This is not about the Red Sox, but Jason Varitek was the point of departure for the train of thought that led to this research.   When Varitek caught Jon Lester’s no-hitter on May 19, this was his fourth no-hitter, which was widely reported to be a record.   (Apparently it ties the record, but this is wandering afield.)  I was thinking about the career that Varitek has had.   He has caught four no-hitters, he has been the starting catcher on two World Championship teams.    He has caught five 20-game winners (Pedro twice, Schilling, Derek Lowe and Josh Beckett), and two Cy Young Award winners.   He has won a Gold Glove, played in the All-Star game, caught rookies who had outstanding seasons.   Everything that a catcher might do that he can point to with pride, it seemed to me, Varitek has done.  

            This led me to ask,

a)  “OK, what are all of the things that a catcher might do that he might take pride in?” and

b)  “Who has done these things most often?”

I don’t mean Johnny Bench-type things, hitting 45 homers and leading the league in RBI; I mean defensive things.   Things that you might not see when you open the Encyclopedia and turn to the player’s batting record. 

Eventually I identified 13 things that a catcher might do that he could point to with pride, which are:

1)  Catching a no-hitter.

2)  Catching a 20-game winner.

3)  Catching a Cy Young Award winner.

4)  Working with a rookie pitcher who has a good season.

5)  Working with a pitcher who has a breakthrough season.

6)  Being the catcher for a team that leads the league in ERA.

7)  Winning a World Series.

8)  Being IN a World Series.

9)  Catching a team that has a good year, OK, we didn’t win the Series but we had a good year.

10)  Leading the league in Fielding Percentage.

11)  Leading the league in Assists.

12)  Playing in an All-Star game.

13)  Winning the Gold Glove at catcher.

I then made up a list of “catchers of interest”—a list that eventually grew to 107 names—and I started counting how often these catchers had done each of these things.   A word to the wise:  don’t start a project like this unless you have some time on your hands.  I must have spent 70 to 100 hours on this project, and the results may not be all that compelling.   But anyway, taking these one at a time:

1)  Catching a no-hitter

I posted a note asking for a list of catchers who had thrown no-hitters, and four people wrote to help me out with that—Chuck Rosciam, Joel Tscheme, Mike Emeigh and Joe Krupnick—so let me begin by thanking those four gentlemen. 

Of the 107 catchers on my list, 37 never-caught a no-hitter, including Carlton Fisk, Bill Dickey, Mickey Cochrane and Gabby Hartnett.    35 had caught one no-hitter, 22 had caught two no-hitters, 11 had caught three, and two—Varitek and Ray Schalk—had caught four.  

In the “Catcher Pride Points” system that eventually evolved I gave the catcher two points for each no-hitter that he signaled for.

2)  Catching a 20-game winner

Jim Hegan, catcher for the Cleveland Indians from 1941 through 1957, was the primary receiver for 18 twenty-game winners—Bob Feller in 1946, 1947 and 1951, Bob Lemon in 1948, 1949, 1950, 1952, 1953, 1954 and 1956, Gene Bearden in 1948, Early Wynn in 1951, 1952, 1954 and 1956, Mike Garcia in 1951 and 1952, and Herb Score in 1956. 

Hegan also caught Bob Feller in 1941 (25-13) and Sam Jones in 1959 (21-15), but he doesn’t get credit for those because he was not the primary receiver for those pitchers.   Actually, figuring out whether somebody was the primary receiver for such-and-such a pitcher turned out to be a nightmare, involving a great deal of guesswork and supposition.

To begin with, I had to eliminate from the list of 20-game winners a number of early pitchers who clearly didn’t deserve to be celebrated as heroes.   Adonis Terry in 1884 went 20-35; so did Pud Galvin in 1880.   Obviously, 20-35 is not what we mean when we say “20-game winner”, but what about Deacon Phillippe in 1899, when he went 21-17.  Is that a distinguished accomplishment, or a throwaway like Galvin and Terry?

