PennyBall Catchers

Who should lead us behind the plate?

I'm making this a quick blog.  Thought about doing outfielders tonight, but I really want to just keep it light and easy.

I went back and forth between Matt Wieters of Baltimore and Kurt Suzuki of Oakland.  Their stats are really really close together. They differ in BA and SLG by only 10 percentage points, and OBP by 16% points.   But as it should be, it came down to defense and it looks as though Mr. Wieters beats out Mr. Suzuki in about every category.

Catcher


Matt Wieters, Oakland Athletics.  $400,000 in 2010

Mr. Wieters is a 6'5 right handed catcher out of Charleston South Carolina.  2010 was his first full season in the bigs since being drafted in the 1st round with the 5th pick overall of the 2007 draft out of Georgia Tech.  Notable Yellow Jacket Draftees include, Mark Texiera, Nomar Garciaparra, and Del Pratt (1916 American League RBI leader).

Matt's offense wasn't that hot but he is a catcher, and that isn't what he is getting paid to do.  He was 4th among catchers in the fielding percentage category, he had the lowest amount of passed balls (2) with a pretty bad pitching staff.  His Caught Stealing Percentage was #2 at .312.   Pretty good year as a catcher I would say.  A big paycheck will be following its way into his bank account if he keeps up these numbers.