Varitek agrees to one year deal with Sox ($5 million)

Synovia said:

Lemme go back and check. Might have the wrong pitcher. One of them had 45 ish plate appearances for Cash, and gave up back to back homeruns in the 7th or 8th inning in a game against Tampa Bay. I lost the thread that had it on SoSH

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The pitcher doesn't really matter. I get the point and, as I said, I don't think its all that it's really that convincing. That's only dealing with one pitcher, and the same splits exist for nearly all of them.

Synovia said:

Possibly, but is the conclusion that Varitek is good, or Cash is bad?

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Considering that Varitek lead the league in CERA among qualifying catchers this past season, I'd go with him being good.

Foley said:

The pitcher doesn't really matter. I get the point and, as I said, I don't think its all that it's really that convincing. That's only dealing with one pitcher, and the same splits exist for nearly all of them.
Considering that Varitek lead the league in CERA among qualifying catchers this past season, I'd go with him being good.

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Or, the pitching staff is good.


If CERA swings wildly over years, it most likely swings wildly during the year.

Synovia said:

Or, the pitching staff is good.

If CERA swings wildly over years, it most likely swings wildly during the year.

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The staff may be good, but there were catchers on better staffs with higher CERAs: Soto, Snyder, Kendall, Navarro.

CERA may not be constant within the season, but there is a far greater swing from season to season than from month to month or start to start. And even still, the effect of said swings should effect Cash just as much as Varitek.

CERA's a flawed statistic, and Tek doesn't save .5 runs per game. That being said, I don't doubt that Tek has a psychological effect on some of the pitchers. I'd guess some are more comfortable throwing to him, more so than someone else. So in that sense he is valuable to the team. His return won't disturb any existing chemistry with pitching staff.

Foley said:

The staff may be good, but there were catchers on better staffs with higher CERAs: Soto, Snyder, Kendall, Navarro.

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How do you say they have higher CERA with better staff? How do you seperate?

Synovia said:

How do you say they have higher CERA with better staff? How do you seperate?

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Looking at the staffs ERA as a whole. Varitek's CERA was over 1/3 of a run lower than the Red Sox team ERA (3.66 v 4.01). None of the other catchers I mentioned (all of which were on teams with a better team ERA than the Red Sox) had a gap that large between their CERA and the teams ERA.

In fact, of the 17 starting catchers with enough playing time to qualify, no catcher saw such a large difference between team ERA and their CERA. The closest after Varitek was Brian McCann, whose CERA was .21 lower than the Braves team ERA.

I think Cash just sucked. But seriously we need another young catcher. Maybe Kottaras or Brown can step up but who knows. Salty is the name that I keep hearing but Texas is playing hard to get. Not giving up Buccholz, sorry!

A huge part of the Sox not already acquiring Salty are the concerns of him being able to be a full time catcher, along with the high asking price.

So who was better Kevin Cash or Doug Mirabelli?

My favorite backup Red Sox catcher was Bob Montgomery.

I'll never forget the game he went like 4-4 or 4-5 and was interviewed after the game. he was asked to comment on the game he had that night and he said "how was tonight? ... well, it was a great season."

Foley said:

Varitek's CERA was over 1/3 of a run lower than the Red Sox team ERA (3.66 v 4.01). None of the other catchers I mentioned (all of which were on teams with a better team ERA than the Red Sox) had a gap that large between their CERA and the teams ERA.

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And you don't think catching Beckett, Lester, and Matsuzaka, the three best pitchers on the staff, and not catching Wake, had anything to do with that?

Synovia said:

And you don't think catching Beckett, Lester, and Matsuzaka, the three best pitchers on the staff, and not catching Wake, had anything to do with that?

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Like I said before, when you mentioned that exact same fact: "Cash did catch Lester and Matsuzaka a few times last year. And the splits in those starts versus Variteks starts were fairly significant in favor of Varitek."

With few exceptions, everyone on the pitching staff pitched better when caught by Varitek rather than Cash.