The Catcher Project: A final thought

Monday's print column should have been sufficient wrap-up to this — the idea, after all, was to detail the "case studies" that buttress the conclusions presented in the column.

But having actually written them all up, I see a point as yet unmade, at least explicitly.

One of the running themes through the 14 — or 19, if you include the five I touched on briefly in the "left out" post — has been this: Catch a lot of games in your 20s, and the odds are you won't do much in your 30s.

If the Twins complete this "legacy" extension with Joe Mauer — and they are expected to — they're going to be committed to him well into his 30s. Which means they would do well to avoid breaking him physically.

So far in his young career, Mauer has caught 607 major league games, with a season high of 139. Last season, in no small part because he missed April with his back problem, he caught just 109 games.

That's too few to justify the kind of money the Twins figure to spend on him. And 139 is probably too risky. I'd like to see him limited to 125-130 games caught a season. But in a 162-game season, it's bound to be difficult for Ron Gardenhire to turn to the likes of Jose Morales almost 40 times.

The Catcher Project: Left out

That's the 14 players in the pool. Assorted comments about a few guys who I didn't do the full takeout on:

Rick Ferrell is in the Hall of Fame, for reasons understood only by the people on the Veterans Committee that inducted him. He didn't make the pool because he wasn't that good. He did play until he was 41, but he had just two seasons of 100-plus games caught after age 31.

Ray Schalk is also in the Hall of Fame. His credentials: He was a "Clean Sox" — one of the 1919 Chicago White Sox not involved in throwing the World Series — and he held the career record for games caught for 14 years or so. Slightly better qualified than Ferrell, but still a weak selection. Mainly a dead ball era guy, he was washed up after his age 32 season.

If Schalk and Ferrell belong in the Hall, so do — oh, Bob Boone and Jim Sundberg and Del Crandall and Tony Pena and ... well, these guys too:

Joe Torre (photo above) will be in Cooperstown someday for his managerial exploits with the Yankees and Dodgers. He was, or should have been, a strong borderline candidate as a player, probably hurt by splitting his time between three positions (903 games at catcher, 787 games at first base, 515 at third base).

He won the Gold Glove at catcher in 1964, which seems preposterous (especially in a league with John Roseboro and Johnny Edwards) — he was never really an outstanding defensive player, and his last game caught in the majors came at age 29. He never caught more than 114 games in a season.

Leaving Torre out troubled me a bit because he DID change positions. My sense of it — and this is more than four decades ago — is that he was phased out of catching (1967-1970) because he wasn't that good at it. He was valuable there because he could hit. And then Ted Simmons came along, and suddenly Torre was a full-time third baseman.

This is a different situation that Mauer. Mauer is regarded as a standout defensive catcher. Moving him to third base would be done to preserve his health. Torre was moved to improve the team.

Elston Howard was better than, or at least as good as, some of the guys in the pool. He didn't reach the majors until he was 26 — the Yankees were slow to get in on this integration fad — and then he had to play just about anyplace other than catcher because the Yankees had Berra. He didn't get to catch 100 games in a season until 1961, when he was 32 — about the age much of the pool started to break down — and had a very strong four-year run as a regular, including winning the MVP Award in 1963.

Thurman Munson, like Carlton Fisk and Johnny Bench, was born in 1947. He died, as noted in the Roy Campanella comment, in a plane crash as age 32. While his batting average still looked good, his power had pretty much dried up and he was having the back and knee problems that shorten many catchers' careers. Which figures; he caught 130-plus games a year pretty regularly in his 20s.

The Catcher Project: Roy Campanella

Born: 11-19-21

Career: 1948-57

Hall of Fame: Yes

Career highlights: Three times MVP (1951, 1953, 1955). Led NL in RBIs in 153 (142). Named to eight All-Star teams. Regular catcher for five World Series teams, winning one.

Career slash line: .276/.360/.500

Find his stats here

Games caught after age 30 season: 593. Age in last season as regular catcher: 35. Win shares after age 30 season: 94. Win share after age 33 season: 23

Roy Campanella's major league career was shortened on both ends — by segregation at the start, by the car crash that left him paralyzed at the end.

