Hip hip Jorge!!

If I asked 100 baseball fans who was the best catcher in baseball right now I bet very few would say Jorge Posada, but he's somewhat quietly having his best hitting season ever. His OBP is .415 and he's slugging .536!! This gives him a higher OPS that players like Vlad Guerrero and Ryan Howard catching. He's currently at 13th best in the majors (tied with David Ortiz for 7th if you look at OPS+).

Of course, he's been one of the best hitting catchers since he got the starting role over 10 years ago. The question is, does he have the credentials, given a few more years and a reasonable decline, to make the hall of fame?

There are 14 HOFers that were primarily catchers. 3 played in the 19th century, so I won't consider these since the game was quite different. The remaining 11 are Cochrane, Dickey, Hartnett, Schalk, Campanella, Berra, Ferrell, Lombardi, Bench, Fisk, and Carter. I'll go ahead an assume Piazza and Rodriguez get in and include them in the comparison.

First, lets start with games caught. I'll note here, that Ivan Rogriduez has caught a LOT of games, 2032 to be exact. If he plays until 2009 he could break Fisk's record of 2226 games caught. (I'm not 100% sure on this record, but I think its right). Of course, he's not playing well so that is no guarantee. Jorge has 1321 games caught, which means he'd need to catch until the end of 2010 to reach about a median level for a HOF catcher. This is doable, but he'll be 38 at that point and catching will eventually take its toll.

Second, hitting. In this regard he is right up there with the best hitting catchers with the exception of Piazza who is head and shoulders above everyone else. His OPS+ for a career is 125, right in line with Bench (126), Dickey (127), Berra (125) and Campanella (124). He's yet to hit a decline phase in his career, but given that he's currently having his best season, his decline may be later than some others.

The third issue is obviously fielding, which I don't want to go into because its very difficult to measure a catcher's defensive abilities because putouts are useless, calling a game is difficult to judge, passed balls are highly dependent on the pitchers, etc. I've heard talk about Jorge being below average for a catcher in terms of calling a game, but I tend not to listen to baseball announcers as most of them are stupid.

The 4th issue, in my opinion, deals more with whether he WILL make the HOF rather than whether he SHOULD make the HOF. That is of course postseason success. He's won 3 rings (only played 8 games in 1996 and not on that postseason roster), which is worth a little bit of boost to him.

So in conclusion, Jorge Posada is not currently a HOFer, but he could be. Besides catching for 4-5 more years, he needs a decent decline hitting wise since I don't think he's getting bonus points for fielding. As one of my favorite Yankees I'll be cheering for him.

UPDATE - Apparently Tom Verducci must read my blog because there is an article today on CNNSI about the great year Posada is having.