Stealing First

Catcher Block Percentage

Posted by Dan Turkenkopf - 14/03/08 at 05:03:45 pm

One of the things I’m interested in with the PITCHf/x data is seeing if we can better quantify a catcher’s impact on the game. The easiest thing to look at is how the individual catchers deal with balls in the dirt.

I looked at all the pitches classified by the Gameday scorers as “Ball In Dirt” with a least one runner on base – a total of 9907 for the 2007 season, spread across 96 different catchers. I considered these pitches to be the catcher’s opportunities to block a ball in the dirt. Brian Schneider led the way with 332 opportunities, with Jason Kendall and Gerald Laird the other catchers over 300 opportunities.

I then counted up all wild pitches and passed balls that occurred with the catcher behind the plate – let’s call them misses. Miguel Olivo had the most with 65, and Mike Redmond had the fewest with at least 100 opportunities at 7. Then I simply divided the blocks (opportunities – misses) by the opportunities to get a block percentage.

UPDATE: Mike Fast pointed out that I had missed the category of “Swinging Strike (Blocked)” when determining opportunities. I’ve rerun the numbers here.

UPDATE #2: I’ve added blocks above average and runs saved here. 

Here’s the list for all catchers with over 100 opportunities in 2007:

Catcher	Misses	Opportunities	Block %
Mike Redmond	7	111	0.94
Jason Varitek	19	236	0.92
Brad Ausmus	17	210	0.92
Gary Bennett	10	121	0.92
Yadier Molina	27	259	0.9
Gregg Zaun	22	220	0.9
Brian Schneider	40	332	0.88
Gerald Laird	38	304	0.88
Chris Iannetta	12	100	0.88
Ramon Hernandez	32	255	0.87
Yorvit Torrealba	22	171	0.87
Russell Martin	40	280	0.86
Carlos Ruiz	25	184	0.86
Mike Napoli	23	166	0.86
Damian Miller	19	140	0.86
Jason Kendall	48	317	0.85
Ronny Paulino	35	233	0.85
Dioner Navarro	34	228	0.85
John Buck	32	217	0.85
Jeff Mathis	27	180	0.85
Kurt Suzuki	25	167	0.85
Josh Bard	24	161	0.85
Jarod Saltalamacchia	16	107	0.85
Brian McCann	34	219	0.84
Paul LoDuca	24	146	0.84
Johnny Estrada	37	221	0.83
Victor Martinez	29	173	0.83
Michael Barrett	25	148	0.83
Paul Bako	23	135	0.83
Matt Treanor	17	101	0.83
Chris Snyder	34	193	0.82
Mike Rabelo	20	113	0.82
Benji Molina	50	257	0.81
Kenji Johjima	40	215	0.81
Jason LaRue	24	129	0.81
Miguel Montero	22	113	0.81
Miguel Olivo	65	277	0.77
Jorge Posada	61	268	0.77
Joe Mauer	30	121	0.75
A.J. Pierzynski	44	160	0.73
Dave Ross	35	126	0.72
Ivan Rodriguez	58	184	0.68

Perhaps the most surprising placement on this ranking is Ivan Rodriguez in last. However, anecdotally he wasn’t very good defensively last year, and he’s always been better known for his arm than for his blocking ability. Joe Mauer is way down on the list, but it’s probably pretty tough for a tall catcher to get down to block the balls. Varitek ranks highly by this measure, which means he’s pretty good at blocking pitches that aren’t knuckleballs. Mirabelli, on the other hand, only blocked 64% of his opportunities – for which he can blame Mr. Wakefield.

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