Update: Top Catching Prospects Produce High Career WAR

On Wednesday I wrote a post on the Toronto Blue Jays historical lack of a legitimate, young ‘franchise’ type catcher in the wake of the Travis d’Arnaud trade.

This is a semi-contiuation of that post. This time, instead of looking at solely the Toronto Blue Jays, I’ve gone back and taken a look at top ranked Baseball America catchers, and their career production in terms of WAR (Fan Graphs version).

In this study I choose a top 100 list cut-off date of 2009. The reason for this? Well, there is no science behind this criteria, simply put–catchers from 2009 & below have already produced at the MLB level.

For players on the list for multiple seasons, I’ve chosen to list their top ranking and it’s adjacent year.

Baseball America Top 100 Ranked Catchers

Stats:

• Median WAR: 3.2
• Average WAR: 10.7
• Average Prospect Ranking, Top 20 WAR Producers: 36
• Average Prospect Ranking, Bottom 20 WAR Producers: 59

Top 20 players don’t seem to ‘miss’. Here’s a listing of players that have received top 20 rankings:

Note: Top 20 selected due to 20 being the next set of 5 to d’Arnaud’s ranking–Travis d’Arnaud ranked #17 in 2012.

Note: Prospects that did not make the 2009 cutoff but are still earned BA top 20 distinction include: Jesus Montero, Devin Mesoraco, and Wil Myers before positional change to OF.

Outside of Salty and Ben Davis, every catcher of this list appears to be at least a 15+ WAR producer (Wieters & Santana are well on their way to eclipsing the 15 mark).

There are no ‘gimmies’ in the world of baseball prospects. But it does appear that the scouting community has somewhat of a handle on catching prospects. However, this does not automatically turn Travis d’Arnaud (or any player for that matter) into an automatic MLB producer.

Up to bat later next week, I’m going to change the criteria a bit (moving the 2009 deadline), and take a look at Baseball America Top 20 prospects career WAR for all positions.

Sources: FanGraphs, Jeff Zimmerman’s compiled list of BA prospects

UPDATE:

It appears that this type of study has been done adnaseum. Below, the Cliff Notes results of a 2012 study carried out by Jay Lyon Tymkovich, Claremont McKenna College

“Table 7. Base and expanded regressions, using Baseball America ranking, excluding players
34
?with WAR greater than or equal to 15.
Dependent variable: WAR. Number of observations: 704.”

 

Tymkovich did not include catchers– who were used as a control group– but I would say that our previous catcher research, coupled with the high levels of WAR for middle infielders, make a case for higher than average WAR production from prospects that inhabit ‘defensive’ positions on the diamond.