I decided to count all pitchers who had 20 or more wins except those who

a)  pitched in the 19^th century,

b)  had winning percentages under .600, and

c)  did not win 30 games.

This eliminated a little less than a hundred “20-game winners”—including Phillippe in 1899—but left more than a thousand on the list, each of whom had to be assigned to some catcher.

A few of those pitchers, I knew, had “personal catchers”, and if a pitcher had a personal catcher and I knew about it, I credited him to the personal catcher, obviously.   But there were, no doubt, also some times when a pitcher had a personal catcher and I didn’t know about it, and I no doubt credited some of these to the wrong mask.   When this study is re-done in 15 years by somebody with more programming skills than I have there will be a data base you can run to get each pitcher’s record with each catcher, so there’s something you will be able to improve on.

When a pitcher did not have a personal catcher (or I didn’t know about it), I simply credited the season to the team’s “regular” catcher.   Except that, in the history of baseball, there are many, many, many teams that have no easily identifiable “regular” catcher.   And many of those teams had multiple 20-game winners, or had one 20-game winner and one rookie pitcher having a good season and one pitcher having a breakthrough season.   Like, to pick one example at random out of 400, the Brooklyn Dodgers of 1939.  Their catchers were Babe Phelps (92 games, 361 putouts) and Al Todd (73 games, 284 putouts).  They had a 20-game winner on the staff (Luke Hamlin), but they also had a rookie pitcher have a very good year (Hugh Casey).   Do we credit all of their success to Phelps, because he is the “regular” catcher, or do we split them between Phelps and Todd?

In theory, I could dig into the box scores, find out who worked with Hamlin and who worked with Casey, and credit each to the “correct” catcher.   I’d have to give up my day job, but I could do it.   But I just tried to be fair.   If a team had a clearly identifiable “regular” catcher—somebody who caught two-thirds of the time or more—I credited all of the team’s pitchers to him, unless I knew there was a personal catcher thing going on there.   If a team had only one successful pitcher to be assigned to somebody, I assigned that to the catcher with the most putouts.  If a team had multiple catchers and mulitple pitchers—which happened very, very often—I tried to apportion credit to the catchers in proportion to their playing time, as nearly as possible.   It was time-consuming and it wasn’t perfect, but I did the best I could.

So anyway, Jim Hegan worked with 18 twenty-game winners, which was the most of any pitcher in my study.   Wilbert Robinson worked with 16, Mickey Cochrane with 15, and five catchers (all of them pre-1925) worked with 14.   98 of the 107 catchers in the study had worked with at least one 20-game winner, all the exceptions except one being post-1955—Gus Triandos, Ernie Whitt, Mike Piazza, Manny Sanguillen, Terry Kennedy, Charles Johnson, Sandy Alomar Jr., and Jason Kendall.   I’ll get to the other guy later.

I gave four points, in the Catcher Pride Points system, for working with a 20-game winner.

3)  Catching a Cy Young Award winner

John Roseboro caught four Cy Young Award winners—Don Drysdale, and three guys named Sandy Koufax.   Dave Duncan caught three (Vida Blue, and Jim Palmer twice), and Jerry Grote caught three (Seaver, Seaver, Seaver).   Damian Miller also caught three, although he wasn’t in our study.    Javier Lopez would have had four, but Maddux used Charlie O’Brien as a personal catcher in ’95.  On the other hand, 70 of the 107 catchers on our list never worked with a Cy Young Award winner. 

Some of you are no doubt poised to object that the use of the Cy Young Award biases the study toward the later catchers (post-1956), since catchers before 1956 had no opportunity to work with a Cy Young Award winner.   In fact, there is a time-line bias in the study, but it goes the other way.   The addition of the Cy Young Award doesn’t begin to compensate the latter-day catchers for the declining number of twenty-game winners.  Between 1900 and 1909, with 152 major league teams, there were 135 twenty-game winners—essentially one per team.  Between 2000 and 2007, with 240 major league teams, there were 30 twenty-game winners—one for eight teams.  

