Catcher impact
 

Are there any stats showing how good a catcher is at handling the pitching staff?

The catcher gives a sign. Then the pitcher goes with it or shakes it off looking for a different sign. Assume the best catchers in this department know the opposing hitters - their strengths, weaknesses, type of pitches they are good/bad at, location of pitches they are good/bad at. Also, good catchers may know how to "set-up" hitters - preferred first pitches, wasting a pitch, how deep in count to go, etc.

As an Angels fan, frustrated with their overall pitching. Perhaps the catcher, Stassi (and others over the years), could be better in this dept.? Or does the catcher really have minimal impact.

I have no stats to back it up, but my gut feeling is Yogi Berra was very good at this, but how would we know?

Maybe starting with No- Hitters a catcher has?
Carlos Ruiz had 4 for the Phillies, two with Halladay, a combined and one with Hamels

Jason Varitek also had 4, with Nomo, Lowe, Bucholz and Lester.
If I remember it right one was followed by a one hitter with Schilling who said the hit came on the only pitch he shook off.

Lots, including Berra with 3

https://www.mlb.com/news/catchers-wi...ost-no-hitters

What makes it a more difficult comparison, is the differing quality of the pitchers, for example Variteks were generally with decent but newish pitchers who went on to be good but not always great while Ruiz had Halladay for two of them.

Berra and other catchers before the advent of teams having 100% film availability and ways to look at the data to get a better idea of a hitters tendencies are probably more impressive.

I'm not aware of any one stat that captures everything a catcher can do, from game calling, general defense, pitch framing, blocking balls in the dirt, etc.

You'll sometimes see "catcher ERA", which is the ERA for all pitchers that throw to that catcher. It can be compared to games that that catcher doesn't catch. Lots of room for random variation there, for sure.

Maybe someday someone can solve the "how do we best value everything catchers do" problem in an all-inclusive way that somehow gets buy-in from the peanut gallery (tip, don't have two versions of it or have it fit into a "What's it good for?" classic song, like WAR).

So much of it is subjective. I think the best we have, historically, is the Gold Glove award. And of course that can't possibly cover all the intangibles.

And especially historically, the Gold Glove award is reputational, or often connected with a big offensive season...so it's more of a "guidepost" than a "statistical measure".

It's also a bit dependent on the rest of the league, like Rookie of the Year. You could have an amazing rookie year and NOT win rookie of the year because someone else had a better year. You can win ROY with a very mediocre season because nobody does better.

If there are three great defensive shortstops in one league, and the 4th best just happens to be in the other league...the first and fourth best defensive shortstops win the GG.

I was always impressed with the way Buster Posey handled so many different types of Giants pitchers over the years.

Three no-hitters are another line on Posey’s impressive resume, which includes a Rookie of the Year Award, MVP, three World Series titles, seven All-Star appearances, five Silver Sluggers, a Gold Glove and a batting title. Cain’s perfect game was the first, and thus far only, in the storied history of the Giants franchise

MLB has a pitch framing stat and there is a league leader but it doesn't appear on baseball reference:

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/catch...tcher&sort=4,1

Definitely subjective, but another way to 'measure' might be how they fare in their post catching career. How good are/were they as managers or coaches?

Catchers generally are the best position players that turn into managers. I believe it has a lot to do with much of the 'unmeasurable' things they need to address during the game. Some is instinctive, some is people skills, some may be related to being the only position that sees the entire field (and maybe has a better 'view' as to how the game is unfolding), and I'm sure a bunch of other 'intangibles' as well.

Also, being good managers might have an awful lot to do with maybe knowing how to handle pitchers better than anyone else.

I don't know about that. I can think of two catchers who were pretty poor handlers of pitchers: Joe Torre and Joe Girardi. Notorious for killing arms.

I meant that more in terms of their egos and moods, etc., since they had to hang out and work directly with pitchers all the time while catching. Not necessarily just about how they handled their pitch selections and pitch counts.

Ah. I would agree with that. They also tend to spend a lot of time in organized ball one or another. Lots of time to soak it in.

Absolutely. And becasue of their interaction with the pitchers, they spend a lot more time watching and analyzing opposing team players and how they bat and so on. I doubt any other position players do anything at all like that.

interesting thread and interesting that there is no more precise way to measure catchers that are less subjective

One of those subjects that make the defensive knock on Piazza so frustrating. Generally pitchers liked throwing to him and he was good at blocking balls in the dirt, plays at the plate etc. He was pretty awful at throwing out base-stealers. Other than that he was not a bad defensive catcher.

I think that's part of what makes it so difficult...the fact that there's so many facets of the catching game - you mentioned blocking balls in the dirt and throwing out runners. Add in calling a game, ability to work with pitchers young and old, pitch framing, and more, and you've got a lot of things to measure, that take very different skill sets.

We're starting to see study in this area, which is nice compared to even the 90's, when guys who could throw out would-be base stealers won gold gloves, and those who couldn't were considered "poor defensive catchers" (your Piazza example plus say an Ivan Rodriguez).

A catcher's ability to throw out someone stealing a base also has an awful lot to do with the pitcher, which a catcher can't control or really affect. The ability of many pitchers to be able to hold runners close, or the speed of their delivery and pitch they throw has probably as much, if maybe not even more, to do with the ability to throw out a someone stealing a base, than just the strength of a catcher's arm and how fast they can throw. And along with that is the ability of a pitcher to pitch from the stretch and disguise their motion so that a base runner is delayed as long as possible from being able to tell when the pitcher actually goes into their motion, and is not just getting ready to throw over to pick off the base runner.

Obviously, some catcher's had such incredible arm strength that the speed at which they could throw allowed them to throw out more runners stealing bases than other catchers. But again, a lot more of that may be on the pitcher, and the athleticism and ability of the person covering the base to react and make the tag in a timely manner as well.

There are a lot of people who put down pitchers and claim they get too much credit for wins, saying they owe a lot of it to their defensive backing and the batting prowess of their teammates. Shouldn't the same be said about catcher's as well then and their ability to throw out base runners? They are most definitely not the only player involved in throwing out someone trying to steal a base, and maybe not even the most important after all.

Very true...really, any of the catcher metrics are somewhat pitcher dependent, including pitch framing, pitch blocking, and even game calling.

The extreme example if Doug Mirabelli. Despite being a backup, he led the league in passed balls two years in a row. That off-season, he was traded...but then re-acquired a month into the following season and even got a state police escort to the ballpark the day he was traded.

He was knuckelballer Tim Wakefield's personal catcher for several years.

The Mets have had good starting pitching this year with two catchers I would charitably describe as AAAA players. And people like Scherzer, and Walker, and Bassitt, experienced veterans, have done just fine with them. Has really made
me wonder how important all the pitch calling, framing, etc. really is. And they are very weak hitters as well.