How Are the Stars Being Acquired? Catchers
On to the next position: logically being the catcher spot. Let’s jump right into the list, based on WAR of players with at least 300 plate appearances at catcher:
Joe Mauer – drafted
Victor Martinez – traded
Brian McCann – drafted
Jorge Posada –drafted
Yadier Molina – drafted
Miguel Montero – amateur free agent
Mike Napoli – drafted
Kurt Suzuki – drafted
A.J. Pierzynski – free agent
John Baker – traded
Scoreboard:
6 drafted
2 traded
1 free agent
1 amateur free agent
70% of the list was developed by their current teams. Mauer is the poster child. I feel like I should’ve added a few empty spaces after Mauer’s name because he’s just that good. He was also the first overall pick in the draft, something that none of the other catchers can say. Here’s a list of rounds in which those six were drafted:
Mauer 1st
McCann 2nd
Posada 24th
Molina 4th
Napoli 17th
Suzuki 2nd
Well that portrays the inherent wackiness of drafting catchers. I did more research on this a while back and found the difference between picking a catcher between 31st and 60th overall and picking one between 61st and 90th overall is minimal at best and that drafting first round catchers doesn’t guarantee much of anything. That last point is obvious about any position, but really, evaluating catchers is extremely tricky. Those teams that do it well at least once try and hold onto their talented backstops as much as possible; maybe that’s part of the reason that only one free agent catcher is amongst the top ten, and his reputation is that of a jackass.
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Posada, though, was drafted as a 2B and later converted to C.
Actually, Posada was drafted at SS, moved to second in his first year with the organization.
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=9591
The inherent wackiness of the baseball draft makes the type of analysis you are trying to do very difficult. Because of the slotting system and agents (or in this case “advisors”) and asking prices and different team budgets, it’s next to impossible to look at draft positions and assign value.
Teams pick players early in the draft because they will sign for less, and other teams pick players late in the draft because they are asking for lots of money, so you end up with a situation where a player picked in the 10th round asks for and receives more money than a player selected in the 2nd or 3rd round. I applaud your effort, but you can’t simply go by where a player is drafted and expect that to be any type of indicator of their level of quality.
It would be interesting to note what stage in their career these players are as well. For instance, Posada was developed by the Yankees but they also signed him long term after he could have left as a Free Agent. It could be useful to know if these stars are all in their pre-FA years, signed by their original teams to longterm extensions, or signed on the free agent market.
“and his reputation is that of a jackass”
hahahahaha
Even though I was not a fan of either team, that BS interference call a few years back still gets under my skin. The “how are you feeling” story from a spring training a few years back also is a classic. At least the Twins mauled another team when they traded him away a few years back!
Wieters joins this list soon…
Mike Piazza should be the posterboy of this list.
Maybe a better way to approach this would be “How old are the stars?”
It would essentially lead to the same conclusion, but would have a more reliable relationship to causation.
Three words Buster Fucking Posey. . . that is all.
Looking at all this I’m starting to think it’s totally random.
Don’t forget Russell Martin. His bat took a shit this year outside of his walk rate, but his defense is as strong as ever and he has shown signs that he can recover the hitting going forward.
Unfortunately for the Angels Scioscia will probably play Mathis more than Napoli in the playoffs.