I gave a catcher four points for working with a Cy Young Award winner.

4)  Working with a rookie pitcher who has a good season

What is a “Good Rookie Season”, you ask?   I defined a “good rookie season” as a Season Score of 75 or higher.    These are the pitchers who just barely made it—the worst rookies that I counted as “good rookies”:

Bill Dickey in his career worked with ten rookies who had good seasons—the most of any catcher in our study.   The ten were Johnny Allen, 1932 (17-4, 3.70 ERA), Russ Van Atta, 1933 (12-4, 4.18), Johnny Murphy, 1934 (14-10, 3.12), Johnny Broaca, 1934 (12-9, 4.17), Vito Tamulis, 1935 (10-5, 4.08), Atley Donald, 1939 (13-3, 3.71), Marius Russo, 1939 (8-3, 2.41), Tiny Bonham, 1941 (9-3, 1.90), Hank Borowy, 1942 (15-4, 2.53), and Butch Wensloff, 1943 (13-11, 2.54).   I have written before that Joe McCarthy had an unusual tolerance for rookie pitchers, and almost certainly used more rookie pitchers than any other manager in history, and this is no doubt a reflection of that fact.   Behind Dickey in our study were Bob Boone, Roy Campanella, Carlton Fisk, Johnny Kling and Ray Schalk, each of whom worked with eight rookie pitchers who had good seasons. 

By my standards there have been 872 rookie pitchers in history who have had “good” rookie seasons.  360 of those were working with one of the 107 catchers in our study.   Only six catchers in our study (Roger Bresnahan, Spud Davis, Rollie Hemsley, Dave Duncan, Gene Tenace and Terry Steinbach) never worked with a rookie pitcher who had a good season.  I gave a catcher 3 points for working with a rookie pitcher who had a good year. 

5)  Working with a pitcher who has a breakthrough season

I defined a “breakthrough” season by a pitcher as

1)  A Season Score of at least 100 points,

2)  Which is at least 50 points better than the pitcher’s previous best season,

3)  And is not a rookie season.

Some pitchers have more than one “breakthrough” season—that is, they establish a new level in 2006, establish another even better new level in 2007.   That’s fine; what I was counting was pitchers who, working with this catcher, accomplished more than they ever had before.   You’re limited to one rookie season, but you’re not limited to one “new career best” season.  

Gary Carter in his career worked with 19 pitchers who had breakthrough seasons—more than any other catcher in our study.   The 19 pitchers who had breakthrough seasons working with Carter were Steve Rogers, 1977 and again in 1982, Dan Schatzeder, 1979, Scott Sanderson, 1979 and again in 1980, Jeff Reardon, 1982, Charlie Lea, 1982, Dwight Gooden, 1985, Ron Darling, 1985, Sid Fernandez, 1985 and again in 1986, Bob Ojeda, 1986, Roger McDowell, 1986, Terry Leach, 1987, David Cone, 1988, Randy Myers, 1988, Ken Hill, 1992, John Wetteland, 1992, and Mel Rojas, 1992. 

After Carter, the leaders in working with breakthrough pitchers were Benito Santiago (16), Carlton Fisk (15), Ramon Hernandez (14, not including this season), Roy Campanella (13) and Johnny Bench (13).   Every catcher in our study worked with at least one pitcher who had a breakthrough season except Emil Gross, a 19^th-century catcher, and I’m really not sure why I included Emil Gross in this study to begin with. 

The leaders are all recent catchers. . .well, reasonably recent.   There are more breakthrough pitchers now because pitching staffs are much larger now.   This, again, helps to offset the bias in the data toward earlier catchers, caused (among other things) by the fact that the earlier catchers worked with many, many more 20-games winners.

