I'm going to live in the past and continue my historical Wins Above Replacement (WAR) series using Sean Smith's WAR database. Other parts of the series including an explanation of WAR can be found in the WAR folder.
Today, I'll look at the top Tigers catchers of all-time based on WAR. FanGraphs has not yet added catcher defense to their WAR statistic but Sean Smith has evaluated catchers based on handedness of pitchers, stolen bases, caught stealing, pickoffs passed balls, wild pitches and errors for years where those statistics are available. That doesn't describe all of catcher defense but it's a start. In this analysis, I included all players whose primary position was catcher. That is, the position at which they played the most games as a Tiger.
You can see in Table 1 that Bill Freehan is the run away leader at catcher with 43.3 WAR. He is followed by Lance Parrish (27.5), Johnny Bassler (16.7) and Mickey Tettleton (14.9). You'll also notice that the Tigers are not deep in the catching position which is why short Tigers career players like Matt Nokes and Mike Heath made the top ten.
Table 1: Tigers Top Ten Catchers by WAR
Player | PA | WAR |
Bill Freehan | 6,397 | 43.3 |
Lance Parrish | 4,674 | 27.5 |
Johnny Bassler | 2,763 | 16.7 |
Mickey Tettleton | 1,706 | 14.9 |
Ivan Rodriguez | 2,523 | 14.2 |
Mickey Cochrane | 1,350 | 12.2 |
Brad Ausmus | 1,392 | 7.2 |
John Wockenfuss | 2,101 | 5.7 |
Matt Nokes | 1,248 | 5.5 |
Mike Heath | 1,467 | 5.1 |
Some people might find it odd that Mickey Cochrane only finished sixth among Tigers catchers. That is because longevity carries a lot of weight in WAR and Cochrane had only 1,350 career plate appearances as a Tiger. In order to get a rough idea of which players contributed the most wins per year, I calculated WAR per 600 plate appearances (WAR600). Table 2 shows that Cochrane was the clear winner with 5.52 WAR per 600 PA.
Table 2: Top Five Tigers Catchers by WAR600
Player | PA | WAR600 |
Mickey Cochrane | 1,350 | 5.52 |
Mickey Tettleton | 1,706 | 3.84 |
Bill Freehan | 6,397 | 3.81 |
Johnny Bassler | 2,763 | 3.75 |
Lance Parrish | 4,674 | 3.57 |
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