So, I was thinking about something the other day: what position, at least among non-pitchers, has been the Mets’ strongest over the years? What’s been the weakest? Traditionally, it’s been well-remarked over the years that the Mets’ weakest has been third base, a position that was notoriously difficult to fill for thirty-plus years. However, since the mid-80s, the Mets have seen Ray Knight, Howard Johnson, Dave Magadan, Bobby Bonilla, Jeff Kent, Edgardo Alfonzo, Robin Ventura, Ty Wigginton, and David Wright. That’s an outstanding twenty years at the hot corner.

Also, I’ve always felt the Mets have been strongest behind the plate, at least as a gut instinct. It seems like you can imagine a simple, elegant chain of backstops going nearly back to the Mets’ roots, where one guy hands the reigns off to the next: Jerry Grote to John Stearns to Gary Carter to Todd Hundley to Mike Piazza.

Those who know me know I’m not going to be satisfied with a mere gut instinct; it wouldn’t be fun or precise. So here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to start a string of positional retrospectives, looking at how the Mets have filled their rosters over their 47 years of existence. These profiles will have two parts: first, I’ll compare how the Mets have done filling positions to the other NL teams, and, second, I’ll take the opportunity to write a few things about the notables who’ve played at each spot. After we’ve done all the position players—I’ll need some time to think up a different framework for pitchers—I’ll provide a summary that recaps what’s been discovered.

We’ll start with catcher, the spot my gut suggested was their strongest over the years.

How Hard Is It to Find a Catcher?

This is something we’ll talk about in more detail after we’ve gone through everything, but I did figure I might as well start presenting the data. I created a bunch of simple criteria to help me quickly analyze how each team’s performed. Take a look at the following chart:

First, a quick word of explanation on what these numbers mean:

Yrs is the number of years the team’s been in existence, since 1962. I’m only using NL teams, so the Brewers only get credited for 11 years. Why? It cuts my work load in half. #Strs is just the number of different players to serve as a starter for the team. A starter is as a player who leads the team in games started at the position, regardless of how many he gets. SLE stands for starter’s life expectancy. It’s just the years of post-1962 club existence divided by the number of different starters the team’s used.

The next two stats aren’t focused on player continuity from one year to the next, but stability inside each individual season. I figured teams happy with their catching situation would be less likely to give starts to other players. LGS stands for leaders’ games started. On average, how many games started did the team leader (what we previously defined as the starter) have? 10%/yr is the average number of players who started 10% of the team’s games at the position each season.

The last two categories look at production. The first is sOPS+, available from Baseball-Reference.com. Think of it as OPS+, but we aren’t comparing the hitter to all major league hitters, just all major leaguers who play that position. A catcher who has a sOPS+ of 100 is a league-average offensive catcher. The second is Baseball Prospectus’s Rate stat. BP’s fielding stats are far from perfect, but they’re better than anything else that’s historically available. Like sOPS+, 100 is league-average defense at the position.

While I won’t be sure until after I’ve completed all positions, I thought teams would have more trouble developing catchers than they did. Catcher is generally a very difficult position to fill due to the rigors and demands of the job. It’s rare to find a guy who can both hit and field, they get injured often, and I find young catching prospects tend to develop in spits and spurts. You’d think that teams would have a lot of trouble finding a guy to hold down the fort for four or five years. Of course, this could swing the other way. Since catchers are so difficult to find, teams feel compelled to stick with mediocrities longer than they should. As a result, you see teams playing guys like Greg Olson, Scott Servais, Joe Oliver, Clay Dalrymple, and Fred Kendall longer than they would prefer.

So the Mets are pretty much middle of the pack across the board. The big reason is that while they have had some outstanding players, there have been some dry spells and instability in between, particularly early in their history and recently. Also, while those big players were great at their peaks, they also had their moments of mediocrity (Hundley early in his career, Carter late, Grote throughout).