While many of his old teammates spoke wistfully of how many homers Campy would have hit had he made to the Los Angeles Coliseum with its short distance to left field, it appears fairly clear in retrospect that he was already a shell of his former self when the crash happened.

It's a startling thing to realize that out of this pool of 14 outstanding catchers, two — Campanella and Mickey Cochrane — had their careers abruptly ended by life-threatening injury in their mid-30s. And had I gone with a slightly larger pool, it would have included Thurman Munson, who died in a plane crash at age 32.

The Catcher Project: Bill Dickey

Born: 6-6-07

Career: 1928-1946

Hall of Fame: Yes

Career highlights: Eleven All-Star teams. Runner-up once in MVP voting, top ten five times. Regular catcher for eight World Series teams, winning seven titles. Had four consecutive seasons of at least .300 average, 20 homers, 100 RBI for the greatest Yankee dynasty, 1936-39. Set a record by catching at least 100 games a year for 13 straight seasons.

Career slash line: .313/.382/.486

See his stats here.

Games caught after age 30 season: 648. Age in last season as regular catcher: 34. Win shares after age 30 season: 120. Win shares after age 33 season: 53

An interesting career pattern — a Mauer-esque left-handed singles hitter the first half of his career, then a power spike from age 29-33, then a decline. The conventional explanation is that he learned to pull the ball into Yankee Stadium's short right-field porch.

Like contemporaries Mickey Cochrane and Gabby Hartnett, Dickey didn't carry the workloads that their modern counterparts frequently do. Dickey had just one season of 130 games caught and was frequently under 110. The difference is probably a combination of better protective gear today and a schedule in the 1930s heavy with double-headers.

Dickey had finshed his age 34 season when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He played two more seasons as a half-time starter, missed two seasons to serve in the Navy, then played a little in 1946, when the war was over. My guess is that the war extended his career slightly.

The Catcher Project: Gabby Hartnett

Born: 12-30-1900

Career: 1922-1941

Hall of Fame: Yes

Career highlights: National League MVP 1935, runner up 1937. Six All-Star teams (the game was created midway through his career). His famous "Homer in the Gloamin'" was a pivotal moment in the 1938 pennant race. Regular catcher for four World Series teams, none of which won — he was, after all, a Cub.

Career slash line: .297/.370/.489

See his stats here

Game caught after age 30 season: 958. Age in last season as regular catcher: 36 or 38, depending on what standard you apply. Win shares after age 30 season: 164. Win shares after age 33 season: 93.

It's relatively easy to find possible reasons why modern stand-out catchers last longer than their earlier counterparts: They're in better condition, sports medicine is better, better equipment, PED use ... and none of them quite explain Gabby Hartnett, who remained a productive player deep into his 30s.

Of the 14 catchers in this pool, only Carlton Fisk caught more games after age 30 than Hartnett. (Ivan Rodriguez could catch him this season.) Only Fisk and Yogi Berra have had more win shares after age 30, and a good portion of Berra's came as an outfielder. Only Fisk had more win shares after age 33.

It is worth noting, however, that Harnett only twice caught as many as 130 games in a season. He missed almost all of the 1929 season, his age 28 season (caught one game). Whether by design or happenstance, he was not abused as a young catcher.

---

The story behind the photo above of Hartnett and gangster Al Capone: The mob boss took his son to a charity exhibition game between the Cubs and White Sox, and Hartnett, a gregarious sort, agreed to autograph a ball. When the photo appeared in the paper, Commissioner Landis called Harnett in — Landis operated out of Chicago — and ordered him not to do that any more. Hartnett replied: "Judge, if that's your rule, it's OK by me. But I'm not explaining it to him. The next time you see him, YOU explain it to him."

The Catcher Project: Gary Carter

Born: 4-8-54

Career: 1974-1992

Hall of Fame: Yes

Career highlights: Led National League in RBIs, 1984. Named to 11 All-Star teams, won three Gold Gloves. Four seasons of 100-plus RBIs, nine seasons of at least 20 home runs. Four times in top six in MVP balloting. Regular catcher on one World Series champ.

