Has Yadier Molina Successfully Framed His Hall of Fame Case?

Yadier Molina, the long-time catcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, is now officially retired. Molina, who wore a Cardinals uniform since 2004, just completed the final year of his illustrious 19-year career, one that’s highlighted by two World Series championships (in 2006 and 2011). Molina and the Cardinals appeared in the postseason 13 times in his 19 years with the squad. In his final post-season at bat, in the 9th inning on Saturday in Game 2 of the Wild Card Series, Molina singled to right field. He was removed for a pinch-hitter, and the Philadelphia Phillies won shortly thereafter, completing a two-game sweep.

It was a sentimental summer in St. Louis. Besides being the final season for Molina, pitcher Adam Wainwright (a hero as a rookie reliever in the 2006 championship season) might have completed the final season of his career, also exclusively as a member of the Cardinals. And finally, Albert Pujols had a remarkable comeback campaign in St. Louis for what was the last season of his magnificent career.

Molina played in 2,224 games for the Redbirds, including 2,184 behind the plate. That is the most games caught by any player for a single team in baseball history. In late 2000, Molina collected his 2,000th career hit. This May, he drove in the 1,000th run of his career, making him the 8th backstop to eclipse the milestones of 2,000 hits and 1,000 RBI. The other 7 are in the Hall of Fame.

In December 2019, longtime Cardinals catcher Ted Simmons (one of the members of the 2,000 hit/1,000 RBI club for backstops) was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. The question today on “Cooperstown Cred” is whether Molina is destined to join Simmons in the Hall of Fame in the future. By the traditional standards on which many players (especially catchers) are judged, Molina would seem to be a shoo-in. He’s a 10-time All-Star, a 9-time Gold Glove Award winner, and a key contributor to those two World Series Championships.

On the Bill James Hall of Fame monitor (on Molina’s Baseball-Reference page), Molina scores 169 points on a scale on which 130 is considered a “virtual cinch.” However, that same page credits Yadi with a career WAR (Wins Above Replacement) of 42.3 and a JAWS score of 35.5, just 22nd best among all catchers in MLB history. So what do you value more? The accolades or the numbers? We’ll delve into that debate after a brief recap of Molina’s 19-year career.

Cooperstown Cred: Yadier Molina (C)

• St. Louis Cardinals (2004-2022)
• Career: .277 BA, 176 HR, 1,022 RBI, 2,168 Hits
• Career: 96 OPS+, 42.3 bWAR (Wins Above Replacement)
• Career: 55.7 fWAR (FanGraphs version of WAR)
• 10-time All-Star
• 9-time Gold Glove Award winner
• 162 career “Total Zone” fielding runs above average (from Baseball-Reference) (2nd most all-time for catchers to Ivan Rodriguez)
• Career: 40.3% of runners caught stealing (best among active catchers)
• Career: 2,184 games caught (4th most in baseball history)
• Won 2006 & 2011 World Series Championships with St. Louis Cardinals
• Career: .328 BA, 12 RBI in 21 World Series games

(cover photo: St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

This article was originally posted prior to the COVID-shortened 2020 season. It has been updated now that Molina’s career is over.

Yadier and the Catching Molinas

Yadier Benjamin Molina was born on July 13th, 1982 in Bayamon, Puerto Rico. Molina is the youngest of three sons born to Gladys Matta and Benjamin Molina Sr., a terrific amateur player who was elected to the Puerto Rican baseball hall of fame in 2002.

As many baseball fans know, Yadi’s older brothers (Bengie Molina and Jose Molina) also had long and productive careers as catchers in Major League Baseball. Bengie played for 13 seasons in MLB, Jose for 15. Both Bengie and Jose were members of the 2002 Anaheim Angels, who won the World Series over the San Francisco Giants. Jose won a second ring as a backup catcher with the 2009 New York Yankees. Although neither of his older brothers had careers remotely as successful as Yadi’s, both Bengie and Jose were well-regarded for their defensive abilities.

It’s fitting that the Molinas grew up in a community (Vega Alta) that was long known as El Pueblo de los Nangatos: “the Village of the Squatters.” The “Squatters” nickname refers to local sugar cane cutters but it’s a perfect match for the Molina family.

