Austin Romine And The Sorry State of Backup Catching

Austin Romine seems like a good guy, a good team player and a capable catcher. Romine had some timely hits last year and added ten homers--a new career high--to finish the 2018 season with a .417 slugging percentage. While a part of me appreciates his contribution, the fan side of me yawns with boredom. Romine is not the player you would ever associate with exciting. Basically, he is a backup catcher and that means a limited skill set.

I have long held that backup catchers are fungible. Really good ones are hard to find. To see if I could back up my long-held feelings, I used Baseball-reference.com's season finder, I attempted to construct a search that would pinpoint what are truly backup catchers and how much value they brought to their teams. For my criteria, I limited my search to players that caught at least 80% of their games and had 300 plate appearances or less. My search also looked for such players that brought at least one Win Above Replacement (WAR, Baseball-reference.com version).

Out of thirty teams last year, there were only four players that fit the search. Austin Romine was one of them. Since the year 2000 there have only been 81 such seasons or about 4.3 per season. There were only two in 2017! Of those 81, only two have been Yankee players--Romine (last year) and Francisco Cervelli in 2014.

The search was pretty successful since only a few of those seasons included starting catchers who happened to be injured that particular season. The search showed me how few backup catchers actually provided at least a win in value for their given teams. Only a handful reached two wins. None reached three.

I should state that such a search really only works for catchers. Starting catchers simply cannot start every day and the best ones are limited to 120 to 130 games. There are exceptions, but that is the norm. If I did a similar search for say a first baseman, I would only come up with 24 such seasons because there really isn't such a thing as a backup first baseman. Maybe I will do a similar search for multi-position players tomorrow.

If I took that search back to 1990, the 4.3 per season held up and between 1990 and 1999, only one Yankee reached that 1 WAR season: Mike Stanley. To show how rare these seasons are and how little value backup catchers have brought to their teams, since 1990, only five backup catchers have reached one win in a season more than twice. The leaders during that time period have to be considered the best backup catchers of their eras:

1. David Ross - 7
2. Mike Redmond - 4
3. Rick Wilkins, Don Slaught - 3

Only thirteen of the 96 total such catching seasons had two. 78 catchers during that period only did it once. And let me reiterate that since 1990, 124 catchers have had seasons with 1 WAR or more for a season out of 870 such team seasons. That is 14%. Backup catchers are truly fungible...or have been 86% of the time. Apparently, it all works out because they usually become managers and broadcasters.

By the way, David Ross is tied for the all time lead in such seasons since 1900 with a guy named Hank Gowdy. Does that make Ross one of the all time greats as a backup catcher? I think you would have to go there.

It seems that the one thing a backup catcher needs to do is have some defensive skills. If we go back to our original search from 2000 to 2018, there were 570 possible seasons for backup catchers (we will go with that even though some teams rarely have three catchers on a squad). Of those 570 seasons, 193 of those were by catchers who had at least 0.5 Defensive Wins Above Replacement. That 34% is certainly higher than the 14% with 1 WAR or more.

If we take that down to 0.1 Defensive Wins Above Replacement, then we have all but 76 seasons. Clearly, roster makers are looking for catchers who can display decent catching skills. That's why a pathetic hitter like Jeff Mathis (with his career 52 OPS+) can play fourteen seasons in the big leagues when he topped 0.5 Defensive Wins nine times during that span.

Tying this all back to Austin Romine, when considering all that we have talked about here, what he produced last season was terrific in light of the fact that only 14% of backup catchers have had such seasons since 1990. There is absolutely no reason for anyone else to replace him as the Yankees' backup catcher. But man, that still feels like getting a box of socks for Christmas.

Why Can't Most Catchers Hit?

Why are so many catchers in baseball so useless with the bat? A staggering 314 catching seasons of 100 plate appearances or more have occurred in the last ten years with a catcher having an OPS+ of 80 or less. That's an average of one per team for every season in the last ten years (30 teams times ten seasons). For comparison, 174 such seasons have occurred for shortstops, a position with a lot of other bad hitters. In that same time span, only 155 seasons of 100 plate appearances or more have occurred with a catcher having an OPS+ of 100 or more. That's an average of one for every two teams for a decade. To put it another way, for every one catcher that had an OPS+ of 100 or better, two had an OPS+ of 80 or worse. Why?

