In the spirit of Better Late Than Never, it’s time we present the
second annual Golden Gun Award, honoring last year’s most valuable
catcher arms. The winner is the major league leader in Stolen Base
Runs Prevented (SBRP), which measures the numbers of runs a catcher
saves his team by throwing out opposing basestealers. It is
calculated from the number of opponent steals (SB), the number of
runners the catcher throws out (CS), and the number of runners the
catcher picks off (CPO), using this simple formula:
SBRP = 0.49*(CS+CPO) - 0.16*SB
The formula is explained in my ESPN.com
Pudge
vs. Piazza article from a couple of years ago.
Here is the 2002 Golden Gun winner, along with the other nine
finalists:
Catcher Team SB CS CPO SBRP ------------------------------------------ Bengie Molina ANA 43 32 1 9.2 Jason LaRue CIN 33 25 1 7.4 Vance Wilson NYM 26 22 0 6.6 Mike Redmond FLA 39 26 0 6.4 Geronimo Gil BAL 61 32 0 5.8 Ivan Rodriguez TEX 26 13 7 5.6 Damian Miller ARI 40 23 1 5.3 Charles Johnson FLA 37 22 1 5.3 Brad Ausmus HOU 65 30 2 5.1 Brian Schneider MON 26 19 0 5.1
Bengie Molina has always had a better-than-average arm, sporting a
respectable 29% caught stealing rate in his career entering 2002. But
he raised his game a notch in 2002 (his defensive game, anyway), gunning down enough opposing
baserunners to save the Angels nine runs over the course of the season. That work put
him at the top of a relatively weak field to claim the Golden Gun
prize for the year.
The previous Golden Gun winner, Jason LaRue, had another fine season
behind the plate in 2002, although he didn’t match the eye-popping
numbers he
put up in 2001. One reason is that opposing
teams wised up a bit and ran on him less frequently. Teams attempted
a steal every 16 innings against LaRue in 2002, down from one every 12
innings the year before. You’d expect that many of the runners who
opted not to run on LaRue in 2002 were the slower runners he threw
out easily in 2001, and the numbers seem to bear that out: The
rate of successful steals per inning against LaRue changed very little
between 2001 and 2002 (.032 vs. .036), but his caught stealings per
inning dropped by a lot (.049 vs .028).
Ivan Rodriguez, the long-standing king of catcher arms, put up
distinctly un-Pudge-like caught stealing numbers in 2002, catching
only a third of the (admittedly few) runners who challenged him.
However, he picked runners off base like the Pudge of old, racking up
a league-high seven catcher pickoffs despite spending a third of the
season on the DL. And those pickoffs kept him among the league’s
most valuable defenders behind the plate, despite the pedestrian CS%.
And what about Molina & Co.’s noodle-armed counterparts? Here are the
least valuable catcher arms from 2002:
Catcher Team SB CS CPO SBRP ------------------------------------------ Mike Piazza NYM 126 21 0 -10.3 Gregg Zaun HOU 39 5 0 -3.9 Brook Fordyce BAL 41 6 0 -3.8 A. J. Hinch KCR 39 7 0 -3.0 Josh Paul CHW 20 2 0 -2.3 Eli Marrero STL 20 2 0 -2.3 Sandy Alomar Jr CH/CO 46 11 0 -2.1 Tom Wilson TOR 44 11 0 -1.8 Chad Moeller ARI 18 3 0 -1.5 Bill Haselman TEX 33 8 0 -1.5
No one will be surprised to see Mike Piazza topping this list. Scott
Hatteberg and Ed Taubensee had recently mounted challenges to Piazza’s
claim as the weakest throwing full-time catcher in the league, but
with Taubensee retired and Hatteberg banished from the catcher’s box
(presumably forever), Piazza currently doesn’t have much competition.
Obviously, Piazza’s weak arm doesn’t make him a bad player; his
impressive work at the plate more than compensates for his
less-than-impressive work behind it. But those 10 runs his throwing
costs the Mets do make a difference in his standing among catchers.
For example, Piazza was easily the best offensive catcher in the
majors last year according to Keith Woolner’s VORP.
But adding or subtracting the value of the catchers’ arms moves both Rodriguez and Jorge Posada ahead of Piazza in overall
contribution for the year. (Posada’s arm was essentially neutral last
season.)
Who are the early favorites for the 2003 award? As LaRue showed
in 2001, it can help if you can couple a strong arm with a weak or
non-existent reputation. The lack of reputation provides the
opportunities–stolen base attempts–and the arm converts them
into outs. So it’s possible that an untested catcher like Miguel
Olivo could emerge to claim the prize. But, reputation or no, you can
never count out Rodriguez. A full, healthy season in a new
league could restore Pudge as the dominant arm in the game.
Thank you for reading
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