At the age of 17, Yadier was selected by the St. Louis Cardinals in the 4th round of the June player draft (2000). With polished catching skills from the moment he was drafted, he moved quickly through the Redbirds’ minor league organization. The youngest Molina brother made his MLB debut on June 3, 2004, just six weeks shy of his 22nd birthday. Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa penciled Yadi into the starting lineup in his first game and the young backstop helped the Cards’ to a 4-2 victory with 2 hits and the first of the 345 career runners gunned down by his strong right arm.

Yadier Molina: Career Highlights

Molina was used mostly as a backup to future Cardinals skipper Mike Matheny in his rookie campaign of 2004. Led by the booming bats of Albert Pujols, Scott Rolen, and Jim Edmonds, La Russa’s Redbirds cruised to 105 regular-season victories and the N.L. pennant before falling to the Boston Red Sox in the World Series. In this, the first of 10 postseasons in which he would participate, Molina appeared in just 7 games, going 1 for 7. He also threw out future Hall of Famer Craig Biggio at 2nd base in Game 4 of the NLCS; Biggio was the first player to attempt to run on Yadi in playoff baseball.

Matheny signed with the San Francisco Giants in the offseason, and so in the spring of 2005, Molina won the starting job; he has been the Cardinals’ primary backstop ever since. Yadi wasn’t much of a hitter in his early MLB seasons but established himself at a young age as yet another Molina who was dangerous to run on. In 2005, while slashing .252/.295/.358 (for a woeful 70 OPS+), only 39 base-runners attempted to run against him (in 959.1 innings). Molina gunned down 25 of those 39 for a remarkable 64% caught stealing percentage. The Cards won 100 games in ’05 for their 2nd straight N.L. Central title but would fall in 6 games in the NLCS to the Houston Astros.

By any objective metrics, the 2006 regular season was Yadier Molina’s worst in baseball. Although he continued to field his position well, Molina did virtually nothing with the bat. After getting 4 hits in his first 10 at bats, Yadi went into a horrific slump, slashing .111/.122/.153 in his next 20 games. He finished the season with an OPS+ of 53 (.216/.274/.321). That OPS+ (53) was the third lowest in all of MLB among the 224 players with at least 400 plate appearances. In his final 39 games, Molina had just 2 HR and 8 RBI (remember those numbers for a moment). Anyway, because of that anemic hitting record, Molina was credited with a -0.2 WAR in ’06 despite solid defensive metrics.

Unlikely 2006 Postseason Hero

2006 was an odd season for the Cardinals. Thanks to a staff ERA of 4.54 and only 3 players (Pujols, Rolen, and Chris Carpenter) with a WAR over 2.0, the Cards went only 83-78 in the regular season. Fortunately, those 83 wins were still good enough to win the N.L. Central. The West Champion San Diego Padres won only 88 games and, in the N.L. Division Series, the Cards prevailed in 4 games.

The Cardinals were heavy underdogs in the NLCS to the 97-win New York Mets, a team with a mixture of future Hall of Fame veteran hurlers (Tom Glavine, Pedro Martinez), hitting stars with future Cooperstown potential (Carlos Beltran, David Wright, and Carlos Delgado) and a lights-out closer with a quality Hall of Fame resume of his own (Billy Wagner). (With a torn rotator cuff, Martinez did not participate in the postseason).

Behind 7 innings of shutout ball by the 40-year-old Glavine, the Mets won Game 1 at Shea Stadium by a 2-0 score. The Cardinals’ bats came alive in Game 2; the team won 9-6, with Molina going 3 for 5 with 2 RBI. The teams split the next four games in St. Louis, with Molina driving in two runs (including a solo HR) in the Game 4 loss.

The final game of the series was a low-scoring affair; the score was tied at 1 after 8 frames. This was a classic Game 7, one that featured one of the greatest catches in postseason history when Mets left fielder Endy Chavez robbed Rolen of a potential two-run tater in the 6th inning.

