Omir Santos, Brad Thomas Removed from 40-Man Roster

The Tigers have removed catcher Omir Santos and Brad Thomas from their 40-man roster and optioned both to triple-A Toledo.  This is a procedural move that will result in both players becoming free agents.  If he never plays another major league game, Santos can say that he played in a playoff game.  After being added to the post-season roster as the Tigers backup catcher, Santos played in one game.  He was the Tigers catcher for one inning of the 10-1 loss to the Yankees in game four.  Brad Thomas had finished the season on the 60-day disabled list with an elbow injury. 

Avila is Your Average Catcher

The title of this post obviously does not refer to Alex Avila's batting contribution in 2011.  In fact, I recently showed that Alex Avila had one of the best seasons ever for a Tigers catcher.  Kurt Mensching talked some more about Avila's season at Bless You Boys, but he also wanted to know more about his defense.  So, I'm going to talk about catcher defense today.

My system for rating catcher defense is complex and I'm not going to rehash the whole thing here.  If you want to see the details, you can read my earlier article.  I do want to give credit to others who inspired me with similar work in the past:  Sean Smith, Justin Inaz, Matt Klaasen and Mike Rogers.

Smith's Total Zone catching metric (Rtot) now appears on Baseball-Reference.  Despite some methodological differences, the final results of Rtot are almost identical to mine.  What I'm going to do here though is break total catcher runs saved/cost into a few different statistics which represent different facets of catcher defense.  

Keep in mind that these numbers do not capture everything that a catcher does.  For example, they say nothing about game calling or understanding of pitcher abilities and tendencies. I am are only going to evaluate catchers based on what we can most easily measure - controlling the running game, pitch blocking and avoiding errors.

Table 1 contains data for all catchers with at least 500 innings in 2011.  That captures almost all of the starting catchers in the majors.  The CSRuns column gives us an estimation of how many runs each catcher saved/cost his team compared to the average catcher by controlling the running game.  It is based on stolen bases against and caught stealing.

Diamond Backs catcher Miguel Montero was the MLB leader with an estimated 6.2 runs saved over an average catcher.   A negative sign before a number indicates that a catcher cost his team runs.  The worst receiver in this category was Matt Treanor, who cost the Rangers and Royals an estimated -9.8 runs.  Avila was eighth in the majors with 3.3 runs saved.  

The next column (WPPBRuns) tells us how many runs catchers saved/cost their teams with pitch blocking or preventing passed balls and wild pitches.  Number one was Phillies backstop Carlos Ruiz with 6.8 runs saved. On the other hand, Jarrod Saltalamacchia cost the Red Sox about eight runs (-8.4).  Avila finished in the bottom five of MLB costing the Tigers an estimated four runs (-3.7) with pitch blocking.

The TERuns column tells us about throwing errors.  There is not a lot of variation between catchers here, but Matt Wieters of the Orioles and Chris Iannetta of the Rockies led with 1.2 runs saved.  saved.  Avila was third at 1.0.  Conversely, Russell Martin cost the Diamond Backs -1.2 runs on throwing errors.

The FERuns column indicates how many runs catchers saved/cost their teams with fielding errors.  Again, there is not a of variation. The Cardinals Yadier Molina and Athletics Kurt Suzuki tied for the lead with 0.8 runs saved.  The worst was Eli Whiteside of the Giants (-1.1).  Avila was right around average on this measure (-0.2)

The final column (CatchRuns) is the sum of the previous four columns.  It tells us how many runs catchers saved/cost their teams on the above items combined.  The leader was Wieters who saved the Orioles over a dozen runs (12.5).  The worst is Treanor who cost his teams -11.7 runs.  Avila finished right in the middle of the pack at 0.4. 

In summary, Avila was very good at controlling the running game and avoiding throwing errors, but below average in  pitch blocking.  According to these numbers, he was an average catcher in terms of overall defense.  This combined with his spectacular hitting made him a legitimate all star and probably the best overall catcher in baseball in 2011.


Table 1: Catcher Runs Saved/Cost in 2011

Player	Team	Inn	CSRuns	WPBPRuns	TERuns	FERuns	CatchRuns
Matt Wieters	BAL	1,150	5.3	6.6	1.2	-0.7	12.5
Miguel Montero	ARI	1,169	6.2	3.5	-1.0	0.3	9.0
Lou Marson	CLE	667	5.3	2.2	-0.4	0.5	7.5
Kelly Shoppach	TBR	625	3.6	2.8	0.4	-0.1	6.8
Nick Hundley	SDP	654	4.6	1.7	-0.7	0.5	6.1
Ryan Hanigan	CIN	687	2.2	2.7	0.2	-0.0	5.2
Carlos Ruiz	PHI	1,051	-3.0	6.8	0.8	0.2	4.8
Ramon Hernandez	CIN	658	3.6	-0.2	0.7	0.5	4.7
Brayan Pena	KCR	537	3.9	0.0	0.3	0.4	4.6
Wilson Ramos	WSN	951	2.1	1.7	0.1	0.7	4.5
Mike Napoli	TEX	506	1.8	1.9	0.2	0.4	4.3
Yadier Molina	STL	1,150	0.6	2.4	0.4	0.8	4.2
Geovany Soto	CHC	1,041	1.5	1.9	-1.5	0.2	2.2
Yorvit Torrealba	TEX	823	2.5	1.0	-0.4	-0.9	2.1
Chris Iannetta	COL	943	1.4	-0.7	1.2	0.2	2.1
Drew Butera	MIN	670	1.6	0.3	-0.4	0.5	2.0
Rod Barajas	LAD	733	-1.4	2.4	0.9	0.0	1.9
Kurt Suzuki	OAK	1,132	0.1	0.8	-0.2	0.8	1.5
Humberto Quintero	HOU	642	-2.0	3.3	0.2	-0.5	0.9
Jeff Mathis	LAA	698	-0.2	0.0	0.3	0.5	0.6
Alex Avila	DET	1,157	3.3	-3.7	1.0	-0.2	0.4
Carlos Santana	CLE	786	-1.6	1.1	-0.7	0.6	-0.7
Eli Whiteside	SFG	583	-1.1	0.0	0.4	-1.1	-1.8
Russell Martin	NYY	1,044	1.6	-3.1	-1.2	0.7	-1.9
John Buck	FLA	1,144	-6.8	3.2	0.4	0.8	-2.4
Ronny Paulino	NYM	511	-2.8	-0.3	-0.9	0.4	-3.6
Josh Thole	NYM	793	-3.6	-1.6	0.7	0.6	-4.0
Jonathan Lucroy	MIL	1,043	0.2	-5.0	-0.0	0.2	-4.7
John Jaso	TBR	603	-4.2	-1.1	0.1	-0.1	-5.3
Brian McCann	ATL	1,083	-5.0	-1.2	0.6	0.3	-5.4
Jarrod Saltalamacchia	BOS	856	2.3	-8.4	0.5	0.1	-5.5
A.J. Pierzynski	CHW	1,008	-5.5	-1.6	0.5	0.7	-5.9
Jason Varitek	BOS	574	-7.3	0.5	0.1	-0.1	-6.9
Miguel Olivo	SEA	1,064	0.3	-6.5	-0.6	-0.8	-7.5
J.P. Arencibia	TOR	1,059	-2.5	-5.7	0.3	0.2	-7.7
Matt Treanor	KCR/TEX	565	-9.8	-1.9	0.0	-0.1	-11.7

Source: Baseball-Reference