I gave each catcher 3 points for each breakthrough pitcher that he worked with.  In baseball history there have been 1,579 breakthrough seasons by pitchers, of which 723 occurred while working with one of the catchers included in this study. 

6)  Being the catcher for a team that leads the league in ERA

Bill Dickey was the regular catcher on nine teams that led the league in ERA, Johnny Kling for seven, Jim Hegan and Javier Lopez for six.   I gave the catcher four points for being the regular receiver on a team that led the league in ERA.

7)  Being the regular catcher on a team that wins the World Series

Dickey and Berra were the regular catchers on seven teams each that won the World Series, no one else more than three.  Altogether, the catchers in our study have won 78 World Series. ..actually, more than that, but 78 on which one of them was the #1 catcher.

In an earlier version of the point system, I gave a catcher twelve points for winning the World Series, figuring that the catcher would be much more proud of winning the World Series than of any other accomplishment.   But this seemed to distort the totals and make them less convincing, and I decided to keep everything within a range of two to five points, reasoning that “how proud” the catcher was of this accomplishment was not a perfect standard for how much weight it should be given.   Winning a World Series is something that is accomplished by 25 players and hundreds of off-field supporters, and, while we’re all extremely proud of it, the reality is that each person’s share of the trophy is limited.  It gets five points—the only accomplishment that does—but it shouldn’t be allowed to dominate the system.

8)  Being the regular catcher on a team that reaches the World Series

Four points, not redundantly counted with Rule 7.

Roy Campanella and Chief Meyers were the regular catchers on four teams that lost the World Series, Wally Schang, Elston Howard and Steve Yeager on three.

9)  Being the regular catcher on a team that has a good year

I defined “having a good year” as

a)  Winning 90 or more games, or

b)  Winning your division or league.

Three points.  Thus, I credited these three points to teams that won their division but didn’t make the World Series, to teams that won 90 games but didn’t make the playoffs, and teams that won leagues (like the Federal League and the 19^th century leagues) which had no World Series to go to.   I did not count any of the 19^th century post-season series as being “World Series”, since they weren’t, and I did not give any credit to teams that won a wild card slot but with less than 90 wins, unless they were able to fight their way into the World Series. 

Combining points 7, 8, and 9, the top point-earners for team

performance were:

While seven catchers in the study had zeroes:  Rick Ferrell, Rollie Hemsley, Sammy White, Mike Tresh, Frankie Hayes, Emil Gross and Hank DeBerry.   Varitek will break into the top ten if the Red Sox can win 90 games this year.  

10)  Leading the league in Fielding Percentage

This category, again, biases the study against the modern catchers, since there are many fewer “league leaders per team” in modern baseball.   Up until 1960, one catcher for each eight teams led the league in fielding percentage.   Now it is one in 14 or one in 16. 

Charlie Bennett, the 19^th-century catcher for whom Bennett Park in Detroit was named, led his league in fielding percentage seven times, while Ray Schalk, Gabby Hartnett and Jim Sundberg did it six times each.   I gave the catcher three points for the accomplishment.

11)  Leading the league in Assists

My intention, when I started this project, was to give these points to the catcher who led the league in baserunner throwout percentage, where the data was available on that issue.   I found, however, that while a great deal of related statistical evidence was available, I could not find it in a way that was organized and useful.  

We know, through the wonders of Retrosheet, that Gus Triandos in 1957 threw out 42 of 63 would-be base stealers, which is the highest percentage known.  We know that in 1929 the most difficult team to steal against was the Washington Senators (regular catchers, Bennie Tate, Muddy Ruel and Roy Spencer) and in 1926 the most difficult team to steal against was the White Sox (regular catchers Ray Schalk, Buck Crouse and Johnny Grabowski).  However, if you phrase the question this way:  who led the American League in throwout percentage in 1971?. . .the answer is not all that easy to find.    You can find it by flipping from catcher to catcher in Retrosheet, and you could probably find it in Baseball Reference.com, if you knew where to look, which I don’t.   Anyway, I couldn’t find the data, so I wound up just giving three points to the catcher who led the league in assists, which is Gus Triandos in 1957, but it doesn’t always work.

