I thought about just going back to 2013 and pulling up the post about Yadier Molina winning the Gold Glove for catchers in the NL and throwing it back up.
It wouldn’t have been much different than the post form 2012, though. So maybe I’d do the 2012 one? Then again, how’s that different than 2011? Or 2010? Or 2009 or 2008? I guess it’s not, right?
Screw it, we’ll just do ANOTHER ‘Molina Wins Gold Glove’ post.
Yadier Molina – he eats, sleeps and wins Gold Gloves.
The STL Cardinals have won 85 Gold Gloves since Rawlings started the award in 1957. No other organization in baseball has as many.#STLCards
— Randal Quackenbush (@rquack) November 5, 2014
Just in case you’re scoring at home, that’s 7 in a row. Molina joins Johnny Bench and Ivan Rodriguez as the only catchers to win the award 7 consecutive years. Bench and I-Rod each did it 10 straight seasons.
Molina’s defense was excellent in 2014, as expected. He earned a 1.5 dWAR and caught 48% of runners stealing (21 on the season). He was amongst the NL lead in defensive metrics for catcher in pretty much every category tracked.
However, he only started 106 games in 2014, appearing in 110 total – missing a large chunk of late summer with a thumb injury. His lowest totals as a Cardinal since his 2004 rookie campaign.
So, if there was a season for another catcher to… ahem… catch Molina and snag a GG, it would have been 2014. If he stays reasonably healthy the next 4 seasons (all under contract with the Cardinals if Cardinals exercise 2018 option), we might just have a pretty large piece of validation that Molina is the greatest catcher ever.
Wow. Congrats, Yadi.
Photo: STLCardinalsBaseball.com
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