To see how much futility is out there makes it understandable when good hitting catchers are paid enormous sums of money. Joe Mauer was given a huge contract not because he was a good hitter but because he was a good hitting catcher. Jorge Posada was paid handsomely because he leads the last ten years in WAR for a catcher despite -20.4 runs above average as a fielder and -41.9 base running runs above average. Brian McCann is a superstar because he's a catcher than can hit. Victor Martinez has been another. Jason Varitek in his prime was another. Good hitting catchers are as rare as blue lobsters.

Perhaps some can make the argument that defensive skills are more important for a catcher than offensive skills. Throwing out runners trying to steal and being a good receiver for a pitcher might be more important than hitting your weight if you are a major league catcher. But aren't all defensive positions important? Is there any more important position for fielding than the shortstop? Jorge Posada was a bad receiver and a bad fielder. Yet he wears five championship rings on his fingers.

Another argument might be the amount of punishment a catcher takes behind the plate with foul balls and balky knees and all those balls into the chest blocking pitches in the dirt. Perhaps. But for every one of those arguments, this writer can throw a Yogi Berra and a Johnny Bench at you. Those guys got hit with foul tips and had to crouch every day for years too.

Perhaps it's the nature of the position with catching. Think back to your Little League days. The least athletic kid was given a mask. It was usually the pudgy kid who could throw. But even that doesn't work, because this writer remembers a lot of those pudgy kids hitting the snot out of the ball. But the thought does resonate that not many good athletes want to play that position. It's hot with all that gear on. There's no glamour to it.

But none of those possible excuses seem to make up for poor quality of catcher hitting. Nor can it explain to this observer why such poor hitting is rewarded with extraordinarily long careers. Old catchers seem to be like Snuggies for major league managers.

Here are some of the most persistently bad hitting catchers of the last ten years:

• Paul Bako - Bako played for eleven different teams in his twelve year career. In the past ten years, he had eight seasons that fit our category. He would have had a ninth had he received more plate appearances in 2005. Bako never had a season with a higher OPS+ of 78 and finished his career in 2009 with a lifetime OPS+ of 62. Bako finished with a career rWAR of -2.3.
• Jose Molina - The middle third of the famous three Molina brothers, Jose has seven seasons in the past decade that fit our category. Molina is having a surprisingly good offensive season backing up Toronto's starting catcher. Despite his good season, his career OPS+ is still only 66. Jose Molina has accumulated 3.5 rWAR in his career due to good defensive metrics.
• Gary Bennett - Bennett compiles his seven seasons that match our ten year study, all in the beginning of the decade. Bennett played thirteen years, six for the Pirates, and compiled an OPS+ of 64 in his career. He wasn't very good defensively either and finished with an rWAR of -3.7 for his career. Oof.
• Brad Ausmus - Ausmus played eighteen years in the major leagues. He had some successful years as a hitting catcher and had a 75 career OPS+. Not bad for our group. But he had a horrid stretch from 2001 to 2008 that was just brutal and puts him in Bennett's company with seven seasons in the last ten years matching our criteria. Ausmus did compile 17.2 rWAR in his career. So it's a little unfair to lump him in here.
• Jason Kendall - Kendall has played fifteen seasons in the big leagues. He should have quit when he was ahead several years ago. Kendall had a really good start to his offensive career. He had some power. He got on base. He had some speed. Then it dried up...really dried up. He's compiled six seasons in our ten year period with our matching criteria. He might be the only catcher with that many bad batting seasons that has compiled more than 37 wins above replacement for his career.
• Henry Blanco - Blanco is currently playing on his ninth team of his fourteen-year career. His OPS+ this season is 92 which isn't bad for him. Blanco also has six seasons in the last ten years that match our criteria. And he sports a career OPS+ of 67. His 3.5 career rWAR is due mostly to his defense.
• Rod Barajas - Rod the Bod has played for six teams and is in his thirteenth season. Barajas has had some decent seasons but six times in the last ten, he has met our criteria. The biggest problem for Barajas is that he has a lifetime .289 on base percentage. That's bloody unacceptable. But he plays good defense and has compiled 7.4 rWAR in his career.

We finish our list with two special mentions:

• Jeff Mathis - Mathis has become a favorite whipping boy for writers across the land. The Angels traded away a good hitting catcher to keep him. Currently, Mathis is having his fifth straight season matching our criteria. His career OPS+ is a stunning 55, which isn't a surprise when his career slash line is: .197/.259/.304.  His batting is so ugly that whatever defense he adds is dried up like a grape to a raisin and his career rWAR is in the negative numbers.
• Koyie Hill - Hill is in this eighth season and is currently on a three year streak of making our category requirements. And he's done it four of the last five years. The only reason he's not five for five is that he didn't get enough plate appearances in 2008. Hill's career slash line? How about: .214/.277/.305, good for a career OPS+ of 55. Ugh. And Hill's defense doesn't make up for the deficit as his career rWAR is -2.3.