Hartnett, Sundberg, Del Crandall and Bob Boone led the league six times each in assists, Gary Carter five times.    When this study is re-done in fifteen or twenty years this will be something that you’ll be able to improve.   The advancement of databases will make it simple to see who led the league in caught stealing percentage for most leagues, and you’ll be able to increase this to a four-point category and improve the reliability of who gets the points.  But at the same time, a catcher might reasonably point with pride to the fact that he led the league in assists in a certain year.

12)  Playing in an All-Star game

I gave a player two points for appearing in an All-Star game, maximum one All-Star game per season.   The problem with making it more than that is that this is essentially a study of defensive accomplishments, while the All-Star team is determined to a large extent by hitting.   Also, since a few catchers go to the All-Star game year after year after year, if you give very many points to this accomplishment it pushes you strongly in the direction of the conclusion that the catchers who have the most “Point to with Pride” type accomplishments are the big stars, which is of course where we are headed anyway, to an extent, but I don’t want to needlessly increase that extent.   Yogi and Pudge played in 14 All-Star games each. . .actually 15 for Yogi, but that includes two in 1960. 

13)  Winning the Gold Glove

I made this a four-point accomplishment.    The catchers with five or more Gold Gloves are Ivan Rodriguez (13), Bench (10), Bob Boone (8), Sundberg (6), and Bill Freehan (5). 

And the Winner Is

The catcher with the most Catcher Pride Points in his career, by my accounting, is Bill Dickey, with 203 points.   The top ten are

 You might think that Dickey wins simply because he played for all of those great teams, and there is an argument for this position, but it isn’t necessarily true.   Dickey has 48 points for team performance (rules 7, 8 and 9)—less than a quarter of his total.  If you take those points away from Dickey, while allowing other catchers to keep theirs, Dickey would still be in eleventh place all-time. If you take the team performance points away from everybody, the leader would be Ivan Rodriguez (165), based on his enormous numbers of Gold Gloves and All Star games, but Dickey would be only ten points off the lead (165-155).  

Dickey, of course, has no Gold Gloves or points for working with a Cy Young Award winner, since those awards didn’t exist when he was playing, and even the All-Star game didn’t start until he was in mid-career.   The system is certainly not biased in favor of catchers from his era, as we will see in a moment.   Dickey never caught a no-hitter. 

Dickey, however, has the following items to point to with pride—setting aside his seven World Series rings, which only Yogi can approach:

He caught ten 20-game winners (Red Ruffing and Lefty Gomez four times each, Tiny Bonham and Spud Chandler once each.)  He got 40 points for that.

His teams, more famous for their power than for their pitching, led the league in ERA nine times—more than anyone else in history.    We gave him 36 points for that.

He caught more rookies who had good seasons (ten) than any other catcher.   We gave him 30 points for that.

He led his league four times in fielding percentage, three times in assists, earning him a total of 21 points for those accomplishments. 

He played in 8 All-Star games (16 points).

He caught four pitchers who had breakthrough seasons (12 points).

            I have always been sort of low man on the totem poll in evaluating Dickey—insisting at length that he was no Yogi Berra, for example—but you have to admit, it’s a pretty impressive resume.  

            You remember Yogi’s Yogiism, when asked how he became the catcher that he was?   “Bill Dickey learned me all of his experiences.”   Dickey took the lead in converting from an outfielder to a catcher not only Yogi, but also Elston Howard, who also did very well in our survey (117 points in a fairly short career.)    If you combine that with the large number of rookie catchers, it creates an argument that Dickey did have an unusual ability to work with others and to bring out the best in them, which is central to what we are trying to measure here.

