Olivo? (Catchers in Thirteen)

[Ceetar]

fangraphs has Thole at +.01, and rates him much better in 2011 and 2010 as well. .9 and 1.6. not a 'full' season, over 120-130 say he's probably approaching 2 if 2012 was the fluke which would put him as a borderline starter, though hardly a problem. B-R only has him around half a WAR, but still positive for those years.

Barring a catcher falling into the Mets lap, Thole still seems like the best gamble.

[Edgy MD]

Agreed, but then it's still a question of Thole and who else.

[Chad ochoseis]

I'm not a fan of using WAR as a metric, but what surprised me about BBRef is that it gave Thole a 1.1 defensive WAR for last season. Joe Mauer hasn't ever had a defensive WAR greater than 1 in a season. Buster Posey hasn't done it yet, either. Yadier Molina gets high scores, but the other Molina brothers have only had three dWAR > 1 seasons between them.

If Nickeas really is worse than replacement level, there should be a free agent that we can sign for the major league minimum who would be an improvement. So, sure, no reason not to do that. But I wouldn't want to give up a player of potential value for any of the available catchers we've been discussing in this thread.

[Guest vtmet]

If Dickey gets traded, will it be a package deal that includes Josh Thole?

Thole has logged 424 of RA's best career innings catching the knuckler...
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?id=dicker.01&year=Career&t=p#catch

Sure others can do it, but catching a knuckler can be harder than you would think...The Red Sox tried to replace Paul Mirabella with Josh Bard as the backup catcher (aka, Tim Wakefield's personal catcher) in 2006...Bard proceeded to give up 12 stolen bases and 10 passed balls in 6 games and the Red Sox had to trade to get Mirabella back on May 1st (barely a month into the season)...

[Ceetar]

Chad Ochoseis wrote: I'm not a fan of using WAR as a metric, but what surprised me about BBRef is that it gave Thole a 1.1 defensive WAR for last season. Joe Mauer hasn't ever had a defensive WAR greater than 1 in a season. Buster Posey hasn't done it yet, either. Yadier Molina gets high scores, but the other Molina brothers have only had three dWAR > 1 seasons between them. If Nickeas really is worse than replacement level, there should be a free agent that we can sign for the major league minimum who would be an improvement. So, sure, no reason not to do that. But I wouldn't want to give up a player of potential value for any of the available catchers we've been discussing in this thread.

It's far from perfect, but..well, nothing is.

being skeptical of defensive metrics as it is i do find it hard to gauge a catcher using it though. Arguably it's grading all catchers by that same flawed formula ,but.. I dunno. I did think Thole was a better defensive catcher than Shoppach though. Nickeas had a couple of blips, but all in all I'm not sure you do much better than him in a backup role, strictly defensively. So really..right-handed, better than Shoppach defensively, better than Nickeas offensively. That's all I'm really asking for Thole's backup/platoon/partner. And I don't think we need to give up something to get that. I suspect, in fact, that we already grabbed a good candidate. Now, if a decent catcher is tossed into a bigger deal, that's a different story.

[MFS62]

Thole has logged 424 of RA's best career innings catching the knuckler...

Maybe they looked at all the innings Thole caught Dickey and said "He must be a very good defensive catcher" and threw him some extra WAR points.

And maybe not.

Later

[Ceetar]

MFS62 wrote: Thole has logged 424 of RA's best career innings catching the knuckler... Maybe they looked at all the innings Thole caught Dickey and said "He must be a very good defensive catcher" and threw him some extra WAR points. And maybe not. Later

there's a good chance it's the opposite.

[Edgy MD]

Yeah sheesh, I'm sure there's little point to them to go cooking the books on their stats.

I'm not really arguing for WAR, but just pointing out that a modest investment can buy them a game or two, which still is the idea.

[Guest vtmet]

I know that it's a different era...and not even sure if they tracked all of the different stats/factors that they do by today's standards...but if you were going strictly by WAR, how would Jerry Grote look? Would he even cut it as a 2nd string catcher? Yet, was he an integral part of the Mets success in the late 60's and early 70'Ss? Did he do things for the pitching staff that isn't going to show up on paper?

[MFS62]

Edgy, I was joking about awarding extra points. I know they are derrived using a formula.
But a guy who frequently catches a knuckleball pitcher needs to get some kind of "purple heart" for all the bruises.

Later

[Guest vtmet]

... But a guy who frequently catches a knuckleball pitcher needs to get some kind of "purple heart" for all the bruises.

speaking of which...is there a way to find out Thole's(or anyone else's for that matter) defensive stats by "splits"? It would be interesting to see how many passed balls or errors occured when catching Dickey; or even his caught stealing percentage by pitcher...

Allow me, then, to toss a molehill on top of that mountain of accomplishment: R.A. Dickey is doing a historically great job of holding runners on base. With agility, poise, and a deep understanding of the fundamentals�as well as some out-and-out flaunting of the rulebook, which we�ll examine later�Dickey has overcome the highest possible degree of difficulty to not only hold his own against the running game, but become one of the very best in baseball at shutting it down. In 2012, only three qualified starters in all of baseball have allowed fewer stolen base attempts per stolen base opportunity than Dickey (defining �stolen base opportunity� as a man on first or second with the next base open). The average qualified starter has allowed 5.81 stolen base attempts per 100 opportunities this season. Dickey has allowed 1.85.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=18519

[Guest Swan Swan H]

He may not have been a free agent, but America wants to know where John Buck stands in the Edgy MD Spectrum of Suck.