Blog Entry #5

As my favorite baseball writer and Twitter user Bob Nightengale tweeted shortly after news broke that Buster Posey has retired, there will be a fascinating Hall of Fame debate in five years about Buster Posey. It should end with him being voted as a first-ballot Hall of Famer as the best catcher of the 2010s.

Posey was one of the best offensive and defensive catchers throughout the 2010s and has the accolades to back that up as a four-time Silver Slugger, a Gold Glove winner, the 2010 Rookie of the Year, and the 2012 MVP.

One of the biggest and most obvious reasons that Posey should be in the Hall of Fame is that he was the best hitter on a dynasty, the 2010-2014 San Fransisco Giants. Posey had a 149 average OPS+ in the three years the Giants won the World Series. He won rookie of the year in the 2010 World Series championship season. He won MVP along with his second World Series in 2012. In 2014 he finished 6th in MVP voting and again won the World Series.

The main argument from those against the idea of Posey being a Hall of Famer is that Posey very clearly doesn’t have the surface level cumulative stats for induction. He only had 1,500 total hits, exactly half of the ultimate hits milestone to make a hitter a sure fire Hall of Famer. However, his stats shouldn’t be compared to the cumulative stats of a general array of hitters, they should be compared to other catchers. They’re not that far off most of the Hall of Fame catchers and his year by year stats justify that.

Posey had a career 129 OPS+. Johnny Bench had a 126 OPS+. No catcher ever has had 3,000 hits. Posey has more than Hall of Famer Roy Campanella (1,401).

Posey has the 14th highest JAWS rating of catchers all-time and 10 of the 13 catchers ahead of him are Hall of Famers—Joe Mauer is soon to make it 11 of 13. The JAWS rating is a good indicator of Posey’s impact because he really only had about seven or eight good seasons.

As for his defense, he caught a total of 1,093 games and was one of the best defensive catchers, according to Baseball Savant’s statcast framing data. Since 2015, he had the second most Runs From Extra Strikes with 61, second to Yasmani Grandal. He threw out runners at a 33% rate, which wasn’t the absolute best in the league but was above average.

Pairing the fact that he was the best offensive catcher and one of the best defensive catchers during his time, he has the resume to be a Hall of Famer.