            Let me note a couple of other things in Dickey’s favor.   I have puzzled, in the past, about the fact that when Red Ruffing pitched with the Boston Red Sox in the late 1920s, his winning percentage was actually worse than the team’s winning percentage (which was terrible), but when he joined the Yankees, his winning percentage became better than the Yankees’ winning percentage.   What happened to Ruffing, when he was sold to New York , that made him what he was?   Bill Dickey is one answer to that.

            Also, while we do not have catcher throwout percentages from Dickey’s years, we do have it from the World Series.   In 38 World Series games Dickey threw out 11 of 17 would-be base stealers—an extremely impressive accomplishment.   It’s a better record in World Series play than Yogi, Cochrane, Bench or Campanella, although all of them also have very good World Series throwout percentages.   The Yankees’ record against base stealers in Dickey’s years is also generally very good; the Yankees’ were generally near the bottom in stolen bases allowed, and near the top in stolen base throwout percentage.

            I have always been skeptical about Dickey’s stature in history, but I am, to an extent, convinced by my own study.    I think he was probably better, defensively, than I have given him credit for being.

            Other notes of interest on the top dogs. . .Gary Carter and Johnny Bench have fairly similar career batting statistics.   While both are in the Hall of Fame, Bench is universally ranked higher, in part because his defense was more impressive.  Carter was a converted outfielder who won a few Gold Gloves, but Bench was the Ivan Rodriguez of his time, the gold standard for catcher’s defense.   It is interesting to note, if not entirely persuasive, that Carter out-points Bench in our survey.   While Bench has a huge advantage in Gold Gloves (10-3, or 40-12) and advantages in All Star games, World Series wins and World Series appearances, Carter beats him in things like leading the league in ERA (3 to 0), catching 20-game winners (3 to 2), catching Cy Young winners (1 to 0), and catching pitchers who had breakthrough seasons (19 to 13).  

            Among the many light-hitting defensive wizards of baseball history (John Roseboro, Malachi Kittridge, Mickey Owen, Steve Yeager, Bob Boone, Al Lopez, Rick Dempsey, Luke Sewell), the most consistent point-producer in our analysis is Jim Hegan.  Hegan, who never won a Gold Glove or worked with a Cy Young winner, because those awards came in just as he was going out, and who played in only two All-Star games because of Yogi and Sherm Lollar and his low batting average, produces points all along the system—20-game winners, three times leading the league in ERA, seven teams that won 90 or more games—and winds up near the top of our survey.  

The Highest and Lowest Rates Per Game Played

            The question really is “Who isn’t there?”  You see those names above. . .Bill Dickey, you think “Sure; he’s obvious”; Yogi, of course; Jim Hegan, he’s famous for that stuff; Mickey Cochrane, Bench, Pudge, Carter, of course.   This only becomes meaningful when you look at who doesn’t do so well in the same survey.  For that, we have to look at points per game played.

            In terms of points earned per game played, most of the highest totals go to 19^th century catchers.   In very early major league baseball, when the schedule was short and catchers didn’t wear gloves, you have “regular” catchers who might have caught 40 games in a season.    Most of the famous 19^th century catchers caught only a few hundred games in their careers.   Buck Ewing, the most famous of them, caught 636 games.   These are the leaders, in my study of 107 catchers, in terms of points earned per game caught, with 130 games considered a “season”:

            Brown, Daly, Flint , Bennett and Boyle were all 19^th century players, having short careers as catchers (except Bennett) in a world where mediocre pitchers went 30-27 and you could lead the league in Fielding Percentage fielding .880.    I believe that these were all very good defensive catchers, but their presence on this list is just a reminder that the 19^th century game was very different.

            Among twentieth- and twenty-first century catchers, the leaders are:

            This is another “good list”, containing four of the same names (Dickey, Hegan, Kling and Cochrane), but substituting players with short careers for Bench, Berra, Gary Carter and others.   But the method, as you can see, clearly does not discriminate in favor of the more recent catchers, despite the addition of points for the Cy Young catcher (post-1956) and the Gold Gloves (post-1957).   Only one catcher from the Cy Young/Gold Glove era—Elrod Hendricks—cracks the list of the most productive catchers, which is dominated by catchers from before 1920. 

