How Many Innings Is Too Many for a Catcher?
Part of a manager’s job is to determine when his players need a breather. For some players, that might be only once a season. For instance, last year in the AL Robinson Cano, Brandon Inge, and Nick Markakis missed just one game each, while Prince Fielder led the NL by playing in all 162 games. When it comes to catchers, though, the question becomes a bit more difficult. Squatting causes plenty of wear and tear, so if a manager wants to get optimal production from the catching spot he has to recognize when his backstop needs a day off.
After starting Yadier Molina in 11 of the team’s first 12 games, including the entirety of a 20-inning affair, I criticized Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa for working his catcher too hard. While Yadier presented a far, far better option than inexperienced backup Bryan Anderson, he also has his limitations. Playing him too much earlier in the season could mean more fatigue down the road. For a team with a catcher as good as Yadier, that can become a rather large issue later in the season.
While Yadier didn’t see immediate ill effects — he hit .375/.438/.464 in the 64 PA following the 20-inning game — he has fallen off a bit lately. Since a 4 for 5 game against Pittsburgh on May 7 Molina has just seven hits in 50 PA, just one for extra bases. We cannot definitively point to Molina’s excessive playing time as a reason for this slump — slumps happen, after all, even to the best hitters in the league — but the correlation is somewhat troubling. Yadier, after all, has caught a large portion of his team’s innings.
Molina is not alone in catching a large percentage of his team’s innings. Here’s a quick breakdown.
Jason Kendall presents the most interesting case here. He has caught by far the most innings of any catcher in the majors, yet ranks among the worst hitters. His .347 OBP is the only saving grace in his line, which amounts to a .309 wOBA, which ranks 19th out of the 24 MLB catchers with at least 100 PA. Is Brayan Pena really that bad? Another good question: will this change with Ned Yost in charge?
Matt Wieters actually ranks worst in this group in terms of wOBA. This is more understandable, because he’s still a young player trying to find his way in the majors. At 83 percent of his team’s innings he’s catching more than most other catchers, which is a concern, but clearly not as big a concern as someone like Kendall, an older player catching nearly every inning his pitchers throw.
All four catchers on the list rank in the bottom half of catchers. Russell Martin started off hot but has cooled off considerably, especially in terms of power. He currently ranks 16th out of 24 qualifying catchers. Molina has caught a slightly lesser portion of his team’s innings, most likely because of Jason LaRue‘s return. Still, maybe the extra work early in the season has taken a toll. He currently ranks 18th among peers in wOBA.
Drawing conclusions from this small a sample does no good. We can see that each of these catchers has caught a disproportionate number of his team’s innings, which intuitively sounds like a bad thing for the long haul. Reading too much into their production, however, will not yield any valuable insights. Every player slumps, and we can’t simply pin the poor play of Kendall, Martin, Molina, and Wieters on their playing time. Too may other factors are at work.
What we can do, and what I will do, is revisit this topic and these players throughout the season. I don’t think we’ll find any definitive connections, but perhaps we can gain an insight or two by seeing whether these catchers continue squatting for this many of their teams’ innings.
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Looks like Kendall has to be some kind of outlier… from 1997-2009, he has the top 6 spots in catchIP/tmIP! Plus #8, #12, #14…
Min 10 seasons with innings at catcher, here are the all-time* leaders:
Kendall 82%
I-Rod 72%
Sundberg 71%
Munson 70%
Campaneris 70%
Bob Boone 68%
Ausmus 65%
Piazza 64%
Carter 64%
Ramon Hernandez 63%
Tony Pena 63%
…
Kendall is clearly a different animal, being so far ahead of the pack.
* given that the lahman database ‘only’ has catcher innings back to the 50s, not really all-time, but the best I can do :)
Campanerris should probably be Campanella am I right?
No.
it’s campanella!!!!!
Yeah, Brayan Pena is not much of a defensive catcher, but I guess I’ve seen worse. I get the impression that Yost, from what he has said, intends to give Kendall the day off once every two weeks or so.
I do personally believe Russell Martin’s workload has affected him offensively. He seems to have almost completely lost the ability to drive the ball much anymore. He’s just not the same hitter he was in 2006-2007 on through the all start break in 2008. Since then he’s turned into Mike Lavalliere at the plate. If you believe the reports he also talks his way into the lineup when Torre wants to sit him down. He’s still a good player because he gets on base, but I think maybe he needs more rest.