Career slash line: .262/.335/.439

See his stats here.

Games caught after age 30 season: 799. Age last season as regular catcher: 34. Win shares after age 30 season: 105. Win shares after age 33 season: 49

Gary Carter wasn't always a catcher. In his rookie season (1975), he played 92 games in right field for Montreal, 66 games behind the plate — and finished second in the Rookie of the Year balloting (behind a pitcher named John Montefusco). The next season, he again caught just 60 times.

Then he went behind the dish for good, at age 23. In the next eight seasons, only once did he catch less than 138 games. The Expos used him hard, then shipped him off to the Mets after his age 30 season.

Which was close to the point where The Kid's offense went south. He had a good year with the Mets in 1985, dropped a bit in '86 — the World Series year — dropped a bit more in '87 and became a half-time player for the last four seasons of his career.

Seeing a pattern here? Young catcher shows he can play a key offensive role, his team keeps him in the lineup day after day, and his bat goes early in his 30s.

Which isn't to say it's the wrong way to exploit the talent. In truth, it's the right way — if, like the Expos, you trade him after his age 30 season. The Expos got the best out of him, and then got more talent in exchange.

The Catcher Project: Ivan Rodriguez

Born: 11-27-71

Career: 1991-present

Hall of Fame: Not eligible

Career highlights: AL MVP 1999. Regular catcher for two World Series teams, one of which won the title. Fourteen All-Star teams, 13 Gold Gloves. Holds career record for games caught.

Career slash line: .299/.336/.471

See his stats here

Games caught after age 30 season: 862 and counting. Age in last season as regular catcher: 37 and counting. Win shares after age 30 season: 109 and counting. Win shares after age 33 season: 28 and counting.

This may be a guideline of how much teams value defensive tools behind the plate: Pudge Rodriguez is pretty close to useless as a hitter now (his adjusted OPS hasn't been close to league average since 2006), but the Washington Nationals gave him a two-year contract at $3 million a year.

Rodriguez was worked fairly hard as a young player — 134 games caught at age 21, 127 at 23, 146 at 24, 143 at 25, 139 at 26, 141 at 27. Then the workload eased for a few years — 87, 106, 100 — and when he left Texas as a free agent after his age 30 season, there was little demand for his services. There was a sense that he was pretty much shot.

Not quite. His game revived in Florida and Detroit for three years. Now the bat has quieted, and he's now in the nomad phase of his career — two teams in 2008, two more in 2009, a fifth team this season. He is apparently driven by the desire to be the first catcher to get 3,000 hits — he has 2,711 — and he's still got the glove and the arm to get significant playing time.

But his bat hasn't deserved the PT since he was 34.

The Catcher Project: Yogi Berra

Born: 5-29-25

Career: 1946-1965

Hall of Fame: Yes

Career highlights: AL MVP in 1951, 1954, 1955; second in 1953 and 1956; from 1950 through 1956, he never finished lower in the voting than fourth. Fifteen All-Star teams. Played in 14 World Series, 12 as a regular; won 10 of those World Series. Five seasons of 100-plus RBIs, 10 straight seasons of at least 20 homers.

Career slash line: .285/.348/.482

See his stats here

Games caught after age 30 season: 606. Age in last season as regular catcher: 34. Win shares after age 30 season: 169. Win shares after age 33 season: 70.

Yogi Berra had a war to fight before he got his career started — he was in on the Normandy invasion — but he was still only 21 when he made his major league debut. But it took a while for the Yankees to decide that yes, he really was a catcher; for a few years, he split time between the outfield and catching.

But once Bill Dickey finished "learning me all his experience" — Berra's memorable phrase —Berra was — in Casey Stengel's words — "my man behind the plate." During that remarkable run of top five MVP finishes mentioned above, Berra never caught fewer than 133 games and was usually in the 140s.

That took him though his age 31 season. The catching workload eased off at that point — 121 games in '57, 88 in '58, 116 in '59 — his last season as the clear regular. He was getting older, and Elston Howard was well past ready for duty.

Berra is the one catcher in this pool who clearly transitioned from catcher to another position in his 30s (outfield) and remained a regular, at least for a few years.