            What I was trying to get to, though, is “Who doesn’t come out well in this system?”

            The number one and two “non-productive” catchers in baseball history are Blimp Hayes and Spud Davis.    Frankie Hayes became the regular catcher for the Philadelphia A’s in 1934 when he was just 19 years old, after Connie Mack had sold Mickey Cochrane to Detroit. 

            Hayes had an impressive career in many respects.  He had some good years with the bat, hitting .291 in 1938, .283 with 20 homers, 83 RBI in 1939, and .304 with 16 homers, 70 RBI in 1940.   In 1944, on a 154-game schedule, he caught 155 games, a major league record at the time, and still tied for the American League record.   He was mentioned in the MVP voting in 1939, 1940, 1941, 1944 and 1945, and he played in four All-Star games. 

            But in terms of the things that a catcher can point to with pride, he’s got nothin’.  He was the one catcher in our study, pre-1955, who never worked with a 20-game winner (or never got credit for it.   Actually he caught part of the season for the Indians in 1946, when Feller had a monster season.)  He gets

            2 points for catching a no-hitter.

            6 points for working with 2 rookie pitchers who had good years.

            9 points for working with 3 pitchers who had breakthrough seasons.

            3 points for leading the AL in assists in 1944.

            8 points for appearing in 4 All-Star games.

            A total of 28 points, in a career that is a couple of years longer than Roy Campanella’s, longer than Thurman Munson’s, or Steve Yeager’s, or Manny Sanguillen’s.  Per 130 games played he is credited with only 2.8 Catcher Pride Points—the poorest ratio of any catcher in our study.

            Just ahead of him is Spud Davis.   Spud Davis played in the majors from 1928 to 1945, making him an exact contemporary of Bill Dickey.  He was a very good hitter—a lifetime .308 hitter—and he was the regular catcher for the 1934 St. Louis Cardinals, who won the World Series with Dizzy Dean winning 30 games.

            He gets 12 points for that—five for the World Series win, four for Dizzy being a 20-game winner, and 3 more for Dizzy having a breakthrough season—and man, does he need them.   Other than those 12 points, he has a career total, in a long career, of 22 Catcher Pride Points.  He was never a regular on any other team that had a good year, no other team winning 90 or more games.  He caught only one other 20-game winner (Dizzy Dean in ’36).  He led the league a couple of times in fielding percentage, once in assists.   When the old catchers get together up yonder and start to brag about their earthly deeds, he doesn’t bring much to the cloud.

            Spud Davis lost his starting job in ’35 to Bill Delancey, who Branch Rickey used to say wistfully was the best catcher he ever saw.  Delancey was forced out of the game very early by tuberculosis, which finally killed him on his 35^th birthday in 1946.  Delancey’s illness put Davis back in the starting lineup, but, despite his .300+ batting averages, he wasn’t really a first-division catcher.

            These are the weakest catchers, in terms of points per game played:

            What do you notice there?   First of all, four players on this list are very direct contemporaries of Bill Dickey (1928-1946).   Bill Dickey actually comes from an era which is discriminated AGAINST by this system, an era that this system doesn’t much like.   I tried to make the system balance reasonably across time, and it does, but. . .the catchers from the Bill Dickey era, other than Dickey and Cochrane, really did not score well. 

            Second, while there are some players on this list who had poor defensive reputations anyway (Gene Tenace, Terry Kennedy, Jason Kendall, Spud Davis) at least two catchers on this list generally have good defensive reputations.   Bob O’Farrell was voted the Most Valuable Player in the National League in 1926, when the Cardinals won their first World Series.   But, as was true of Spud Davis, that world championship with the Cardinals was his only good team.   He caught a no-hitter, but he worked with only three twenty -game winners—in a long career, in an era when winning twenty games was far more common than it is now.   He worked, in his long career, with only one rookie pitcher who had a good season—Art Reinhart in 1925.  Of course, he was a backup catcher for most of his career, and it may be that the system discriminates against him unfairly for that reason.

