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February
28

You see some interesting things if you pay attention around the Yankees. Like 6-foot-10 Andrew Brackman asking 5-foot-8 Yogi Berra to autograph a photo.

I went over to ask Arod if he had watched Brackman pitch.

“Not bad,” he said. “That kid is tall. He should play basketball.”

I told him that Brackman had played two years at North Carolina State.

“See?” Arod said with a twinkle in his eye. “I told you so.”

my favorite yogism is
“people don’t go there anymore… it’s too crowded

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WHEEWWWW!!!! I was sure that I misquoted somebody or missed a valid point they were making. I’m so much relieved, now.

Supposition? First of all I am an attorney. Tell me there is a possibility of an alternative theory and I am not going to accept what you (Goldman) are throwing out there as a theory without doing more investigation. Secondly, I have eyes and watched every game Molina played in last season. Thirdly, without necessarily doing the math, I remember our rotation from last season well and would say that it is probable that there is more than supposition involved with thinking it may have had something to do with the pitchers. Perish the thought if Molina had to catch many of Ian Kennedy’s gems, for example. I will add another caveat, a personal one, and that is that I am entirely distrustful of anything that comes out of Baseball Prospectus since its originators have Boston ties. (Certainly my right to feel that way just as it is anyone else’s right to think that BP is a brilliant publication, etc.)

All of that said, I will stick with my opinion about Molina and the very positive feedback that accompanied him to Yankee Stadium by people who have played the game, the ones I do tend to trust. I will check out his catcher rating but I’m pretty sure he was rated in the top third of catchers throwing out runners.

In fact it DOES help you win games. Now granted I have not yet read all of the rest of your post, but since your first line was in response to what I said about defense and Molina playing his position well, I’ll tell you that the guys that you get to hit 1-7 are there for a reason. If you have to worry about your 8 and 9 doing the hitting in order to win games (not that you don’t want them to hit some of the time) then you haven’t scouted your offense very well.

Derek Jeter said it much better than I, but I can give you the paraphrase to let you know that there are a lot of people, players included, who place a high commodity on good defense. Once Jeter was asked what made me feel better as a player, having a good AB or making a good play in the field. Without hesitation, he chose the play in the field, and followed it with the well-worn mantra: pitching and defense win games.

I will now read the rest of your post to see what the person you quoted had to say about Jose Molina.

I totally agree about not signing Santana. But what did Hank have to say about signing Igawa? Or was that before Hank had any say (refresh memory)

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Igawa was before(2007 season) we started hearing the lovely whispers of Hank Steinbrenner. I think. If he did say something, I don’t remember

See I truly like players who know how to play their positions. Molina knows how to play his postition. Well. I don’t demand that every player be 5-tool. Plus I am someone who values defense over offense, not of course that I appreciate good offense.

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That’s all fine and good, but it doesn’t help you win games. Steve Goldman illustrates it much better than I can:

Let’s deal with MAD, Molina’s Alleged Deterrence. A full-season workload for most catchers is about 1200 innings, or about 140 full games. Molina caught 737 innings last season, so he got in about 60 percent of a full season. The Yankees played 1441 innings in total, so he took just a fraction over half of the team’s catching load. Now, here’s a very simple way of looking at things, but this is my take on all the baserunners that might not have run because Molina was in the game: they ran anyway. The average AL team saw 129 stolen base attempts last year — 94 steals, 35 caught stealing. Half of that would be roughly 65 attempts — 47 steals, 17 caught. Molina, though, saw 75 stolen base attempts. Another way of looking at it would be to say that the AL least year had .80 stolen base attempts per nine innings. Molina had .92 attempts per nine in the games he caught. Perhaps a lot of that was the pitchers, and had Molina not been catching even more runners might have gone, but that would be pure supposition.

Your request that we give Molina credit for the half-season he didn’t play won’t make him look any better. As above, he played roughly half a season, starting 81 games behind the plate and relieving in 16 more. If we simply double his playing time, we have a player who saved ten runs in dead baserunners and was roughly 30 runs worse than the average catcher and maybe 40 runs worse than the average hitter. Giving you more of Molina doesn’t make him any better; it just increases the damage.

http://pinstripedbible.mlblogs.....mania.html