The Catcher Project: Ted Simmons

Born: 8:9-49
Career: 1968-1988
Hall of Fame: No.
Career highlights: Nine All-Star teams. Six seasons above .300 while catching on an almost-daily basis. Played on one pennant winner, splitting time between catching and DH for the '83 Brewers; no team with Simmons as a regular catcher won even a division title.
Career slash stats: .285/.348/.437

See his stats here

Games caught after age 30 season: 332. Age last season as a regular catcher: 32. Win shares earned after age 30 season: 69. Win shares earned after age 33: 22.

Ted Simmons, like Jorge Posada, was a switch-hitting catcher with the emphasis on hitting, and in the 1970s — when basestealing was far more prevalent than it is today — a bat-first catcher was a bit of a liability.

But Simba could hit. In the context of the 1970s, in the context of old Busch Stadium, he was a better hitter than Posada.

And the Cardinals used him hard: 130 games caught at age 21, 135 at age 22, 153(!) at age 23, 141 at age 24, 154 at 25 ... if you've ever been in St. Louis in August, you know what a furnace feels like. And he consistently hit .300 through that workload.

It couldn't last, and it didn't. When Whitey Herzog took over the Cards, he decided he couldn't live with Simmons' declining defense — or, probably, his stature in the community. Herzog traded Simmons to Milwaukee.

Simmons' last season in St. Louis was his age 30 season. He hit .303/.375/.505 with 21 homers — a basic Ted Simmons season to that point. His first year in Milwaukee: .216/.262/.376. Simba had only one St. Louis-caliber season in the last eight years of his career. That came in 1983, when he caught just 86 games and DH'd for the rest of his playing time.

Another example of heavy use young leading to a decline late.

The Catcher Project: Mike Piazza

Born: 9-4-1968

Career: 1992-2007

Hall of Fame: Not eligible

Career highlights: Widely regarded as the greatest hitting catcher ever. NL rookie of the year 1992. No MVP awards, but runner up twice and in the top 10 of balloting seven times. Nine seasons of 30-plus home runs. Twelve All-Star teams. Regular catcher on one World Series team.

Career slash line: .308/.377./545

See his stats here

Games caught after age 30 season: 690. Age during last season as regular catcher: 37. Win shares after age 30 season: 119. Win shares after age 33 season: 51

Evaluating Mike Piazza's career isn't easy. There's a lot of smoke about him and steroids and very little clarity. There are those who suspect his entire career was a chemical construct.

Whether he juiced or not, however, his aging pattern — which is, remember, our concern in all this — followed a traditional path.

His offensive numbers fell off in two steps — slightly as he entered his 30s, and more sharply in 2004, which happens to be both the season when the players union agreed to steroid testing and his age 34 season.

At that point — whether because he was old or because he wasn't juicing — he was breaking down physically. He fell off to being roughly a league-average hitter — and his defensive skills weren't strong enough to support that. The Mets tried making him a first baseman, but that didn't take, and he reverted to catching in 2005 before completing his career as a DH.

The Catcher Project: Jorge Posada

Born: 8-17-71

Career: 1995-present

Hall of Fame: Not eligible

Career highlights: Regular or quasi-regular catcher for four World Series winners, two other pennant winners; has played almost a season's worth of postseason games. Finished third in MVP voting in 2003, sixth in 2007. Five 90-plus RBI seasons. Five All-Star teams.

Career slash line: .277/.379/.480

Find his stats here

Games caught after age 30 season: 702 and counting. Age is last season as regular: 37 and counting. Win shares after age 30 season: 140 and counting. Win shares since age 33 season: 72 and counting.

Jorge Posada was not blessed with top-grade defensive skills behind the plate, but he gets the job done — and he has always been able to hit. This will be his age 38 season, and as spring training opened last week his manager (and former co-catcher) Joe Girardi said he was looking for 115 games or so behind the dish for Posada: "He's caught a lot of ballgames in his life. We want to make sure that he's strong and healthy all year long."