In the top of the 9th, Mets reliever Aaron Heilman retired Edmonds before allowing Rolen to stroke a single to left field at the end of a 9-pitch at bat. La Russa still had bats on the bench, but with the score tied and the potential of extra innings looming, he left his light-hitting catcher in to hit. Molina proceeded to stun the 56,357 fans at Shea by swatting the first Heilman offering into the left field bullpen for a go-ahead, two-run HR that helped the Cardinals to their first World Series appearance since 1987.

As a Mets fan who watched Molina’s home run in horror, I was bemoaning that one of the worst hitters in baseball had beaten my team while one of the game’s best hitters (Beltran) was frozen on an 0-2 Adam Wainwright curveball with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th.

Regarding the Molina long ball, not in a million years did I think I had just seen the signature moment in the career of a future Hall of Famer. Remember that I asked you to recall that Molina drove in 8 runs in his final 39 regular-season games? Well, in 7 games against the Mets in the NLCS, Yadi drove in 6.

Embed from Getty Images

After the dramatic ending to the NLCS, the World Series was a proverbial walk in the park, with La Russa’s Redbirds defeating Jim Leyland’s Detroit Tigers in 5 games. Molina hit .412 in the Fall Classic, capped by three hits and two runs scored in the decisive Game 5 off rookie sensation (and a near-certain future Hall of Famer) Justin Verlander.

Perennial All-Star and Gold Glove Award Winner

In the years that followed Yadier Molina’s postseason heroics, he started to hit closer to the level that he showed in the ’06 postseason. In 2007, Molina slashed .275/.340/.368 (85 OPS+) but was limited to 111 games thanks to a wrist injury that caused him to miss most of June.

In 2008, although his OPS+ was still under par (96), Molina hit .304 and was recognized with the first of his 8 consecutive Gold Gloves. In 2009, Molina was an All-Star for the first time; he’s only not been voted or named to the team three times since.

It was in 2011 (his 8th in the majors) that Molina emerged as a true two-way force. In addition to his consistently sterling work behind the dish, Yadi became a consistent threat with the bat. He set career highs with 14 HR, 65 RBI, a .305 BA, and 124 OPS+. In what would turn out to be the final seasons in St. Louis both for La Russa and Pujols, the Cardinals won the World Series again, this time in a thrilling 7-game series win over the Texas Rangers. After going 0 for 7 in the first two games of the ’11 Fall Classic, Yadi’s bat caught fire. He slashed .471/.524/.588 with 9 RBI in the final five games of the series.

After helping his team to another World Series title, Yadier Molina was rewarded with a five-year extension worth $75 million in the spring of 2012. In the beginning, Molina more than earned every penny of that deal, becoming a legitimate MVP contender in 2012 and ’13. In ’12, he had the best offensive season of his career, slugging 22 HR with 76 RBI and a 137 OPS+. With that offense combined with his continued defensive prowess, Molina’s bWAR in ’12 was 7.2, second-best in the N.L. to another catcher (Buster Posey).

In ’13, Yadi backed up his sterling season with 12 taters, 80 ribbies, a 129 OPS+, and a 6.2 WAR. He finished 4th in the MVP voting in ’12 and 3rd in ’13.

In the first season under new manager Matheny, the 2012 Cardinals were one of the two N.L. Wild Cards and advanced all the way to the NLCS before succumbing to the San Francisco Giants in 7 games (Molina hit .393 in that series). The 2013 Redbirds won the pennant before falling to the Red Sox in the World Series.

2014-2019

Coming off two superb campaigns, Yadier Molina was now one of the biggest stars in baseball. He was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated‘s 2014 preview issue. He played the role of superstar to a T on Opening Day, hitting a solo tater to deliver the only run in the Redbirds’ 1-0 victory in Cincinnati. Yadi’s bat remained hot for nearly the first two months of the season. As of May 21, he was hitting .335 with 22 RBI and a .839 OPS. He slumped, however, in his next 42 contests, hitting just .230 with a paltry 8 RBI.

Even so, Molina was named to the All-Star squad for the 6th straight year. Unfortunately, he was unable to suit up thanks to tearing ligaments in his right thumb on a slide at third base in early July. The injury caused the Redbirds’ star backstop to miss 40 games. After his return in late August, Molina posted a lackluster .622 OPS with no home runs and 8 RBI in 27 games. After three seasons of double-digit home runs and 65+ RBI, Molina finished the ’14 campaign with just 7 taters and 38 ribbies. Still, thanks to his typically scintillating glove work, Yadi posted a 3.2 WAR. The Cards won the N.L. Central and won the NLDS before losing (again) to the Giants in the NLCS, this time in 5 games.