It’d be interesting to look at this phenomenon over the course of a career. Looking at the extreme case, Kendall caught over 1200 innings in 1997, 1998, and 2000, and was on his way to racking up that many in 1999 before he got hurt. His wOBA dropped off a cliff in 2001, although he had a bit of an offensive resurgence a couple years later (again, in the midst of several consecutive seasons of 1200+ innings caught) before bottoming out again.
Martin might be on his way to having a somewhat Kendall-like career arc. He caught over 1200 innings in each of the years 2007-2009, and his wOBA dropped precipitously last year, with a corresponding big drop in ISO.
“Every player slumps, and we can’t simply pin the poor play of Kendall, Martin, Molina, and Wieters on their playing time. Too may other factors are at work.”
I think, at least in Molina’s case, that this would be more accurate if it stated that “we can’t simply pin the poor OFFENSIVE play of [...] on their playing time.”
I can’t vouch for the others, but Molina’s defense (which is the main reason he’s in the lineup) has been fine.
Wieters’s defense has been excellent. Beyond the Box Score had a recent feature where they ranked him as the 2nd best defensive catcher in the majors (using their own metric).
I’m not sure why we can’t look at correlations like this? It wouldn’t be perfect, but I would think that one could measure the effects of in-season and total catcher innings played on catcher performance (using some favorite stat). Might also be worth trying it while controlling for age vs not. If everyone “agrees” that catcher wear-down is a certainty, shouldn’t the data be able to back it up pretty readily?
I’m not quite sure what the point is in doing a series of case studies on random players this year, when it should already be possible to just an the analysis. Am I off base here? Is there something I’m missing? I would think that certain regression approaches, or at the very least a markov chain analysis approach would be pretty effective on this (using catching innings and performance as state).
Kendall ranks among the worst hitters? Have you looked at the catcher slot? He actually has positive value as a hitter, so have to disagree with that statement. In fact, he’s been more valuable than all but a handful of al catchers. I know he is disliked within the roto community, but he’s not among the worst hitters at the position (at least not this year).
As the article says, his .309 wOBA is 19th out of 24 catchers with at least 100 PA. So yes, I have looked at the catcher slot, and have seen that 18 catchers have a better wOBA than him and only 5 have a worse one.
He’s 30th in WAR for the catcher position. You have to expand the field because not every catcher is qualified. I read somewhere that teams try to limit catchers innings.
100 pitches has not eliminated tommy john surgery!!! with that in mind how many roster slots do you propose? meaning how many catchers? bench players? starters? pitchers? middlers? closers? clearly 25 slots aint enough for this new baseball roster…
I doubt Kendall will get much rest unless he gets hurt. Yost started him in 137 of 150 games in 2008 (Dale Sveum then took over and started him in the last 12). And Yost has started him every game so far in 2010 too.
Would it be different to show it in terms of PAs rather than IPs? All innings aren’t equal, right? Or would the impact just average itself out between the 1-2-3 innings and their marathon counterparts.
Why not, you know, actually run a correlation with all catchers?
Apparently, people have missed Martin’s recent hot streak. No excuse for the abuse Little and now Torre have inflicted, but a lot of his hitting issues last year seemed to be from a change in approach and swing that he has largely corrected.
I think rather than just look at innings caught one also needs to look at temperature, humidity, etc. Catchers are a different animal and build up quite endurance.
It’s still amazing how Pudge caught all those innings in the TX heat.
We’re currently experiencing mid 90s temps with high humidity. Today was the 1st time all year I heard our ultra hard working and talented catcher complain about anything. He complained about the amount of sweat getting into his eyes.
As one who did a 1/2 ironman a couple of years ago, nothing drains energy and increases fatigue like heat and humidity. In the Midwest, before this week it had been very cool. Our last 3 9U games had been at night and 60. On Sat it was 90. The diff was almost unbearable. Stupid humidity.
I cannot imagine what it is like to catch in June, July, and August other than it must suck. Glad to have been a pitcher.
Note: The catcher was our senior, college bound kid, not our 9U team. The nine year olds beg to catch.
LaRue is Molina’s backup, not Anderson, which is why LaRussa wants to play Molina so much. Anderson would get called up as the starter only if Molina got hurt (again).
Yes, but when I wrote the original article LaRue was on the DL and Anderson was the backup.