Yadi Molina

Tonight was a big night for baseball in terms of personal awards. The major award finalists were announced, including both AL and NL Rookie of the Year, Manager of the Year, Cy Young, and MVPs, as well as all of the Gold Glove award winners. My Tigers were shutout from wins for another year, but the Orioles (3 winners), Royals (3), and Rockies (2) all had excellent showings.

Here's what really grasped me though. Yadier Molina, Cardinals catcher and the youngest of the Molina Catching Trio (Bengie, left, Jose, center, Yadier, right; all photos are courtesy of Baseball Reference)

won his 7th consecutive NL Gold Glove for catching tonight. Both Bengie and Jose won a World Series ring with the Angels in 2002, and with Yadi's win with the 2006 Cardinals, they became the first trio of brothers to ever win World Series rings. How fun would that be at Thanksgiving? 

But back to Yadi. I have a bold claim to make about him. This is bolder than bold Chex Mix;

it's bolder than when I remove my contacts shortly after eating hot wings; ladies and gentlemen this claim is bolder than Colorado (sweet mercy I hope someone gets that joke):

Yadier Molina is the best catcher of our generation.

(See I even put it in boldface type just in case you didn't hear me that it was bold.)

Yes, he's even better than Ivan Rodriguez. Now, Yadi is only 31 and has many more years of catching ahead of him, especially if he finds the fountain of youth like Pudge, who caught up to age 39 for the Nationals. Through age 31, Pudge had 10 Gold Gloves and a higher batting average than Yadi, but let's look a little deeper.

First, Yadi has a higher catching fielding percentage than Pudge. Through 11 seasons, he has a .994 fielding percentage and only 53 errors. Pudge's career fielding percentage is .991, still excellent, with 142 errors. Even if Yadi were to catch for 10 more years, essentially doubling his service time, his projection would jump just barely over 100 career errors, considerably fewer than Pudge. Pudge's cannon was great to have because he kept runners close and nabbed anything that moved, but that came to backfire at times with the ball trickling away from fielders or simply airmailing them. And even with Pudge's absurd 88 career pickoffs, let me tell you a secret: Yadi has 52 career pickoffs, and is on pace to pass him. Pudge got there faster, but Yadi has proven to be more consistent. 

Not just with pickoffs, but caught stealing percentage, too. Pudge led the league multiple times, but who was stealing bases? In 2001, Pudge caught 60% of base runners, a career high, but the AL steals leaders that year were Ichiro (487 career), Roger Cedeno (213), Alfonso Soriano (I know, right? 289), Mark McLemore (272), and Chuck Knoblauch (407). Of the top 5, Pudge only threw them out 3 times out of 9 chances throughout the 2001 season.

It was not a strong stealing class compared to Yadi's career high of 64% in 2005, when the NL steals leaders were Jose Reyes (455 career steals), Juan Pierre (614), Jimmy Rollins (453), Ryan Freel (only 143), and Willy Taveras (only 195 career, but 68 in 2008). Of the top 5 NL base stealers, Yadi threw them out 57.1% of the time, or 4 caught stealing out of 7 attempts.

This is the first thing I uploaded to the blog, even before any text. It's probably looped 1500 times now and gets better every time.

So Yadi's career high 64% is better than Pudge's career high 60%, it was against a higher quality selection of thieves, and he threw them out more than Pudge threw out the top 5. Pretty convincing if you ask me.

Second, look at leadership. Yadi doesn't only have 2 World Series rings, but he's also caught much better pitchers and made them better pitchers. The following stats and individual successes all come under Molina as the primary Cardinals starting catcher:

• Adam Wainwright: 2 CYA runner-ups, 3 ASGs, career highs in wins, ERA, CG, shutouts, WHIP
• Chris Carpenter: CYA, 3 ASGs, career highs in W, CG, lows in ERA, WHIP
• Edwin Jackson: 3rd lowest ERA, highest winning percentage 
• Jason Marquis: career ERA in 2004
• Kyle Lohse: Only top 10 CYA voting, career highs in wins, winning percentage, his only sub 3 ERA, and lowest career WHIP

While Pudge didn't have great pitchers to begin with, he didn't make them much better, either.

• Kenny Rogers - career high in wins was not with Pudge, lowest starting ERA was with Oakland
• Aaron Sele - lowest ERA was with Boston
• Kevin Brown - for the first player ever to sign a $100 million contract, he only had a career high in wins under Pudge; his careers in WHIP and ERA were with the Marlins
• Rick Helling - only had career high wins

You may argue that Yadi was given better pitchers talent wise. Then I would counter with Kyle Lohse's 2012 performance, something he has never duplicated in his career, or Jason Marquis who was always around, but never really great, while Pudge had some solid pitchers that blossomed after they had a different catcher. Maybe he had a different training regimen where they improved later. 

Pudge is the better offensive catcher, there is no doubt about that. However, Yadi's offense has improved vastly the last 5 years and if it weren't for a nasty thumb ligament injury that limited his swinging ability in 2014, he probably could have hit above .300 for the fourth straight year. After age 31, Pudge slowly began to trend downward offensively, though he had some peaks in the remaining 8 years. If Molina continues on his upward trend (.262 in 2010 to .319 in 2013), he could push his career average close to .290 (sitting at .284 right now). I think because of the offensive numbers and just how many times he led the league in caught stealing percentage, he'll be remembered as a better catcher, but he also played in the steroid era when steals were an ancient stat.

Pudge's thoughts towards Yadi.

Molina, especially playing in the NL and for manager La Russa, is of the small ball school, where catchers have to be quick and catlike rather than just have a great arm to not only throw runners out but to call pitches, know batters and runner tendencies, and then turn around and hit. 

With 6 All-Star games, 7 straight Gold Gloves (2 Platinum), and 2 rings, Molina is authoring an impressive Hall of Fame resume. However, knowing that chicks and writers dig the longball, Yadi's .284 career average and only 1297 hits through 11 years is not quite legendary quality. But we never know what the future holds; Yadi could blossom into a .300 hitter and rewrite the offensive history books for catchers. But for now, I hope you agree with me through my research that Yadi Molina is the best catcher of the three Molinas and of this generation. 

Thanks for reading.