In 2015 Molina had arguably his worst offensive season since 2006. He hit .270 and drove in 61 runs but only hit 4 homers and had an OPS+ of just 80. Matheny’s Redbirds won 100 games but fell in 4 games to the Chicago Cubs in the NLDS.

Yadi rebounded with the bat in 2016 (.307 BA, 8 HR, 58 RBI, 111 OPS+) but had a subpar season with his golden throwing arm. He threw out just 18 out of 85 runners (21%), the lowest caught-stealing percentage of his career. For this reason, his 8-year Gold Glove streak came to an end. Besides missing out on the game’s highest fielding honor, Molina was bypassed for the Mid-Summer Classic for the first time since 2008.

From 2017-19, Molina was an average hitter (95 OPS+) due to a .313 OBP but showed respectable power, slugging .426. With declining defensive metrics, his average WAR from ’17-’19 was 1.6 in what were his age 34-36 seasons.

(Because Yadi’s birthday is July 13th, his “age season” is always labeled on his Baseball-Reference profile as his Opening Day age. Therefore, 2022 was reported as his age 39 season even though he turned 40 shortly before the All-Star Game).

Final October Moment of Glory?

Yadier Molina’s final moment of postseason glory will be remembered as having occurred on October 7, 2019. The ’19 Cardinals won 91 games, which was good enough for the N.L. Central title and the 10th postseason opportunity in Yadi’s 16 MLB campaigns.

Molina hit only .152 in the ’19 postseason but was responsible for two signature moments in Game 4 of the NLDS (against the Atlanta Braves). The Redbirds were down 2 games to 1; Game 4 (at Busch Stadium) was a must-win. Heading into the bottom of the 8th inning, the Cards were trailing 4-3. With one out, first baseman Paul Goldschmidt reached on a double to left field. After Marcell Ozuna struck out, Yadi hit a solid line drive to left field to tie the game at 4.

Two innings later (in the 10th), Molina came up with the winning run (Kolten Wong) on third base. The 37-year-old backstop hit a fly ball to left field that was deep enough to score Wong and force a winner-take-all Game 5 (which St. Louis would go on to win). Just as it was with his famous tater in the 2006 NLCS, both the game-tying hit and game-winning sacrifice fly were stroked on the first pitch.

Embed from Getty Images

Yadier Molina’s Final Three Seasons

Molina wasn’t quite done yet, however, with his superlative postseason hitting. In the expanded 2020 postseason in the COVID-shortened season, Yadi slashed .462/.500/.615 with 2 RBI in a 3-game losing effort to the San Diego Padres in the first round of the playoffs. During the 60-game regular season, Molina appeared in 42 games, hitting .262 with 4 HR and 16 RBI while throwing out a robust 45% of would-be base-stealers.

In 2021, Molina had a decent season with the bat and the glove. In 121 games, Yadi hit .252 with 11 HR and 66 RBI, throwing out 41% of all runners attempting to steal. That was good enough for a bWAR of 1.8, the 15th highest for any catcher in their age 38 season or beyond.

The currently completed campaign of 2022, despite the sentimentality, was not a good one for Molina. In 78 games, he slashed just .212/.233/.302 (53 OPS+) with 5 HR and 24 RBI. He did, however, succeed with respect to the running game, gunning down 13 out of 33 (39%) of runners attempting to steal.

The Case For and Against Yadier Molina for the Hall of Fame

Let’s start with the case against Yadier Molina for the Hall of Fame. As noted at the top of the piece, Molina has a Bill James “Hall of Fame Monitor” (HOFm) score of 169 on a scale that calls 130 a “virtual cinch” for a Cooperstown plaque. Now, you should know that James created this in the 1980s based on the characteristics of the existing Hall of Famers at the time. It was always meant to predict who would make the Hall, not necessarily who should. 

