Is Yadier Molina a Hall of Famer?

The other day at work a co-worker of mine told me rather certainly that St. Louis Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina would be a future baseball hall of famer. I gave a “are you kidding?” laugh, chalked it up to him being a Cardinals homer and said there was no way Molina had a shot at being a hall of famer.

I texted my friend Bobby, the smartest guy I know (other than myself, of course) when it comes to baseball, that my co-worker floated the idea of Molina as hall of famer. Bobby’s reply frankly stunned me. He texted: “Very likely if he continues to play like he has over the past few seasons … but, I wouldn’t call it a guarantee.” Even the name Yadier Molina and the words “very likely hall of famer” in the same sentence dumbfounded me.

I figured if Bobby thought there was a shot I might as well look into it a little further.

The best way to determine whether or not Molina is a future hall of famer is to, of course, compare him to hall of fame players at his position. There has to be some caveats, though, for the comparisons to be fair or ring true. For instance, hall of fame catchers before the modern era of baseball who played in the dead ball era before 1920 couldn’t be thrown into the mix, because the lack of offense from that era would skew the numbers. This eliminates hall of fame catchers like Roger Bresnahan and Ray Schalk.

That leaves us with 10 hall of fame catchers who’ve played the game of baseball since 1920. Those catchers are (in order of induction): Mickey Cochrane, Bill Dickey, Gabby Hartnett, Roy Campanella, Yogi Berra, Rick Ferrell, Ernie Lombardi, Johnny Bench, Carlton Fisk and Gary Carter.

Let’s start with the average age of these hall of fame catchers when they played their last full season (100 games or more) as a catcher. Because of the wear and tear of the catcher position, which hasn’t changed all that much over the years (although it may in the future with the elimination of running over catchers at home plate), the average age a hall of fame catcher plays to is only 35, and that number was actually skewed a little higher than it should be by freak of nature Carlton Fisk, who was an everyday catcher until the age of 43 (the next closest hall of famer at the age of his final full-time season as catcher was Ernie Lombardi, who was six years Fisk’s junior at the end). If you were to take Fisk out of the equation (a reasonable thing to do given his six extra years is a whopping total) the average age of a hall of fame catcher at his final full-time season would be a full season earlier at age 34.

Yadier Molina is currently 31 years old and will turn 32 during the halfway point of the 2014 MLB season. Based on the standards for his position we have to believe Molina only has four or five (and five is likely a stretch) years remaining as a full-time catcher. In fact, Molina (who’s likely seen the most playing time of any catcher over the last decade) is already starting to show some wear and tear when it comes to injuries, even if his offensive numbers have climbed over the last few years.

So, what are the average offensive numbers for a catcher in the baseball hall of fame?

The average hall of fame catcher gets around 1,882 base hits in his career in 6,593 at-bats, giving him an average of .285. This is almost identical to Molina’s career average of .284 (1,183 for 4,165) after nine full seasons. Now, Molina’s average is likely to fall a few percentage points over the late years of his career (as you’d expect from any major leaguer), but likely won’t fall below .280, which would give him a higher career average than hall of famers like Johnny Bench (.267) and Carlton Fisk (.269). I expect Molina to finish his career with a batting average akin to hall of fame catchers. I also suspect that he will have around the same amount of career hits as the average hall of famer. Molina has averaged 127 hits per season for his career and giving him four to five more seasons of everyday play would put him around 1,691 to 1,818 for his career, certainly not hall of fame averages for any other position, but for a catcher it’ll do.

Everybody who’s seen baseball over the years knows that Molina is not a power hitter, but even though catcher is historically not a power position the average hall of fame catcher hit long balls at a higher rate than Molina. The average hall of fame catcher hit 246 career home runs and this number is skewed drastically by Rick Ferrell (often considered the most egregious hall of fame selection, and one made by the veteran’s committee and not Baseball Writers Association of America) who’s 28 career homers are tied with shortstop Ozzie Smith for the least of any position player hall of famer whose career came after the dead ball era. The next lowest hall of fame catcher in home runs was Mickey Cochrane (who had his career drastically cut short by injury), who hit a huge 91 more homers than Ferrell. Without Ferrell’s measly total, the average for a hall of fame catcher becomes 270 (more than a season’s worth of homers than it is with Ferrell). If you exclude Ferrell and add the numbers of Mike Piazza and Ivan Rodriguez, who should be no-brainer hall of famers and likely one day will be, the average goes to 289. You may say Piazza and Rodriguez played during an era of inflated numbers, but both are generally considered to have been clean (and I won’t make accusations otherwise) and Piazza’s 427 homers (most ever by a catcher) aren’t alarmingly more than Bench’s 389 or Fisk’s 376. Rodriguez’s 311 (over a longer than average career) would only be ranked sixth among hall of famers if he were currently inducted.

After nine seasons, Molina has 89 career homers, or an average of 10 per season. Homers could (maybe should) go down with age, but we’ll give Molina 40 to 50 more for his career giving him a total of 129 to 139. If you account for the fact that Cochrane was already out of the league due to injury by Molina’s current age, Molina would have the fewest homers of any catcher if he were to be inducted.

How about RBI?

