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Player Value Posts
To avoid spamming the general blog page with the Player Value posts for each season/team, this blog page will serve as a separate listing of all of the Player Value posts for each season/team. These posts will be less detailed, mainly just listing out the top players each season and including the necessary files.
Well, by "all-time", I really mean from 1912-2021, as that is currently the span of years that I have the data for. As the headline suggests, these rankings are according to my Player Value ranking as of the date listed above. You can read my initial Player Value post here and its addendum here. Since then I have used Retrosheet play by play data to better fine tune the run value weights of the various events, but haven't been able to write up a post detailing them yet. Rather than listing them out again in this post, you can view them towards the top of my latest Hall of Fame post here. When we're discussing positional rankings, there's a couple of ways we can decide what a player's primary position was. One approach is to do it based on games played, which is the easiest but results in guys like Pete Rose and Ernie Banks being first basemen. I instead elected to take the approach of using the position that a player accumulated the most Player Value at. This way, Rose is a left fielder and Banks is a shortstop. I still list out their main position by games played in the data files below, but that's not what I went off of. There's also the matter of if we should take a player's total Player Value for their career and then just group them by their position, or should we only use the Player Value that a player accumulated at this specific position. This choice is a little trickier, so I've gone ahead and listed out the top rankings for each option. So, without further adieu: Top 25 Catchers From 1912-2021, Based On Total Player Value At All Positions
What About ...... ?!
Bench not 1st, but 7th?! Berra not 1st or 2nd, but 4th?! Rodriguez 8th?! Yadier 55th?! Blasphemy! Who even are those top 3 guys?! What's the deal?!
Top 25 Catchers From 1912-2021, Based On Total Player Value As A Catcher
You may also be interested in which catchers were the best at different segments of Player Value, so let's took a look at those too: Top 25 Catchers From 1912-2021, Based On Batting Value At All Positions
Top 25 Catchers From 1912-2021, Based On Fielding Value At All Positions
Top 10 Catchers From 1912-2021, Based On Baserunning Value At All Positions
From the span of 1912-2021, I have just 476 players that contributed most of their value as catchers. This is very interesting, considering there are 8,646 total position players in this span. If you go based off of games played, however, there are 1,469 catchers in this span. This makes sense, as any catchers that were negative for their careers would have been assigned to a different position, based on value. So to be in the top 1%, a player would have to be among the top 14-15 catchers during this span. To be in the top 1.18% (the general Hall of Fame mark), a player would have to be among the top 17-18 catchers during this span. There are currently 18 catchers in the Hall of Fame, but that includes Negro League catchers Josh Gibson and Biz Mackey, as well as the mainly pre-1912 catchers Roger Bresnahan and Buck Ewing, whom we don't really have Player Value for. Joe Torre had a near Hall of Fame career as a catcher, but was inducted as a manager. Al Lopez was also inducted as a manger and was a catcher during his playing days. So if we want to actually match the Hall of Fame numbers, that leaves us with 14 catchers to work with. If we look at the top 14 catchers according to Player Value, 11 of them are in Cooperstown. The exceptions are Ted Simmons, Ernie Lombardi, and Ray Schalk, who rank 22nd, 25th, and 26th, respectively. Those 3 catchers were all inducted by a Veteran's Committee as well, rather than through the BBWAA ballot. Bill Freehan, Wally Schang, and Jorge Posada should presumably take their places. While 14 players matches the "top 1%" idea that many people think of the Hall of Fame as, in reality the Hall operates at a slightly higher rate , so it's unfair to limit the catchers to this standard. Below you can graphically see how all of our catchers compare in terms of Player Value, along with the black line denoting which players provided positive value, the gold line denoting the Hall of Fame mark, and the blue dots denoting the actual Hall of Fame members: If you were wondering, the extreme batter example on the far left is Mickey Templeton, and the extreme fielder example on the far right is Brad Ausmus. Below you can graphically see how the top 26 catchers compare in terms of Player Value. I went ahead and included Ray Schalk and the top 26 (rather than top 25) since he just missed and is a Hall of Famer. Below is the dataset of primarily catchers from 1912-2021, as determined by which position the player provided the most Player Value at. There are 476 catchers in this dataset.
Below is the dataset of primarily catchers from 1912-2021, as determined by which position the player played the most games at. There are 1,469 catchers in this dataset.
In case those 2 plots above are a little hard for you to read, you can download them below as well:
Thanks for checking out this catcher rankings post. I plan to update it whenever I develop new Player Value iterations, and hopefully we'll get closer and closer to some rankings that we can more firmly support. I'd say the main takeaway for now should be that some catchers like Freehan, Parrish, and Posada have been underrated, rather than getting caught up on guys like Bench and Berra not being at the top of the list.
Statting Lineup Newsletter Signup Form: If you'd like to receive email updates for each new post that I make, sign up for the Statting Lineup newsletter using the link below: https://weebly.us18.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=ab653f474b2ced9091eb248b1&id=3a60f3b85f The information used here was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by Retrosheet. Interested parties may contact Retrosheet at 20 Sunset Rd., Newark, DE 19711.
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