The Cards Over The Last 32 Seasons - Catchers

Well, I have to do something to fill time. The basic idea is the St. Louis Cardinals have had 3 managers for any extended period of time since 1980: Whitey Herzog, Joe Torre, Tony LaRussa. There have been others who managed parts of seasons after Herzog resigned and Torre was fired, but those are the only ones with at least one full season. Which isn't too shabby. So I thought I'd look at who were the best and worst starters at each position for each manager. Starter is defined by any player who had the plurality of innings at a given position in a given season.

As to determining best and worst, performance is an issue, but so is longevity, and to the extent I know anything about it, how representative of the manager's philosophy a given player is. In cases where the manager was only there part of the year, I went the lazy route and multiplied the player's stats by the percent of the season the manager was there. Stats are given as a 162 game average for their stint as starter. When I refer to Wins Above Replacement (WAR), I'm using the Baseball-Reference version. You prefer Fangraphs or whomever, use it for your own study. With all that out of the way, let's look at Catchers.

Herzog Era: 6 catchers.

Best: Darrell Porter (1981-1984). Strictly speaking, Ted Simmons had the best single season in 1980, when he was worth 6 WAR over 162 games. An .881 OPS out of a catcher will do that for you. But that was the only season Simmons was the starter for Herzog, who felt he wasn't defensively adequate enough and traded him to make room for Porter, acquired as a free agent. Porter was the starter the next 4 years, and platooned with Tom Nieto in '85, though Nieto logged more innings, so he's the catcher of record here.

So Porter has longevity, as the only other catcher to log more than 1 year as starter is Tony Pena (1987-1989). He also was the defensively top-notch (or believed to be top-notch) catcher Herzog wanted, which gives him a bonus in that vague "philosophy" category. But he also has some impressive statistics. Over his 4 years as starter, Porter had only a .240 batting average, but since he drew walks at a rate of 83 per 162 games, his OBP was .349, and with a pace of 24 doubles, 5 triples, and 16 home runs, his SLG was an even .400. All that plus his defense made him worth 3.3 WAR per 162 games (I know I'm mentioning 162 games a lot, I just want to make sure that point is sticking with you. I'll try to stop that henceforth). Simmons has better numbers, but not the years (though he'd headline any list of All-Time Cardinals' Catchers). Pena's stats don't come close to stacking up (0.6 WAR, dragged down by an injury plagued first season), and none of the others have the years or the numbers.

Worst: Tom Nieto (1985). I'm not sure why Herzog platooned this guy with Porter. He must have either been trying to save Porter's energy for the postseason, or he thought his defense had really slipped. Nieto's '85 would have been worth a -1.4 WAR for an entire season, as there's probably never been a catcher so good defensively they could compensate for a .586 OPS (Porter posted a .747 that year, good for a 108 OPS+). One could argue Nieto was only a starter for a half-season, but all the other guys are so far ahead of him, it doesn't help much. Even Mike LaValliere was worth 1.8 WAR in 1986, though that was a down year for offense. Pena did struggle his first year, but the other two at least partially compensated.

Torre Era: 1

Best: Tom Pagnozzi. Todd Zeile played the most innings at catcher in '90, but when Torre became manager, he gave Pagnozzi more starts behind the plate, and used Zeile more at 3rd (though Terry Pendleton still had more starts there). After that, there were no serious challengers to Pagnozzi. The backups changed, from Rich Gedman to Erik Pappas, to Terry McGriff, and Danny Sheaffer, but other than Sheaffer, none of them managed more than about half Pags' innings in a given season. Pagnozzi is the weakest of the three catchers who'll be selected, but he was still worth 2.0 WAR/162 from '90-'95. His biggest issues were an inability to stay healthy, and an inability to draw walks. His batting average is .258, but his OBP was only .303.

LaRussa Era: 5

Best: Yadier Molina (2005-2011). Molina has the years, he has the numbers, and he clearly offered what TLR wanted from a catcher. They let Mike Matheny walk and gave Molina the starting job, then stuck with him even after a 2006 where his OPS+ was an abysmal 57 (worse than Brendan Ryan's 2010). Molina's offense has picked up since then, to the point his OPS over this span is .708, and he's worth an average of 2.5 WAR. Pagnozzi's '96 comes close to that, but it's only one year. Matheny (2000-2004) was the starter for 5 years, but with a .643 OPS, he was only worth around 0.9 WAR. Bit too large of a gap there. The only offensive category I looked at where he beat Yadi was the gap between batting average and OBP. Matheny's was 59 points, Molina's was only 53. Of course, the difference in batting average means Molina's OBP still beats Matheny's by 22 points.

Worst: It's a two-horse race, Mike Difelice (1997) or Eli Marrero (98-99). On the one hand, Difelice's WAR is worse, -0.5 to 0.0. But that means Marrero was exactly replacement level for two years as a starter, which is possibly worse than being sub-replacement level for one. Plus, Difelice wasn't supposed to be the starter, but was pressed into the role because of Pags' injuries, and because TLR didn't trust Tom Lampkin to start (never mind Lampkin could actually hit a little. . .) But Marrero had to deal with a serious illness, which killed his '99. His '98 was actually not bad, over a whole season he'd have been worth about 1.5 WAR. But his next year was as bad as that was good and here we are. Based on that, I'm gonna have to give the nod to Mike Difelice.

That takes care of the catchers. Next time, whenever that is, we'll move over to first base. It'll be a little tricky in the Herzog Era, not so much for the others, on the "best" lists, at least.