Lyflines runs through a chronology of the Jason Varitek affair, then gets down to some real nitty-gritty …
All that said, the big claim of the Varitek defenders is that his defensive contributions vastly outweigh his offensive deficiencies. He "calls a great game." He's a "master of handling the pitching staff." He "makes the pitchers on the staff better." We've heard it for years.
But is it true? I've long been skeptical, but I don't know how you'd measure it. I know that the pitchers tend to rave about him, but they raved about Alex Gonzalez, too. I know that somehow, other teams have good pitchers and good pitching staffs without Jason Varitek. I know that the Red Sox have tremendous resources involved in advance scouting and game planning. And I know that, in the end, the pitch doesn't get thrown if it isn't what the pitcher wants to throw. So, as I say, I've long been a skeptic on the extent of Varitek's influence behind the plate.
--snipping all the data--
I don't want to pretend that this "proves" that Varitek's game-calling is worse than anyone else's. I don't know. There's a ton of noise in this data set, no matter how you parse it. I will say this -- I've long felt that Varitek's importance behind the plate was over-stated and over-rated, and this data seems to support that position.
Is there an obvious flaw in this analysis? Beyond the noise, I don't see one. This is what the pitchers who have started at least five games in Red Sox uniforms with Varitek starting behind the plate, and at least five games in Red Sox uniforms with some other catcher starting behind the plate have done during Varitek's Red Sox career, normalized for innings pitched. I'm open to any and all methodology criticisms (though I'm not going to wade through box scores and do relievers and catching replacements without significant monetary inducement.)
Bottom line? The Red Sox should have a good-to-excellent pitching staff in 2009, and there's no compelling evidence to suggest that Jason Varitek's presence is required for that to be the case.
Summarizing the results of Lyflines' study … Using a method to "match" innings, he comes up with a 4.77 ERA with Varitek behind the plate, and 4.66 for other Red Sox catchers. Stripping
Tim Wakefield from the study -- Varitek rarely catches Wakefield -- the numbers are 4.80 for Varitek, 4.63 for everyone else.
Yes, there is a great deal of noise in the data. Yes, there probably is a more sophisticated way to study the issue. But it's hard to argue with the notion that
if Red Sox pitchers were better with Varitek behind the plate, we would expect to see different results than we're seeing here. Of course, it's notoriously difficult to find
any catcher with a measurably positive impact on his pitchers, while at the same time it's intuitively and anecdotally hard to deny that some catchers
do make a real difference.
So that's where we're at. That's where we're always at. Looking for evidence of something we know should be true, and not finding it. I've been told that the Red Sox front office does believe that Varitek has magical powers. But if they believed those magical powers resulted in two or three extra wins per season, wouldn't they offer him more than $5 million?
Rob Neyer