Most of those games came after age 30. Posada reached the majors to stay in 1997 and spent three seasons essentially splitting the job with Girardi, who was a defense-first catcher. Posada took over the job fulltime in 2000 and had a streak of eight straight seasons of 130-plus games-caught seasons.

He had significant injury problems in 2008 and was limited to 100 games caught last season, so 115 this year might be pushing it. Still, he has been one catcher who has performed well deep into his 30s — and as with Fisk, the fact that he wasn't pushed hard in his 20s may well have something to do with that.

The Catcher Project: Johnny Bench

Born: 12-7-47
Career: 1967-83
Hall of Fame: Yes
Career highlights: National League MVP 1970, 1972. NL Rookie of the Year 1968. Led NL in home runs twice (1970, 1972) and in RBIs three times ('70, '72, '74). Thirteen All-Star teams, 10 Gold Gloves. Played in four World Series, winning two of them.
Career slash line: .267/.342/.476

See his stats here.

Games caught after his age 30 season: 244. Age in last season as regular catcher: 32. Win shares age 30 season and on: 81. Win shares after age 33: 24

Bench's career pattern is a prototype for the theory that big-hitting catchers don't last. In his first four seasons — ages 20 through 23 — Bench caught 154, 147, 139 and 141 games. Sparky Anderson dialed it back a little bit after that, but he was still catching 130 games a season, and that took a toll. His knees went sour, and he was finished as a catcher in his early 30s. (He has since had a hip replacement, again because of the grind of his catching workload.)

Note: Bench and Carlton Fisk were born in the same month (December 1947), and their slash stats are very similar. The batting averages and OPB are almost identical; Bench has a 20-point advantage in slugging percentage.

Bench got to the majors first, was used hard and flamed out. Fisk never reached Bench's peak performance, but he lasted a good 10 years longer than Bench and wound up catching nearly 500 more games.

The Catcher Project: Carlton Fisk

Born: 12-26-47

Career: 1969-1993

Hall of Fame: Yes

Career highlights: Rookie of the year in 1972. His home run in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series was not only dramatic, it changed the way sports are televised (NBC lucked into the reaction shot of him waving the ball fair). Eleven All-Star teams, one Gold Glove, high of third in MVP voting (1983). Led league in triples in 1972.

Slash line: .269/.341/.457

See his stats here.

Games caught after age 30 season: 1290. Age in last season as regular catcher: 43. Win shares from age 30 on: 240. Win shares after age 33: 173

How long did Carlton Fisk's career extend? The man hit 37 homers (his career high) at age 37. He also stole 17 bases that season. He made his major league debut at age 21, and left the field at age 45, having set the record for games caught (since broken by Ivan Rodriguez).

Paradoxically, I believe that one reason for Fisk's longevity was injuries. He played in just 52 games in 1974, 79 games in '75 — the result of a horrific knee injury that could have ended his career early. While the injury took away the equivalent of a full season from him, it probably helped in the long run by giving him an extended break from the daily grind of squat-and-rise that does incremental, long-term damage to the back, hamstring and knees.

Whatever the cause, Fisk is the one most obvious outlier, the catcher who maintained his level of performance literally for decades.

The Catcher Project: Ernie Lombardi

Born: 4-6-08

Career: 1931-1947

Hall of Fame: Yes

Career highlights: National League MVP in 1938. Led NL in batting average in 1938, 1942. Regular catcher for two pennant winners, one World Series champ. Seven-time All Star.

Slash line: .306/.358/.460

Find his stats here.

Games caught after age 30 season: 851. Age in final season as regular catcher: 37 (1945). Win shares age 30 and on: 133. Win shares after age 33: 60.

Ernie Lombardi must have been an incredibly fun player to watch. To begin with, he was probably the slowest man ever to play in the majors. And one of the most savage line-drive hitters ever as well. He whistled base hits into the gaps into what were essentially five-man outfields, as the middle infielders didn't have to play him honestly. His batting grip intertwined the little finger of his top hand with the index finger of his bottom hand. And he had this incredible nose, so long that it stuck out through the slats of his catchers mask and was occasionally skinned by foul tips.

