only 12 of 72 base stealers.

So why did this happen again?

Theories:

Try as they might to avoid doing this, some of these baseball men simply attach a catcher’s offensive value to the thought process when contemplating their Gold Glove choice. Martin batted .293 with 19 homers and 87 RBIs last season. (That does not explain, however, why Ausmus won it in 2006).

Molina’s case was damaged by a stint on the disabled list (fractured wrist) in late May, then was shut down in late September because of a knee injury. Martin caught in 145 games; Molina only 107. If a manager/coach was adamant about factoring in playing time and durability in the voting, I can see some logic there.

The Cardinals finished 11th in the NL in ERA (4.65). Do the voters hold that against a catcher? It shouldn’t. Molina’s catcher ERA (4.29) was lower than the Cardinals’ overall ERA, so he obviously wasn’t the issue. And that Molina ERA wasn’t much higher than Martin’s catcher ERA (3.95). Obviously, with Brad Penny, Derek Lowe and Chad Billingsley making 85 starts for the Dodgers, Martin had better guys to work with.

Molina is well on his way to having one of the greatest defensive careers in MLB history.

His career throw-out rate of 47.1 would be the best in major-league history since STATS began keeping track of the statistic.

And he’s yet to win a Gold Glove award.

That tells you more about the flaws in the process, and in the minds of the voters, than any weakness in Molina’s defensive game.

It seems that the only thing these guys can steal on Molina is the Gold Glove award.