How Are the Stars Being Acquired? Catchers

On to the next position: logically being the catcher spot. Let’s jump right into the list, based on WAR of players with at least 300 plate appearances at catcher:

Joe Mauer – drafted
Victor Martinez – traded
Brian McCann – drafted
Jorge Posada –drafted
Yadier Molina – drafted
Miguel Montero – amateur free agent
Mike Napoli – drafted
Kurt Suzuki – drafted
A.J. Pierzynski – free agent
John Baker – traded

Scoreboard:
6 drafted
2 traded
1 free agent
1 amateur free agent

70% of the list was developed by their current teams. Mauer is the poster child. I feel like I should’ve added a few empty spaces after Mauer’s name because he’s just that good. He was also the first overall pick in the draft, something that none of the other catchers can say. Here’s a list of rounds in which those six were drafted:

Mauer 1st
McCann 2nd
Posada 24th
Molina 4th
Napoli 17th
Suzuki 2nd

Well that portrays the inherent wackiness of drafting catchers. I did more research on this a while back and found the difference between picking a catcher between 31st and 60th overall and picking one between 61st and 90th overall is minimal at best and that drafting first round catchers doesn’t guarantee much of anything. That last point is obvious about any position, but really, evaluating catchers is extremely tricky. Those teams that do it well at least once try and hold onto their talented backstops as much as possible; maybe that’s part of the reason that only one free agent catcher is amongst the top ten, and his reputation is that of a jackass.