World War II was doubtless a significant outside influence on his aging pattern. He had had a down year in 1941, his age 33 season — but then the war came that winter. While most major leaguers went into the military, Lombardi failed his draft physical, and he got to play for the duration, three good seasons and one poor one. He hung around as a reserve catcher for two more seasons after the war ended.

My guess is that the war extended his career. He had good numbers during the war years, but that was against diluted competition. On the other hand, he didn't embarrass himself at the plate after the real players returned.

The Catcher Project: Bill Freehan

Born: 11-29-41
Career: 1961-1976

Hall of Fame: No

Career highlights: Spent entire career with Detroit Tigers. Second in MVP voting in 1968, when Tigers won the World Series; third in 1967. Made 11 All-Star teams, won four consecutive Gold Gloves.

Lifetime slash numbers: .262/.340/.412.

Find stats here.

Games caught after age 30 season: 335. Age in last season as regular catcher: 33. Win shares age 30 and on: 75. Win shares after age 33: 20.

Bill Freehan's not in the Hall of Fame largely because he was unwise enough to center his career in the high-mound era of the 1960s. A secondary reason may be that just as his star was brightest, Johnny Bench emerged in the other league. And he is the most marginal of the 14 catchers in this study.

Freehan's last season as a regular catcher was in 1975 at age 33, but that followed a season in which he split time between catching and first base.

And the difference — in 1974, he hit .297/.361./.479. In 1975, .246/.306/.398. That was followed by a season as a reserve catcher, followed by the end of his playing days.

As a starting catcher, Freehan's offense fell off the cliff in his early 30s.

The Catcher Project: Mickey Cochrane

Born: 4-6-03
Career: 1925-1937

Hall of Fame: Yes

Career highlights: AL MVP in 1928 with Philadelphia Athletics, again in 1934 with Detroit Tigers. Led American League in on-base percentage in 1933. A regular on five World Series teams in seven years, player-manager for two of them.

Lifetime slash numbers: .320/.419/.478.

Find stats here.

Games caught after age 30 season: 231. Age in last season as regular catcher: 32. Win Shares age 30 and up: 79. Win Shares after age 33: 5.

In many ways, Cochrane is the best comp among catchers to Joe Mauer. A left-handed hitter better known for batting average and eye at the plate than for power, he scored 200-plus more runs than he drove in.

His last season as a regular was at age 32, when he caught 110 games for the Tigers (1935). He appeared in just 44 games in 1936 and 27 in 1937.

The dropoff in playing time in 1936 came from a mental/emotional breakdown apparently brought on by the strain of being a player/manager/general manager. On May 25, 1937, he was hit in the head by a Bump Hadley fastball; the beaning was nearly fatal, and he never again took the field as a player.

Career prematurely shortened, but perhaps not because he was a catcher.

The Catcher Project: Introduction

I expect to resume the weekly print column on Monday (the day the Twins hold their first pitchers and catchers workouts in Fort Myers), and the topic figures to be Joe Mauer and length of contract. (Unless something more compelling pops up between now and then.)

In working though my thoughts on the subject I reviewed the careers and aging patterns of 14 top-flight offensive catchers. Nine of them are in the Hall of Fame; the five who aren't either are not eligible or are (my opinion) a mistake by the voters. There were three guys I considered including but didn't; I chose a deliberately high standard.

The 14, in alphabetical order: Johnny Bench, Yogi Berra, Roy Campanella, Gary Carter, Mickey Cochrane, Bill Dickey, Bill Freehan, Carlton Fisk, Gabby Hartnett, Ernie Lombardi, Mike Piazza, Jorge Posada, Ivan Rodriguez and Ted Simmons.

Left out: Joe Torre (spent much of his career at first or third base); Thurman Munson (died at age 32) and Elston Howard (caught behind Berra in the Yankees system, he didn't become a regular catcher until already into his 30s).

Everybody's career is a bit different, of course. None is a perfect comp for Mauer, who, as I've written before, appears to be a historically unique player.

What I'm going to do here, bit by bit, is detail the aging of each of the 14 — something there simply isn't room to do in the paper. Hey, I've done the work, I might as well share it with you.