In the offensive-charged game of baseball of the last 25 years, there are a good many hitters (and two pitchers) who have exceeded 150 on the HOFm scale but still aren’t enshrined in Cooperstown. However, with the exception of Todd Helton and Curt Schilling, every Hall of Fame snub with a HOFm of 150 or more has links to Performance Enhancing Drugs or a gambling scandal (Pete Rose). Regarding Schilling and Helton, there are other reasons why they have yet to get the Hall call. With Schilling, it’s his Tweeting habits; with Helton, it’s that his numbers are inflated by playing his entire career in Coors Field.

Molina doesn’t have either of the above issues. So he should be a shoo-in, right? Not so fast. James has a new Hall of Fame monitor (which he publishes in his annual “Bill James Handbooks.”) In the new formula, Molina gets just 84 points through the end of the 2021 season. To my knowledge, James has not revealed what’s in the current formula, but we can assume that it takes into account that writers today are aware of and judge players by metrics that the writers of the 1970s and ’80’s never considered. With 84 points (instead of 169), Yadi goes from “virtual cinch” to “possible but not likely.”

So which one is it? Molina has been a key contributor to two World Series champions, a 10-time All-Star, and 9-time Gold Glove Award winner. What’s not to like? Well, it’s his offense. The numbers aren’t good. The case against Yadi is legitimate, and it’s based on those numbers.

Yadier Molina’s Offensive Resume

So, let’s dig into the offense. Pretend for a moment that you don’t know anything about Yadier Molina except for the numbers that you can see on his Baseball-Reference page. Forget the All-Star Games, the Gold Gloves, the rings. Just look at the statistics.

This is how Yadi ranks in various offensive statistical categories among all 69 catchers in baseball history with a minimum of 5,000 PA and 50% career games caught:

WP Table Builder

If you’re wondering where Joe Mauer‘s name is, he’s not on these lists because he was a catcher for less than 50% of his career games played.

Offensively, Molina has not had a career worthy of Cooperstown. Honestly, he’s really not close. The names “behind” on these rankings are players whose careers overlapped with Yadi’s by at least one year (meaning they played at least one season between 2004 and 2022).

There are several names on this list with which a current fan will be familiar. Here are the full numbers of Molina and some of his closest contemporaries. I’m going to include Mauer on this list because his best years were behind the dish and he’ll be considered for the Hall of Fame a few years before Molina will be.

WP Table Builder

OK, we can put this to bed now. If Yadi Molina makes the Hall of Fame, it’s not going to be for what he’s done with the bat.

Molina’s Defense?

If you’re a Yadier Molina fan and growing impatient now, let’s acknowledge that it’s his defensive excellence that will likely get him into the Hall of Fame. So now let’s look at how Yadi compares to the previously listed 8 catchers when it comes to the following defensive metrics: Total Games Caught (GC), Catcher’s ERA (cERA), Caught Stealing% (CS%), dWAR, WAR runs from fielding (RField), Total Zone Runs (TZ) (all from Baseball-Reference), and Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) (from FanGraphs).

WP Table Builder

Not surprisingly, there’s quite a difference here, and it’s why Molina has won 9 Gold Gloves. Whether you understand some of these statistics or not, it’s clear that Molina dominated his peers in them. For the one statistic that is easy to understand (CS%), Yadi reigns supreme. In today’s game, throwing out 40% of all base runners attempting to steal is remarkable.

Anyway, how do we reconcile the mediocre offensive and superlative defensive statistics? That’s what WAR is good for. The whole point of WAR is to combine offense, defense, and base-running into one number. How many “Wins Above Replacement” is a player worth? Here is how the 11 named catchers compare. This is the Baseball-Reference version of WAR:

WP Table Builder

Gulp. When you combine it all, Molina is way behind Mauer and also behind Buster Posey, Jorge Posada, and Jason Kendall. Now, there are some people who believe that Posada (a really great hitter for a catcher) deserves a spot in the Hall and many feel that Posey has a Cooperstown plaque in his future. But Jason Kendall? The 3-time All-Star had a nice career, but nobody looks upon him as a Hall of Famer (he got 2 out of a possible 440 votes from the writers in 2016).

