I don’t know about you, but I was thrilled when the Angels drafted Fresno State catcher Taylor Ward with the 26th overall pick on Monday. My elation didn’t really have much to do with Ward himself—I hadn’t heard of 99% of the draftees until 72 hours ago—it had to do with what people were saying about him. Specifically, the comparison to Jeff Mathis seemingly everyone with Internet connection made within 10 minutes of his selection. What excited me about the likening of the two players wasn’t the prospect of another Mathis in Anaheim—I’d really rather not—it was that their juxtaposition provided me the perfect opportunity to re-open a door that had long been sealed: the Mathis-Napoli debate.
Well, “debate” might not be the right word. As far as I’m aware, there was never really much of a pro-Mathis contingent among Angels fans. It was pretty much Mike Scioscia vs. The World, and the world was in Mike Napoli’s corner. (Or at least not in Mathis’ corner.)
In their final three seasons as Angels teammates, from 2008–2010, Mathis and Napoli shared the team’s catching duties almost evenly: Mathis appeared in 235 games behind the plate, while Napoli appeared in 225. This happened despite a nearly 300-point OPS difference between the pair in Napoli’s favor, and Mathis becoming literally the worst hitter in baseball. When asked (almost daily) to justify Mathis’ place in the starting lineup, Scioscia would always point to Jeff’s superior run-prevention abilities, his most infamous quote on the subject coming in March 2009:
“If you string out 162 games, and you have one catcher who’s giving up one run a game less,” Scioscia said, “as net runs go, he’s 162 runs ahead. There’s a defensive aspect of catching we pay a lot of attention to. I think a catcher will influence a game more with his defense than he will with his four at-bats.”
If we assumed Scioscia’s math was right, and that Napoli really was one run worse a game, that’d mean Mathis was worth more than 23 wins on defense alone from ‘08-’10, more than making up for his -0.9 oWAR over that span. There was never any chance that one-run-a-game number was accurate, of course, but at the time there was no way to definitively say Scioscia was wrong. The only catching metrics around were divisive and dubious stats like cERA, leaving us all to guesstimate just how much value Mathis’ allegedly superior catching really provided.
Now, though, the quantifying of catcher defense/receiving is more or less complete. The framing revolution led the way, determining that divide between the best and the worst framers can be as much as 50 runs over a full season. Alongside framing numbers came blocking stats, with a gap of roughly six runs separating the top and bottom of the leaderboard. And last but certainly not least came the game-calling stat, introduced by Harry Pavlidis two weeks ago at ESPN, which is worth up to 25 runs a year.
With all this new information at our fingertips, what happens when we go back and apply it to Mathis and Napoli? Where do their 2008-2010 seasons stand with these new-fangled metrics? Will Scioscia’s much maligned decision-making be vindicated, or will the masses have been right all along?
Let’s start with their run values at the plate, then slowly work in their numbers behind it. For the suspense.
Hitting (and Baserunning)
As you’d expect, it’s Napoli in a landslide. New stats haven’t made the divide here any less jarring. Mathis begins the exercise in a nearly 100-run hole thanks to his .200/.264/.303 line, including a catastrophic 37 OPS+ in 2010. Tony Reagins watched that season unfold and decided, “yeah, Napoli is totally expendable.” Mathis, of course, followed that with a 38 OPS+ in 2011.
I should point out here that the runs listed above are not sums of their Adjusted Batting Runs, but rather of the Runs Batting stat that B-Ref uses as part of its Runs Above Average metric. It’s a very slight difference in terms of totals, but still worth noting.
The baserunning, meanwhile, is a wash. Both are pretty much average.
Difference: +91 runs, Napoli
Defense
This is the part where I mention this is all a very crude exercise. All these stats are working to quantify the same thing—i.e. runs above average—but that doesn’t mean we can just add them all up and come to some definitive conclusion about where everyone stands. If I wanted to do that, I’d probably have to do weighting and a bunch of other things that are way above my pay grade.
I bring this up now because this is where I go off-book with the numbers a bit. I initially just added up their Defensive Runs Saved totals, but then realized there’s a sort of game-calling component (RerC) to DRS for catchers in addition to the standard fielding and running-game stuff. Not wanting to double any measures, I ultimately decided to simply subtract their RerC totals from their overall DRS for ‘08–’10. Like I said: crude.
This alteration dropped Mathis’ defensive runs total from 23 to 14, and raised Napoli’s from -19 to -6. Foreshadowing!
Difference: +71 runs, Napoli
Framing/Blocking
Now things are getting interesting. According to BP’s Receiving Runs, which sums the runs saved and lost due to a catcher’s framing and blocking abilities, there was roughly a 10-run average receiving difference between the pair each season. Mathis was (and is) mostly above average across the board while Napoli was consistently in the red, resulting in a more than 30-run swing.
With one last metric to go, the initial gap has been more than halved. Progress, for sure, but the difference is still massive. There’s no way game-calling alone can bridge a nearly 40-run divide.
Can it?
Difference: +37.4 runs, Napoli
Game-Calling
Oh snap. If Scioscia were holding a mic, this is where he’d drop it.
No, Mathis wasn’t worth anywhere close to the 162 runs per season more that Scioscia estimated back in 2009, but it’s not like +102 runs over three seasons isn’t ridiculous in its own right. If someone from the future had come back to tell us that playing Mathis was alright because his powerful defense/receiving/game-calling trifecta was saving the team 3 wins per season relative to Napoli, we would have had that person committed.
And yet, here we are. Mathis never got out of the red in terms of overall value, but he didn’t have to. Napoli sailed right by him on account of atrocious numbers across the board behind the plate.
Difference: +10.6 runs, Mathis
Before you get working on your heartfelt apology letters to Scioscia and Mathis, remember again that this was a somewhat crude way of going about this. In reality, the value Napoli provided (mostly directly) on offense probably outweighs what he lost (mostly indirectly) on defense, even at a position involved in every single pitch. Just not by nearly as much as we’d all imagined.
Even if we concede that Mathis was the more valuable player behind the plate overall, that still doesn’t excuse the way the Angels handled Napoli. If the club was so aware of his defensive shortcomings at catcher, why keep him there so long? That Napoli never played a single game at first base—where he’s now a plus defender, mind you—until Kendrys Morales went down with his freak leg injury in 2010 is borderline criminal. In lieu of playing Napoli regularly at first or DH against lefties in 2008 and 2009, Scioscia opted for such luminaries as Robb Quinlan, Gary Matthews, Reggie Willits, Maicer Izturis, and Brandon Wood. Not a great look.
Scioscia probably made the right call in limiting Napoli’s innings behind the dish, but not in letting him rot on the bench. Whether or not Scioscia regrets this decision, it’s one he pays for every time Boston comes into town.
Meanwhile, Mathis just keeps chugging along in Miami, likely exasperating another fan base while providing plus value behind the dish in his 11th MLB season. There are probably worse things to aspire to if you’re Ward.
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