Last year about this time there was a pretty popular post about Pudge Rodriguez’s ability to thwart the running game. Last year, Pudge’s caught stealing numbers have suffered a little bit, but his reputation made him the catcher that was least likely to be run on. He led Major League Baseball with .51 stolen base attempts per nine innings despite throwing out only 29%. This year a slimmer and quicker Rodriguez gunned down 45% of would-be stealers. However, he was no longer the most feared catcher in the game, as 3 other starting catchers had fewer attempts.
Player Inn SBA SBA/9 Inn CS% Yadier Molina 959.1 35 .33 55% Brad Ausmus 1065.2 57 .48 26% Joe Mauer 999.2 54 .49 38% Rod Barajas 1025.1 67 .59 32% Ivan Rodriguez 1032.2 68 .59 45%
The table shows the catchers who had the fewest attempts per 9 innings. Not included in the table, but right behind Rodriguez was Chris Snyder. What’s interesting is that while the attempts against Pudge increased modestly in 2005, the attempts against the leaders were significantly below Pudge’s leading mark from last year.
So was this a league wide phenomenon? Comparing total attempts the last two years, the difference was only 55 fewer attempts (out of approximately 3000). I’m not sure what caused the shift, but a handful of catchers had the luxury of not being tested nearly as much as in the past.
As for what this means for Pudge, his reputation didn’t loom quite as large. In 2005 opposing managers probably noticed Rodriguez that Rodriguez had slipped in 2004. Will his reputation come back in 2006? He certainly will stand to benefit from having 3 left handers in the rotation, two of which are amongst the best at holding runners. The Tigers should be able to control the running game. The bigger question will be keeping the runners off the bases in the first place.
It’s not surprising that managers were more willing to run on Pudge this season. As you said, he wasn’t very sharp on those occasions in 2004 when runner did go, and it was widely reported (I remember seeing it multiple places during Spring Training). What I would like to see (maybe I should try to look it up) is how the attempts were spread through the season. ie, Were managers running more often early in the season and later learned their leason (or reading scouting reports) or were attempts spread through-out the season?