So, as much as this will surprise/shock/irritate fans of the St. Louis Cardinals, let’s put it out there. There will be controversy over whether Yadier Molina belongs in the Hall of Fame. It’s not scientific and a sample of (mostly, maybe all) non-Hall of Famer voters, but I put the question to my Twitter followers a couple of years ago about whether Yadi was worthy of the Hall of Fame. 58% said “yes,” 27% said “no,” and 15% said it was “too early to tell.”

Since a player needs 75% of the vote to make the Hall, he would not get in on my Twitter followers’ first ballot. It is very possible (likely even) that Molina will be a candidate as polarizing as Jack Morris (now in the Hall of Fame via the Veterans Committee) or Omar Vizquel (on the ballot for the 6th time in 2023). What made Morris and makes Vizquel controversial are the strong feelings people have that they were Cooperstown worthy because they “seemed” like Hall of Famers while they were playing and the equally strong feelings from people that they did/do not belong because of each having a sub-standard career WAR: 45.7 for Vizquel, 43.6 for Morris. (Vizquel also has some off-the-field controversies that are slowing his progress to Cooperstown).

The Hall of Fame Case for Yadier Molina

We’ve plainly seen that Yadier Molina has been a merely average hitter throughout the course of his career, so “average” that Baseball-Reference ranks him 22nd all-time in the Jaffe JAWS system and tied for 19th in WAR (behind Wally Schang, Gene Tenace, Thurman Munson, and Bill Freehan as well as Mauer, Posey, and Posada). Therefore, the case that Molina belongs in the Hall must be that he was one of the greatest defensive catchers of all time, with bonus points for being a key figure in 21st-century postseason history.

There are four planks to Molina’s defense-first Hall of Fame case:

1. The 9 Gold Gloves
2. His 40% Caught Stealing Rate
3. A career “Catcher ERA” of 3.69
4. Superb pitch-framing metrics

Let’s start with Molina’s 9 Gold Gloves, third-most all-time for backstops behind Ivan Rodriguez (13) and Johnny Bench (10), both first-ballot Hall of Famers. The first task is to show that Molina was worthy of that hardware. One of the reasons I argued that Vizquel (with his 11 Gold Gloves at shortstop) did not merit a Cooperstown plaque is that the metric dWAR (defensive Wins Above Replacement) showed that he was only in the top 3 at his position twice in his 11 Gold Glove campaigns. So let’s see if that’s true also for Molina.

WP Table Builder

OK, if you go with the Ryder Cup rule that the tie goes to the defending champion, these numbers show that Molina deserved 6 of those 9 Gold Gloves. However, Molina also led the N.L. in dWAR in 2005 (1.8) and 2006 (2.0) and, with a 2.1 dWAR in 2007, was second to Russell Martin‘s 2.7. So, Molina led his league in this all-encompassing defensive metric 8 times in his career. If you trust the numbers, Yadi’s actual total of 9 Gold Gloves is a pretty fair validation of his excellence behind the dish.

I’m not implying that Gold Gloves should be handed out merely based on who leads in dWAR, but it’s an indicator that he earned them by performance and not by reputation. There are other defensive metrics one could choose. Molina also led the N.L. in “Total Zone Runs” 7 times.

The Caught Stealing Rate

How good is Yadier Molina’s career caught stealing rate of 40.3%? Well, in the entire history of the game, he ranks just 213th in CS%, just behind Butch Wynegar and ahead of Ed FitzGerald. If you’re saying “who” when reading the last name, FitzGerald was a wreck of a catcher for the Pirates and Senators in the 1940s and 1950s; his full name, incidentally, was “Edward” not “Edmund.”

So, what gives? The answer is that, for pretty much the entire 20th century, teams did not understand the win probability metrics of base stealing.

The great defensive catchers I watched growing up (Bench and Thurman Munson) threw out 43.4% and 44.5% of all base-runners. However, it’s pretty clear that until the last two decades, most MLB managers operated under the assumption that anything above a 60-to-65% success rate was worth the risk of an out. While Bench and Munson were throwing out 43-45% of all runners, the MLB caught-stealing average was 35%, which means the runners were successful 65% of the time.

