HALL OF FAME WILL COME CALLING FOR...YADIER MOLINA

There aren't many defensive catchers in the Hall of Fame, despite an increasing recognition (and more than occasional over-inflation) of the position's significance in the art of run prevention. Most of the backstops in the Hall are mashers first, and "tools of ignorance" intellects second. These range from Mickey Cochrane and Gabby Hartnett through Bill Dickey and Ernie Lombardi, to Yogi Berra through Gary Carter, Carlton Fisk and Mike Piazza, and even to someone like Johnny Bench (though he was lauded lavishly for his defense), those non-hitting catchers who've been inducted (Ray Schalk, Rick Ferrell, Al Lopez) all seem questionable at best.

The most recent catcher inductee is close to being a defensive catcher: Ivan Rodriguez had a pretty good bat, maybe a bit more than that in his prime. But the next two HOF candidates who spent significant time behind the plate--Joe Mauer and Buster Posey--fit the hitter-first model, and seem destined to prevail despite relatively short careers. 

Yadier Molina, just retired, looks like a significant exception to the general rule. Because his hitting is relatively indifferent (a career OPS+ of 96), some question whether he'll make it. But there are some compelling arguments in his favor...

First is his relationship to overall team accomplishment. There's no other catcher who played with the same team as long as Molina (19 years, 18 as the first-stringer). From 2005 to the present, the St. Louis Cardinals have posted an aggregate .551 WPCT, third in baseball for the time frame (behind only the Yankees and the Dodgers. The team's ERA in that span is also third best.

Second--and most crucial to his Cooperstown candidacy--is his record on defense. Bill James' Win Shares suggests that he's the second-best defensive catcher in history, trailing only Ivan Rodriguez--a catcher who moved around a lot in his 20+-year career and had a more indifferent record of success. Rodriguez' bat, combined with his defensive prowess, earned him a spot in the HOF on the first ballot. Presume for a moment that Molina is essentially even with Rodriguez defensively; given that pinnacle of performance behind the plate, such an evaluation would extrapolate into a scenario where Molina makes the HOF through the front door somewhere between his third and fifth year of ballot eligibility.

But there might be more compelling data regarding his defense, specifically with respect to his ability to curtail the opposition running game. Looking at the stolen base/caught stealing data from the past eighteen years (2005-2022), we can see that Molina is totally in a class by himself with regard to limiting stolen bases/stolen base attempts and in stolen base success rate. The chart at right shows just how better than average at this important aspect of a catcher's defensive performance Molina actually is. 

Most of the data in the chart (the blue diamond-shaped markers) conforms to a relative narrow, solidly linear performance range: it captures each team's number of running game events relative to the major league average for 2005-22. 

But then there's that lone red diamond down in the lower left corner. Keep in mind that this is a scatter chart, with the horizontal dimension measuring the opponent's stolen base success rate. It ranges from lower (better in terms of defensive performance) to higher (worse) from left to right. 

That red diamond represents Yadier Molina's defensive performance relative to the running game for the past eighteen years. As you may know, stolen base success rates have improved over that time frame, as managers have curtailed the running game during a big-homer era. Managers curtailed stolen base attempts against Molina more assiduously than anyone (as the near -800 event value indicates), but in doing so they couldn't mitigate his stunning effectiveness in throwing out opposition baserunners.

This chart demonstrates Molina's defensive singularity, a performance level probably not approached by any other catcher in baseball history. It's pretty much all we need to know in terms of his suitability for a plaque in Cooperstown. We doubt that he'll make it in his first year of eligibility--as noted, his hitting was indifferent (though he had his moments). But there is no better case for a defensive catcher with respect to the Hall of Fame, and Molina's level and length of achievement suggests that he could make it as early as his second or third year. He deserves it...