            But what do we say about Rick Ferrell.  Ferrell was voted into the Hall of Fame in 1984

            a)  as a testament to exactly how badly the Hall of Fame’s selection system can screw up sometimes, and

            b)  upon the belief that he was an outstanding defensive catcher.

            Of course, virtually nobody believes that Ferrell belongs in the Hall of Fame, anyway; it was a totally absurd and arbitrary selection, even if we assume that Ferrell was a defensive genius.   But if he was a defensive genius, the evidence of it largely escapes our research.   Ferrell

            a)  Never caught a no-hitter,

            b)  Was the regular catcher for one team that led the league in ERA, the 1945 Washington Senators,

            c)  Caught six 20-game winners, which is a decent total and earns him 24 points, but

            d)  Caught only three rookie pitchers who had good years,

            e)  Caught only six pitchers who had breakthrough seasons, an unimpressive total,

            f)  Was never the regular catcher for any team that won 90 games or won any kind of championship,

            g)  Led his league once in fielding percentage, twice in assists, and

            h)  Played in two All-Star games.

            Adding it all up, we credit him with just 68 points, catching 1,806 games.  The raw total ranks well behind guys like Alan Ashby, Terry Steinbach and Dan Wilson, in much shorter careers.   The per-game ratio is one of the poorest in our study.

            Other catchers who did well in our study, albeit not well enough to make the leader boards:  Buck Ewing, Chief Zimmer, Billy Sullivan, Ramon Hernandez, John Roseboro, Elston Howard, Wilbert Robinson, Dave Duncan, Walker Cooper, Jason Varitek, Tim McCarver, Bill Freehan, Gabby Hartnett, Thurman Munson, Earl Battey, Tom Haller.   

Mid-range numbers, not notably good or notably bad:  Mike Scioscia, Steve Yeager, Smoky Burgess, Sherm Lollar, Jerry Grote, Jim Sundberg, Bob Boone, Dan Wilson, Jorge Posada, Charles Johnson, Hall of Famer Roger Bresnahan.  Bresnahan, like Ferrell, was elected to the Hall of Fame mostly on the basis of the theory that he was a great defensive catcher.   His point ratio, for the era in which he played, is actually very unimpressive.

Carlton Fisk comes in at a not-too-awesome 8.3 points per season. . .not quite low enough to make the Dud list, but not anything to get excited about.   Rick Dempsey is at just 8.1, Brad Ausmus at 7.9, Benito Santiago at 7.7, and Lance Parrish at 7.7.

Below that, you’re talking about guys who just honestly do not have a whole lot of markers on their side.  These include some Gold Glove winners:  Ray Fosse, Tony Pena (four Gold Gloves and a couple of World Series losses are basically all that he has to brag about) and Sandy Alomar Jr.  Alomar narrowly misses the “bottom ten” list, ranking just two slots above Rick Ferrell—despite the help of SIX All-Star selections.   Without the All-Star selections he’d be down around Spud Davis.   Other guys who don’t do well in our survey include Mike Piazza, Ernie Lombardi, Luke Sewell, Al Lopez, Ted Simmons, Manny Sanguillen, Bo Diaz, Ernie Whitt and Rich Gedman. 

I want to stop short of saying that any of those men was not a good defensive catcher, or that our system proves that Johnny Kling and Chief Meyers were great defensive catchers.   It’s not proof.   I just thought it would be interesting to look at this issue in this way, and I hope that it was worth my time to do the research, and I hope that it’s been worth your time to read it.     I’ll try to keep what I learned here in mind the next time I rank the catchers.