You know what two words keep coming up around the Mets this offseason that really scare me?
Bengie Molina.
In his latest epic for MLB.com, Marty Noble, after firing off a few shots at out-of-touch bloggers, writes:
Bengie Molina and Rod Barajas are available and the Mets have their eyes on both. Barajas is younger and has more power. Molina has been a productive hitter with the Giants, but his thick body is 35.
OK, let’s define “productive hitter.”
In his three years with the Giants, Molina produced a 90 OPS+ over 1606 plate appearances. Over those same three years, the average National League catcher produced a 91 OPS+.
Does that make Molina a productive hitter? No. It makes him an average hitter for a catcher, which is kind of like being an average musician for a member of Nickelback.
Molina’s reasonable .742 OPS over that time is mostly fueled by his .440 slugging percentage. On one hand, it’s tempting to say that’s nice for a team that clearly lacked power in 2009. On the other hand, as Sam at Amazin’ Avenue pointed out today, a big part of the reason OPS is not a perfect stat is that it overvalues slugging in regards to on-base percentage.
And Molina’s OBP with the Giants was a miserable .302.
Not productive.
The good thing about how infrequently Molina reaches base, though, is that in the rare event he gets there, he’s an utter embarrassment. To the eye, he’s about the slowest player in the history of Major League Baseball. Statistically, he has regularly cost his team about 20 bases per season, according to BillJamesOnline.net.
Plus he’s 35, like Noble said, so he’s not getting any faster.
Defensively? Well, he moves about as well behind the plate as he does on the basepaths. Catcher defense is a tough thing to gauge statistically, but Driveline Mechanics recently put him right near the bottom of all Major Leaguers.
Here is one interesting tidbit about Bengie Molina: Five of the six players named Molina to ever play Major League Baseball have been catchers, and only three of them — The Cathing Molina Brothers — are related. The only non-catching Major League Molina was Gabe, a pitcher who wasn’t very good.
Tedquarters 
Zing!
Nickelback sucks.
Ted, I really hope someone from Minaya’s team is reading your columns and those from Amazin Avenue. Nice job.
Just say no to Bengie Molina. God, he’s terrible.
In the past 3 seasons, Molina has collected 55 HRs, 77 doubles and 2 triples; driving in 256 runs, collecting 422 hits and only striking out 159 times in 1518 at bats…for a NL catcher post-Piazza, that is solid production…
Do you really need a catcher to draw a lot of walks? What is the point, if he’s not hitting for extra bases, he’s better off giving his legs some rest on the bench…Brian Schneider’s OBP was 72 points higher than his batting average as a Met, how did that help the offense? It didn’t…
Molina’s Catcher’s ERA last season was 3.74, doesn’t give up a lot of passed balls and can throw out runners…he’s not ideal, but he’s not exactly Jorge Posada behind the plate either…Defensively, I’d prefer one of the other Molina brothers but he’s a good handler of pitchers as well…
Ideal catcher? No…but not the worst stop-gap especially considering the lack of RH power that the Mets showed last year…IMO, he’s basically a version of Ramon Castro that is capable of catching 1000+ innings per season…
I wrote about this last week: http://www.blueandorange.net/?p=770
He’s an awful player, vtmet. There’s no debating the issue really. He hits for moderate power and that’s it.
Here’s a prediction: if the Mets sign him to a two year deal, like most guys they sign, he’ll be absolutely useless by the time the contract expires.
Or as Marty Noble pointed out today
i agree and use the same arguments to say Murphy has no business being the starting 1B. Murphy’s OBP is similar but it’s not average for a 1B it’s the lowest of all 1Bs in the league and he is not a good fielder.
This is a fair point about Murphy’s offense — and obviously first basemen should hit much, much better than catchers. The important distinctions between Murph and Molina, though, is that Murphy is 24 and so theoretically on his way up, while Molina is 35 and most certainly on his way down. Also, the Mets would likely have to pay Molina at least 10 times what Murphy will make next season.
Ted Berg: Linking to subscription-only content at BillJamesOnline since 2009.
Whatever, that’s just my way of pushing people to subscribe. It’s cheap as hell and quite awesome.
Plus it bills quarterly, which is novel.