[Seven]

For those posting about Mauer, there seems to be a recent shift in how voters are evaluating catchers. My thoughts are they're giving a little more recognition to peak performance, and things that aren't necessarily measured by statistics. the latter is most prominent in the case of a guy like Yadier Molina, who has become some sort of darling to a lot of the baseball media and fans alike. Many are calling for his eventual Hall of Fame election, despite him putting up only above average statistics for the majority of his career.

In terms of the numbers, a lot of times when it comes to candidacy, I look at a players JAWS. To define it "A player's JAWS is their career WAR averaged with their 7-year peak WAR. Note that only batting or pitching WAR are used in determining the averages at a given position. The current Hall of Famers are then grouped by position and a position average JAWS is computed." While this method is not perfect it allows us to look at a players numbers in comparison to his contemporaries throughout the eras of baseball. When Looking at Mauer's, which I've linked this is what we see

He falls right between Dickey and Berra. This is not a be all, end all, far from it. We know baseball is certainly more than a game of just numbers, many other things factor in. On a personal level ranking the MLB catchers of all time, I have Berra in my top 3. Number wise, however, Mauer tracks. There have certainly been more egregious selections in past years. I wasn't expecting him to get in the first time around, but I'm not upset by it.