Today we know that you need an approximate 75% success rate to help your team score runs. So teams run less. Molina’s excellence at stopping the running game is not just rooted in throwing out 40% of those runners but in keeping the opposition from running in the first place. Again I’ll ask, how good is 40.3%? The answer is that Molina is the leader among all active catchers with at least 500 attempts to steal against them.

Using the minimum standard of 500 stolen base attempts, the second most successful active backstop has been Salvador Perez of the Kansas City Royals. Perez, a 5-time Gold Glove winner in the A.L., has thrown out 35.7% of all base-runners. That’s a great number but way, way behind 40.3%. During the careers of both players, the MLB average has been 27%. This means that Molina has been 48% better than the average backstop when it comes down to gunning down opposing base thieves. When a hitter is 48% better than average in OPS (a 148 OPS+) over 19 seasons, that’s an exceptionally strong Cooperstown credential.

So, let’s look at the numbers of the other 10 catchers we highlighted in the previous charts. These 11 backstops are ranked by the number of opponent stolen base attempts per opportunity.

SBO = Stolen Base Opportunities

WP Table Builder

The last column shows the ratio of stolen base attempts to the number of opportunities. Only one out of 30 runners have dared run on Yadi Molina over the course of his career. The evidence is clear. Compared to his peers, Yadier Molina shut down the running game not just because he threw out a high percentage of base thieves but also because those potential runners were afraid that he would.

Embed from Getty Images

Catcher ERA

In 19 seasons in St. Louis, Cardinal pitchers have posted a 3.69 ERA in the innings Yadier Molina has caught. During those same 19 years, Redbirds hurlers have logged a 4.12 ERA in the innings that he hasn’t caught. That’s a remarkable difference of nearly half a run per game! The spread validates the reputation that Molina is superb at handling a pitching staff and calling a game. The question here is how unusual that is for a top-flight backstop.

Let me pause to note that the next chart is incomplete and somewhat unsatisfying. Although Baseball Reference and its offspring Stathead have hundreds of splits and leaderboards, one split it does not have is a multiple-season split for team pitching by a catcher. In order to find a player’s career “catcher ERA,” one must go to the advanced fielding metrics page of that player. The page lists the pitchers’ ERA in the games caught on a year-by-year basis but does not break down the component parts (innings, ER). For one season, the specific split can be found on the team pages but not for multiple years. Without going too deep into the weeds, it is vastly simpler to reverse engineer a backstop’s career “catcher ERA” compared to his brethren if he spends his entire career with one team. In a future update of this piece, I may take the time to do the year-by-year grunt work of calculating the split between all contemporary catchers’ “catcher ERA” and their teammates, but for the time being, I’m going to focus on the players who have spent their entire careers with one team. The good news is that most of the top backstops of the last 25 years who are not already in the Hall of Fame (Molina, Posey, Mauer, Posada) only played for one franchise, so they’re all on the next chart.

With that long disclaimer out of the way, let’s look at the team ERAs posted with Molina, Posey, Mauer, Posada, Perez, and Varitek behind the dish compared to the team ERAs posted when their backups were manning the tools of ignorance.

cERA = staff ERA when the named player is catching

othERA = staff ERA when the player’s teammates were catching

WP Table Builder

If you’re a serious baseball fan, you won’t be surprised to see Perez near the top of this list, but the huge gap between his cERA and those of his teammates is striking. In his case, however, the numbers are a bit misleading. Perez caught an average of 135 games from 2013-15, the years that the Royals had a lot of really good pitchers and were a contending team. He averaged only 90 games caught in 2011-12 and 2016-18 when the team did not contend. (Perez missed the 2019 campaign with Tommy John surgery).

What’s notable here is the nearly half-run split for Molina for such a large body of work. Joe Mauer’s numbers are also good, and (in my opinion) he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame due to his peak performance, but his catching volume is dramatically less than Yadi’s.

Incidentally, in case you’re curious, I also researched Bench, Munson, and Bill Freehan (an 11-time All-Star and 5-time Gold Glove winner for the Detroit Tigers). Molina’s cERA split is significantly better than all three men’s. Bench and Freehan had a cERA of 0.23 better than their teammates; Munson’s was 0.11 better than his.

