Of Catchers And Batting Average

Nice, long piece on Carter by Posnanski. One of the better sports writers out there. However, I do wonder about this:

"...But for some reason, it always seemed to me, Carter was never quite as big a star as he should have been. The Montreal teams he played on seemed to underachieve annually — he took blame for that. His clean-cut image and personality did not quite fit in with those wild New York Mets teams — he took blame for that, too. He played years past his prime — and for four different teams in his last four years — which probably led people to lose sight of his greatness. His relatively low batting averages (Carter never hit .300 for a full season) played a role, too..."

This struck me because historically, catchers are not known to hit consistently over .300. In fact, hitting .300 is an exception. So, relatively, he's in the norm.

Consider his long-playing contemporaries:

The highly regarded Carlton Fisk never hit .300 and his career average is only a couple of points higher than Carter. Bob Boone? Nope. Lance Parrish, Jody Davis, Rick Dempsey, Ernie Whitt, Jim Sundberg, Mike Scioscia? Nope. Tony Pena? Once he hit .301 but had a lower career average to Carter. Terry Kennedy never hit .300 but had a higher average and he's not in the Hall.

For the fun of it, what about the icons?

Roy Campanella and Yogi Berra were superior career sluggers and hit .300 a few times between them. Mickey Cochrane (sometimes cited as the greatest catcher ever) was .300 hitting beast but he did play in the live-ball era. Gabby Hartnett and Bill Dickey too. Each of whom had better career averages than another catcher widely considered the best ever: Johnny Bench who never hit .300 in a season. Well, he did in 52 games. Thurman Munson too hit for higher average before his life was cut short.

In recent times, the best hitting catchers I've seen are Ivan Rodriquez, Mike Piazza and Joe Mauer. All slugging their way to multiple .300 seasons - much like Campanella and Berra did. Time will tell if Mauer can keep up.

Food for thought.