from Amazon
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Brandon Inge
To catch or not to catch:
Through this past Sunday, Inge’s career batting line while playing catcher has been .199/.260/.330, and while at third base it’s been .257/.329/.433.
Me, from THT09:
Another interesting finding is that the players who were considered catchers but were moved to another position later on were really good hitters. Those 91% who remained at catcher were -9 runs per 650 PA through age 28, and -10 from age 29 onwards. The other 9% were zero runs through age 28 (i.e. average) and +10 runs from age 29 onwards. It is possible that these players, freed from their catcher shackles, went on to be the good hitters they always were.
This is why we need to consider Catcher as a separate pool when applying the positional adjustments.