.

1.  Tip o' the Johnny Bench Backwards Catcher Cap to 13of2, who has been talking about Shoppach all winter.  Now maybe he'd like to summarize for us what he likes about Shoppach.

2.  On to the shtick.

................

Forget about what the chart above DOESN'T tell you.  Consolidate in your mind for a moment what it DOES tell you.

Don't clutter your head with how predictive the chart is, what it tells you (or doesn't tell you) about the future, what the 9,000 reasons are that the chart might be misleading, such as the mix of pitchers that Shoppach caught, and all that.

What DOES it tell you?

It tells you that in about 500 major league games, Shoppach's defensive teams have given up a perfectly average number of runs.  Average in the sense of solid-average, in the sense of "fully up to standard."

...................

There is a baseline to measure against ... were Shoppach's PITCHING STAFFS average?  Did he return average scoreboard results when he had average pitchers, or good pitchers, or bad pitchers?

He's coming into his 10th pitching staff now, and we can ask how those staffs did throwing to him AND TO COMPETING catchers who worked with the same staffs:

The "average" of those team ERA's, estimated at 4.26, is going to be accurate give or take a few points.  The real average will be 4.21 to 4.31.  

Shoppach himself, as the backup catcher*, returned the same run-prevention outcomes as did the group including Victor Martinez, John Jaso, Dioner Navarro, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, and an assortment of fringe AAA/ML defensive specialists.

This overall defensive outcome -- 4.23 ERA in all of Shoppach's games -- captures ALL of the following skills ENTIRELY:

• SB%
• Framing
• Blocking, WP's
• Game calling
• Anything else we don't know about

Here's an article about how Shoppach goes all geek-o-matic on his knowledge of the current AL hitters.

The catchers against whom Shoppach was "competing" includes a string of bat-first catchers, but on the other hand, these catchers probably don't deserve the scoffing that fans give them.  Victor Martinez cruised through the CC Sabathia and Cliff Lee years in Cleveland; Jaso teamed with Shoppach on the 2010-11 Rays and those pitching staffs were among the best in the league.

Shoppach has a rep for being a bat-first catcher, but that rep is not based on the outcomes he has achieved with the teams he's played for.

From a purely sabermetric standpoint, Shoppach OVERALL has had average-solid defensive results, has performed as a Certified American League Catcher.  Sabermetrically, he would be fine in a starting role, and (more to the point) he is a catcher who is currently booked-up on the league's hitters.  As opposed to what Mike Zunino would be.

So, obviously a GM who could score such a catcher to play backup, the GM would be delighted to get him.  Speaking as an Arsenal fan, it's nice to have starting-caliber ballplayers on the bench.

.

NEXT