The average for hall of fame catchers is 1,116 RBI, which would also go up slightly if you threw in Piazza and Rodriguez’s numbers. Molina is currently sitting at 546 RBI for his career. He averages 59 RBI a season. Using his career averages I foresee Molina finishing his career with around 782 to 841 RBI. This means that Molina would finish his career with around 300 fewer RBI than the average hall of fame catcher, which might not seem like a lot, but you have to realize that’s at least four to five seasons for a catcher of hall of fame status.

Now, you might be thinking that Molina’s last few seasons (the ones according to Bobby he’d have to maintain to be a hall of famer) are higher than his career averages and that would be correct. However, the numbers don’t jump drastically enough to make up for 300 fewer RBI and 150 fewer home runs, and it isn’t even close. Also, almost no player in Major League Baseball maintains his career high averages toward the end of his career.

It’s not a prerequisite for a hall of fame catcher to have won a Most Valuable Player award, but the majority have (60 percent). It would seem unlikely at this point in his career and given the average numbers of MVP players that Molina would ever win a MVP. Even if he did, it wouldn’t matter because of many of the other reasons listed in this piece.

Molina has also rarely if ever been considered the best overall catcher in the game during his career. That honor has typically gone to Joe Mauer for much of Molina’s career and Molina has had to battle with Brian McCann and recently Buster Posey to even be considered the best in his own league. This is something that hall of fame voters look at as hugely significant, and every hall of fame catcher (with the likely exception of Rick Ferrell) was considered the best at their time in baseball or at least their league.

Offensively, Yadier Molina isn’t a hall of fame catcher. If Ted Simmons couldn’t make the hall of fame with career numbers of .285 (the average for a HOF catcher), 248 homers (two higher than the current average) and 1,389 RBI (way above the average and second most among all catchers in MLB history) than no way can Molina. In fact, Simmons finished his career with the most hits in baseball history by a catcher with 2,472 (Ivan Rodriguez since passed him) and didn’t even sniff the hall of fame, receiving less than four percent of the vote in his only year on the ballot and falling off. Based on his numbers, Simmons should be a no-brainer hall of famer and he trumps Molina in every category but defense.

Ah, there it is … defense.

Molina has never been known for his offense, but has as long as he’s played been considered the premiere defensive catcher and game-caller in the league.

Let’s start with game-caller. Do you think hall of fame voters would even for one second take game-calling into consideration? I hope you’re not thinking hard on this, because it wouldn’t even cross their mind (whether it should or not).

So, down to defense (which both my co-worker and Bobby thought would be the thing to tip Molina into possible hall of fame territory).

Yadier Molina’s defense is at hall of fame level, in my opinion. He may be the greatest defensive catcher to ever play the game. There really aren’t too many ways to quantify this, though, and hall of fame voters aren’t spending too much time on defense anyway. Basically what you have to go by here are number of Gold Gloves won and defensive WAR (wins above replacement), despite the fact that I’m not a huge fan of Sabermetrics.

Molina currently has six Gold Glove wins. Johnny Bench finished his career with 10 Gold Gloves. Ivan Rodriguez finished his career with 13 Gold Gloves. If Molina were to win the Gold Glove every year until the end of his career (which, I believe, many would say is unlikely especially when he ages) he would finish with around nine or 10. This puts him at Bench’s level and a few behind Rodriguez. Gold Gloves may not always be the best argument or representation of defense, but it’s one of the few defensive aspects hall of fame voters are going to pay attention to. Even then it doesn’t matter a whole lot, just ask Keith Hernandez what his 11 Gold Gloves or Jim Kaat what his 16 Gold Gloves did for them, and they both have more impressive numbers respectively when it comes to their positions than Molina does overall.

When it comes to defensive WAR, Molina is currently behind both Bench and Rodriguez (that along with the Gold Gloves tells us that Molina is likely only the third best defensive catcher of all-time currently, if that, because I’ve only included data from HOFers and those that should be). Molina’s career averages show that he could likely pass Bench in this category, but shouldn’t reach Rodriguez’s total. This means that it’s very unlikely that Molina will retire as the greatest defensive player to ever play his position.

But, what if he did retire as the greatest defensive player to ever play his position?

The chances of Molina’s induction into the hall of fame would still be slim-to-none. Ozzie Smith is the only player in baseball’s modern era that made the hall of fame mostly on the basis of his defense, but even still Smith had nearly 2,500 base hits and stole 580 bases (which ranks him in the top 25 all-time). Being the best defensively simply doesn’t make one a hall of famer. I use Keith Hernandez as my example. He’s considered to be the greatest defensive first baseman by far, and has the hardware to show it. He was also talented with the bat hitting .296 for his career, with over 1,000 RBI and 2,000 hits. He also won the 1979 National League Most Valuable Player. He never got more than 10.8 percent of the vote.

Yadier Molina is a great player, one of the best of his era at least defensively and is a generally likable person (which could help come voting time), but he’s not going to get anywhere near the 75 percent needed to make the hall of fame if guys like Hernandez and Simmons are only getting 4-to-11 percent.    

Molina is going to fall into the category of very good baseball player and likely one of the 25 greatest to ever play his position when his career comes to an end, but he’ll have to settle for that and not induction into Cooperstown.