A good hitting catcher is gold in this market. Perhaps as more analysts are in positions in front offices to make a difference, weak hitting catchers will not last as long as they currently do. To be totally fair, catchers as a whole have a higher OPS than shortstops and third basemen this year. But it's only a slight edge. What this writer would love to see is some sort of study that builds a case for the value of a good defensive catcher over that of an offensive one. What is the tipping point?

Lousy Catchers.- Maybe it's the Vowels

Last week on the Fan's podcast, it was mentioned that there were 123 players last year (2010) that finished with a Wins Above Replacement (WAR) score of zero or in the negative numbers. Generally, this is in the same percentage as always. But when going down the list for the listening audience, it was noticed that a large preponderance of those "neggies" (the Fan's bid to coin a new word) were catchers. Why are there so many crappy catchers in baseball today? Has it always been that way? And why can't major league teams find better catchers? Whoa, that's a lot of questions. Let's take them one at a time.

Why are there so many crappy catchers? Well, "crappy" is an unkind word, is it not? Perhaps to soften the blow, we should call them WAR-deficient catchers. There. That's better. Why are there so many WAR-deficient catchers? The 123 players listed in the first paragraph had at least 100 at bats. But when dropping that quantity amount, we find that 46 catchers finished 2010 with a WAR of zero or worse. 46!  In fairness, a third of those guys didn't even have 100 at bats, so we can take that with some grain of salt. But some of those with the worst WAR totals played a lot. Among the group was Bengie Molina (-0.6), Koyle Hill (-1.0), Jeff Mathis (-1.3) and Adam Moore (-1.4). Moore proved that Seattle's tough season was no fluke as his WAR was the lowest for any catcher in baseball. And it seems to be catchy. Jake Fox, who just a couple of years ago was hammering all kinds of minor league pitching for the Cubs' system put on the tools of ignorance for the first time in a while and hit all of .217.

Seventeen of these 46 guys were over 30 years of age. Which again proves that managers and GMs are much more comfortable if the catcher has major league experience. It doesn't matter or not if they stink...err...are WAR-deficient. They just want a veteran. Nothing else can explain why guys like Kevin Cash,  Mike Redman, Chad Moeller and others can have ten to twenty year careers despite not offering anything of value other than the willingness to put a mask on and get beaten up during the course of a game or season. Brad Ausmus finally hung up his catcher's mitt after turning 41 last year. That's a lot of years of mediocrity. Consider if you will that only 25 catchers that saw any playing time last year were 25 years of age or less.

If you were to do a survey of all the major league teams, only about a third of them would have catchers to be proud of. Oh sure, for many, you'll get the "gamer," "good with pitchers" and "good clubhouse guys" thrown in there to make it sound like teams were happy with these WAR-deficient catchers. But if you got behind those euphemisms, most GMs were giving the Giants dirty looks for having a guy like Buster Posey.

According to the Fan's searches (which should always be open to scrutiny), there were 111 catchers that played last year. The fact taht 46 of them had zero or a negative WAR is terrible. But is it unprecedented?

In 2009, 109 catchers got into games in the majors. 45 of them were at zero WAR or in the negative numbers. Nearly identical. Let's go back ten years to 2001. In 2001, 109 catchers got into games and 56 of them ended with zero WAR or a WAR in the negative numbers. That's even worse! If we go back to 1991, 51 of the 101 catchers that got into games in that season finished with a WAR of zero or in the negative numbers. It's beginning to look like a plethora of crappy catcher...oops...WAR-deficient catchers have always been with us. Back in 1955, 31 of the 61 catchers in baseball were just as ba...deficient.

The Fan is going to go out on a limb here. Feel free to chop it off if you'd like. But it seems that teams don't value a good catcher very much. If there has been nearly 50% of catchers in the game that can't even crack positive value, then we can term it chronic. Catchers that come up in the system that can do some damage at the plate get converted out of the catching position (Bryce Harper and Biggio are two that come to mind). Guys that are not perceived as good receivers but are good hitters often get to the big leagues in other positions. Jesus Montero may never be an every day catcher for example.