Pitch Framing

If you’re a stat geek and are looking for some good sabermetric news for Yadier Molina’s Hall of Fame case, Molina’s pitch-framing stats are the droids you’re looking for. Pitch framing is the art of “stealing strikes” or, more charitably, “revealing” a strike to a fallible human umpire.

One of Baseball Reference’s core benefits is the ability to compare players across eras, using statistics such as WAR, OPS+, and ERA+. There is a limitation, of course, due to the differing levels of raw data available today compared to yesteryear. When it comes to the skill of pitch framing, Baseball Reference doesn’t include the currently available data when calculating a catcher’s WAR.

FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus, however, recently recalculated all modern catchers’ WAR using that data. In March 2019, FanGraphs revealed new WAR numbers for backstops based on the pitch-framing metrics. The results were startling; the new formula added nearly 50% career value to Molina while adding more than 50% value to Brian McCann and Russell Martin. This is the graphic (from that piece) for 8 active or recently retired catchers, showing their “old” fWAR and new fWAR (as of the end of the 2018 season).

As you can see, Yadier’s older brother Jose goes from a replacement-level backstop to one with solid value.

Additional tweaks to the formula (plus the addition of the 2019-22 seasons) put Yadi’s career fWAR at 55.7, a number that is the 10th highest among all backstops in baseball history. There are two big caveats here. The first is that the calculations that put Molina 10th also put him just barely ahead of Martin (54.9) and McCann (54.5). Does this mean that, if Molina is a Hall of Famer, McCann and Martin are as well? Most fans would laugh at the notion, but Jay Jaffe examined this a couple of years ago, and I took a look into McCann’s case last October after he announced his retirement.

The second caveat is obvious: we can’t compare the pitch-framing skills of Molina, McCann, or Martin to Bench, Munson, Yogi Berra, or Roy Campanella.

Conclusion: Does Yadier Molina Deserve a Cooperstown Plaque?

Before yielding my own verdict, let’s ask the player, as Marly Rivera from ESPN did in early 2020. She asked Yadier Molina, “do you think about the Hall of Fame?”

“Yes, I think about it. When I started my career, I had to overcome a lot of obstacles. And even though Tony [La Russa] gave me a chance, I was bombarded by negative comments. The press killed me because of my offense, my personality, whatever. All I’ve done is work hard to get better and better every single year to become the best catcher I can be. And my numbers are obviously there. I think that, because of the way I catch, that I’m one of the best catchers to have ever played baseball.”

— Yadier Molina (espn.com, May 14, 2020)

As for the last statement (“one of the best catchers to have ever played baseball”), I would say that he is one of the very best catchers in the history of the game. I would disagree that he is one of the best players who happened to be a catcher to play the game. However, being one of the very best ever at calling a game, receiving the ball, and shutting down the running game is extraordinarily significant. In the defensive “runs above average” components of their WAR calculations, both FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus rank Molina #1.

Molina’s mediocre career with the bat is a negative, a big one, but in my view, it’s overcome by his superlative work while donning the tools of ignorance with the added bonus of having been a productive postseason performer offensively. (Molina has a career BA of .312 in 39 NLCS contests and .328 in 21 World Series games).

As we’ve chronicled, Molina shut down opponents’ running games at a clip 48% better than the average backstop. In 19 seasons, he’s coaxed an ERA nearly half a run better per game out of his pitchers than his backups. He won those 9 Gold Gloves. Perhaps he didn’t deserve them all (especially the last one), but he arguably deserved a couple that he didn’t win early in his career.

When it comes to deciding the worthiness of a Hall of Fame candidate, I often ask myself two basic questions:

1. Do they have peak or long-term qualifications that make them worthy of a spot in Cooperstown?
2. How important is the player’s role in the history of the game?

Molina has the defensive qualifications to rank as one of the best ever. That’s a “yes” to #1. And, given his All-Star appearances, Gold Gloves, and role in the winning of 2 World Series titles, he’s a significant character in the history of the first 20 years of 21st-century baseball. That’s a “yes” to #2.

Sometimes a player transcends their numbers. Yadier Molina is one of those players. He belongs in the Hall of Fame.

Thanks for reading. Please follow Cooperstown Cred on Twitter @cooperstowncred.

Embed from Getty Images