Some things about Bengie Molina
You know what two words keep coming up around the Mets this offseason that really scare me?
Bengie Molina.
In his latest epic for MLB.com, Marty Noble, after firing off a few shots at out-of-touch bloggers, writes:
Bengie Molina and Rod Barajas are available and the Mets have their eyes on both. Barajas is younger and has more power. Molina has been a productive hitter with the Giants, but his thick body is 35.
OK, let’s define “productive hitter.”
In his three years with the Giants, Molina produced a 90 OPS+ over 1606 plate appearances. Over those same three years, the average National League catcher produced a 91 OPS+.
Does that make Molina a productive hitter? No. It makes him an average hitter for a catcher, which is kind of like being an average musician for a member of Nickelback.
Molina’s reasonable .742 OPS over that time is mostly fueled by his .440 slugging percentage. On one hand, it’s tempting to say that’s nice for a team that clearly lacked power in 2009. On the other hand, as Sam at Amazin’ Avenue pointed out today, a big part of the reason OPS is not a perfect stat is that it overvalues slugging in regards to on-base percentage.
And Molina’s OBP with the Giants was a miserable .302.
Not productive.
The good thing about how infrequently Molina reaches base, though, is that in the rare event he gets there, he’s an utter embarrassment. To the eye, he’s about the slowest player in the history of Major League Baseball. Statistically, he has regularly cost his team about 20 bases per season, according to BillJamesOnline.net.
Plus he’s 35, like Noble said, so he’s not getting any faster.
Defensively? Well, he moves about as well behind the plate as he does on the basepaths. Catcher defense is a tough thing to gauge statistically, but Driveline Mechanics recently put him right near the bottom of all Major Leaguers.
Here is one interesting tidbit about Bengie Molina: Five of the six players named Molina to ever play Major League Baseball have been catchers, and only three of them — The Cathing Molina Brothers — are related. The only non-catching Major League Molina was Gabe, a pitcher who wasn’t very good.