The Fan has noticed another trend. Forty of the 111 catchers that saw big league action last year have names that end in a vowel. Think about it. There's Jaso and Navarro and Blanco and Cervelli and LaRue and Molina   (thrice) and Sardinha. Is the Fan right or what? Perhaps this is part of the problem for some strange reason. 

Perhaps the catching position is considered fungible. Perhaps it is a position to save money. But it seems to this non-astute observer that teams with great catchers also have great teams. Where would the Braves be without McCann? The Giants get Posey and win the World Series. Posada was a terrific offensive catcher for this current Yankee generation of pennant winners. Whatever the case, it would seem to be a position of importance and yet there is so much lacking at the position. The only other position that is like it is shortstop. Of the 111 shorstops that played in the majors last year, 56 of them ended up with a WAR of zero or in the negative numbers. Again, this includes many who have the "Utility" tag next to their position. And as the Fan wrote last week, a lot of these guys hang around too long and clog up the lower rungs of the WAR ladder.

To give the game a break, we must admit that the percentage of WAR-deficient catchers is lower now than it was twenty, thirty or forty years ago. But that isn't saying much. The Fans advice for all this is that as long as so many of baseball's catchers are going be of little or not value, teams might as well always have their back up catcher as a rookie. At least then the catcher will make minimum instead of one of these Buteras or Blancos that play for ever, make millions and add nothing of value year after year.

The Catchers are Banging

If nothing else, these last eight days have been the time of the catcher. Offensive mashing by those who handle the tools of ignorance (Egads! a cliche!) have been happening all over baseball. This Fan has watched decades of baseball and can't remember a week like it. Ever.

We of course have to start with the Blue Jays and one John Buck. Buck has hit 78 career homers in 2005 at bats or roughly one homer per 26 at bats. In his last ten games, he's hit seven and has eight for the season in 89 at bats or one homer per 11.5 at bats. In those last ten games, he has a three homer game and a two homer game. Buck now has 22 hits on the season. Eight have been homers and eight have been doubles. That's 54 total bases in just 22 hits or 2.45 total bases per hit. Amazing.

The Mets are having fun with their catchers too. Henry Blanco has seven hits in his last fifteen at bats and raised his average to .300. He also hit the game winning (and walk off) homer on Saturday. His partner, Rod Barajas, who caught for Toronto, if you'll remember, had two homers on Friday to give him nine for the year in just 82 at bats. Once again, here is a catcher that has averaged one homer per 26 at bats currently going at a clip of one homer per 9 at bats this year.

Stories in the New York papers stated that Jorge Posada pleaded with Joe Girardi to get in the line up in Saturday's games. Who can blame him. Girardi mumbled something about giving Posada's calf another day, but secretly, he was riding Cervelli as long as he could ride him. And who could blame him? Cervelli has batted safely eight times in his last thirteen at bats and is batting a guady .395. Want to bet that a bunch of Yankees are calling Jorge, Mr. Pipp?

The Twins are the only team in history that has a catcher that has won three batting titles. He's got another shot this year as Mauer is in the high .300's. But he got hurt. No problem. Wilson Ramos came up from the minors and got seven hits in his first nine at bats in the majors. Butera didn't want to be left out so he got two RBIs in the nightcap of the double header on Saturday.

How about Ivan Rodriguez? He had to go 0-4 on Friday to cool his average to .383. That's the first time he's been under .400 all season!

Carlos Ruiz for the Phillies has six hits in his last twelve at bats and is now batting .317.

John Jaso is getting more playing time for the Bay Rays because he is hitting .314 with a .977 OPS.

How about the Giants? Bengie Molina has thirteen hits in his last eleven games and is batting .325. Their back up catcher? Eli Whiteside is batting .385 with an OPS of 1.200. Sheesh.

Want more? Ryan Hanigan is batting .409 for the Reds and had five RBIs on Saturday and now has fifteen RBIs in 17 games. Geovany Soto went hitless on Saturday but is still hitting .349 with an OPS over 1 and before Saturday had six hits in his last ten at bats. Jason Jaramillo had three hits for the Pirates Saturday and is now batting .280. Yadier Molina went hitless on Saturday but is still hitting .304 and before Saturday had ten hits in his last fifteen at bats. Jason Kendell has been starting for the Royals nearly every game and is batting a healthy .291 with a .377 OBP.

There are still some teams struggling at catcher like the Rangers and the Mariners. But over all, it's been an amazing offensive run by catchers around the majors.