By sabermetrics, longtime Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina would appear to have an uncertain Hall of Fame case.
At 35.3 Wins Above Replacement as of this writing, Molina’s well off the mark of Hall of Fame backstops such as Johnny Bench at 75 WAR, Yogi Berra at 59.5 WAR and Mike Piazza at 59.4 WAR. Molina isn’t a Hall of Famer either by two other advanced Cooperstown metrics, JAWS and Hall Rating.
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Not that any of this matters to Molina’s manager or the pitchers he catches.
“To me, he’s been one of the most impactful players that I’ve ever seen at that position,” St. Louis manager Mike Matheny told Sporting News after Sunday’s win over San Francisco.
Matheny said there’s no doubt to him or other Cardinals that 35-year-old Molina’s a future Hall of Famer.
“There’s so many intangibles that the analytics are never going to catch up with,” Matheny said. “So when you start talking to guys in that room, it’s an easy conversation.”
Cooperstown chances: 80 percent
Why: Cardinals’ rookie reliever John Brebbia has had the same experience with Molina as other St. Louis pitchers since their veteran backstop joined the team in 2004.
Brebbia’s thrived in general this season, putting up a 2.25 ERA in 37 appearances. But he’s done particularly well with Molina, with a 1.46 ERA in the 24.2 innings he’s thrown to Molina, according to Baseball-Reference.com.
“He makes my job incredibly easy,” Brebbia said. “I think one of my favorite ways to describe what it’s like throwing to him is that I can shut my brain off."
Molina has won eight Gold Glove awards and been 119 defensive runs above average in his career. His defensive prowess has offered reassurance to Cardinals pitchers such as starter Michael Wacha.
“It just puts so much trust in us that we can throw any pitch we want with the guy at third and you don’t have to worry about a passed ball or anything with him behind the plate,” Wacha said.
Like Brebbia, Wacha has done a notch better with Molina than other Cardinals catchers in his career, compiling a 3.74 ERA in the 532.1 innings he’s thrown to Molina against an overall career 3.84 ERA.
“He’s amazing to work with,” Wacha said. ”I’ve never seen another player do as much video work getting prepared for each game than what Yadi does. Just the amount of preparation he does before each game, each series to know all the hitters and know all the pitchers he’s going to be facing as well, it’s pretty remarkable.”
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Cardinals reliever Zach Duke said Molina has a unique ability to match a pitcher’s strengths against what could work in a given situation, even if this clashes with what’s on paper.
“We get all the scouting reports and, you know, ‘This guy is bad on certain pitches in this area,’” said Duke, who joined St. Louis in a 2016 trade.
Duke added, “But from Yadi’s perspective behind the plate, he kind of has a different understanding of how maybe my sinker plays against a certain hitter, where it says on the sheet it’s not a good pitch. … He sees the hitter’s swing, he knows the movement on my pitches and realizes that it’ll be a little bit different story than what the sheet says for myself.”
Molina keeps “his finger on the pulse of game,” reliever Matt Bowman said.
Bowman said Molina is constantly looking up at hitters to gauge what’s going on with them. It’s like the game moves slower for Molina, he said.
“I think of him sort of like a puppetmaster,” Bowman said. “Like we’re different ... puppets on the mound and he’s just pulling strings and wanting us to execute whatever it is that we’re doing.”
But Molina maintains his composure, too, when pitchers get their own ideas about what to do in a given situation. Bowman recalled facing a Nationals’ hitter in 2016 and reaching a 3-2 count. Bowman shook off a signal from Molina, thinking his catcher was calling for a pitch he couldn’t execute.
“He just like stops putting fingers down and just goes like, gives me this signal like, ‘Alright c’mon, let’s go,’” Bowman said, putting both of his hands out as he stood in front of his locker and motioned toward himself, as if summoning a dog.
“I think, ‘Oh, no, like, I’ve pissed him off. This is bad,’” Bowman said. “I throw the first pitch he called, because I assumed that he was like, ‘C’mon, let’s go, I know what I’m doing.’”
Bowman added, “After the game, he comes up to me and he says, ‘When I go like this and give you this motion, I’m not mad. Just throw me whatever and I’ll catch it.’”
Some of what Molina’s done best in his career is in areas where the numbers are still uncertain. For instance, he has a reputation as one of the best framers in baseball, referring to a catcher’s ability to make a close pitch look to an umpire like a strike.
“I don’t know if he’s talking to the umpire back there, getting him on good graces or what it is,” Wacha said. “But he seems to get us quite a few pitches.”
Molina’s pitch framiing ability has faded somewhat in recent years, at least according to analytics. But baseball researcher Adam Darowski points out that, according to Baseball Prospectus, Molina’s pitch framing in his prime was worth 2 WAR alone.
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To a man, Brebbia, Wacha, Duke and Bowman all said Molina belongs in Cooperstown.
“You look at ever since he came in the league,” Duke said. “His defense has been the best in baseball. He’s evolved into a very feared hitter as well. And he plays every day. There’s not a lot of catchers that play as frequently as he does and at the level that he does. To me, as long as he’s been in this league, he’s the standard of what a catcher should be.”
Asked what made Molina a Hall of Famer, Wacha said, “Just the way he goes about his business behind the plate, all the Gold Gloves, what he’s meant to this organization, the World Series rings. There’s many things that could put him in there.”
Brebbia offered a simple “no doubt” when asked whether Molina was a Hall of Famer. Bowman said he wasn’t well-versed on the topic but added that from what he did know, Molina deserved enshrinement “without a doubt.”
“The modernization of understanding how important a catcher is sort of, I think, shoots him right to the top of the list of what I would assume are the greatest catchers of all-time,” Bowman said.
Molina was deferential when reached at his locker for a brief interview after Sunday’s game. He said every player thinks about the Hall of Fame.
“But it’s a long way to go right now. I’m not concentrating on that," he said. "I’m just trying to help my team win right here and focus on this season.”
Asked about his pitching framing, Molina said, “Nobody told me about framing. I got a guy that worked with me when I was a kid, when I started here in this level. He just told me to catch the ball. Don’t worry about framing. That’s what I’m doing.”
The secret to his success?
“Work hard, never take anything for granted and play the game the right way.”