Anyway, just for fun, my top five organizations at developing catchers since 1962:

5. Philadelphia Phillies

I doubt very many consider the Phillies to be a catching-rich organization—there’s hardly a star in sight. But it’s been a very productive position for the organization on the whole, one that’s seen both stability and production. Dalrymple was nothing special, but he was capable defensively and he held the position from ’62 to ’67. After that, the organization struggled a bit before finding Bob Boone, one of the very best defensive catchers of all time, who was also an above average hitting catcher with the Phils. After Boone left in 1981, the team focused on finding bats without worrying much about defense, using Bo Diaz, Ozzie Virgil, Lance Parrish, Darren Daulton, Benito Santiago, and Mike Lieberthal. Daulton and Lieberthal are particularly underrated players.

The top team sOPS+ at catcher in a season:

   Team       Year   sOPS+     Starter
1. Dodgers    1997     168     Mike Piazza
2. Braves     1965     165     Joe Torre
3. Phillies   1992     162     Darren Daulton
4. Dodgers    1996     158     Mike Piazza
5. Reds       1965     157     Johnny Edwards
5. Braves     1966     157     Joe Torre

4. Cincinnati Reds

The secret to the Reds’ success? Employing two guys named Johnny for nearly twenty years. While Bench’s exploits are well documented, Edwards wasn’t a bad player either, and, as the above chart displays, he actually had the best season, offensively speaking, of the two. After Bench retired, the Reds never quite found the right players to take over—their best were Bo Diaz and Jason LaRue—but the dynamic duo are enough to put them in the number four slot.

3. St. Louis Cardinals

The most interesting thing about the Cardinals is that they’ve been successful both ways. First, they went with offense over defense; then, they did the reverse. From 1962 to 1980, the Cards used Gene Oliver, Tim McCarver, Joe Torre, and Ted Simmons (why doesn’t he have a spot in Cooperstown?). While they were never bad defensively—and McCarver was pretty good—they were an offensively minded group. Then they brought Darrell Porter aboard, who became the bridge between the glove men and the hitters. Porter was someone with great defensive skills who was a consistently underrated hitter, too. He only hit .247 over his career, but his secondary average was .332, and he was credited by Whitey Herzog for being the linchpin of those mid-80s Cardinals teams.

After that they went heavy on fielding, utilizing Tom Nieto, Mike LaValliere, Tony Pena, Tom Pagnozzi, Mike DiFelice, Mike Matheny, and Yadier Molina. Many of them couldn’t hit much, but they were among the best defensive backstops of their time.

2. Pittsburgh Pirates

Like the Phillies, not many would credit the Pirates for having great catchers. It certainly took me by surprise. Over the years they’ve had some outstanding catchers. They started out with Smoky Burgess—a hell of a hitter—and moved onto the solid Jim Pagliaroni. In 1969, they found Manny Sanguillen, a player Bill James once described as the exact opposite of Darren Daulton, though a player nearly as successful. Sanguillen was a good defensive backstop who could run and hit line drives all day but never took a walk.

The one thing the Bucs have always seemed to understand when it came to catchers was when to turn away. They almost never kept a catcher a year too long, and they were always willing to use them to the best of their natural abilities. One of the better examples? Mike LaValliere, a pudgy, good defensive catcher, and Don Slaught, a slight, poor defensive catcher who could belt out line drives. They played together for a several years and flourished, mostly because the Pirates knew their limitations.

Jason Kendall was also a hell of a hitter in his prime.

1. Los Angeles Dodgers

Unlike the Phillies and the Pirates, the Dodgers’ success behind the plate should come as a surprise to no one. They’ve featured Johnny Roseboro, Tom Haller, Joe Ferguson, Steve Yeager, Mike Sciossia, Mike Piazza, Paul Lo Duca, and Russell Martin, all, except the last two, rated among Bill James’ top 100 in his New Historical Abstract. It’s a superb tradition that dates back to the Roy Campanella days in Brooklyn.

And, for more fun, the three worst franchises at developing catchers:

3. Milwaukee Brewers
2. San Diego Padres
1. Houston Astros

For what it’s worth, I have the Mets ranked seventh. This hasn’t been a very Mets-centric article, but please check back on Wednesday for a more complete idea of the Mets’ standing and the sorts they’ve employed behind the plate over the years. I’ll make up for it in spades. I promise.