Every time a team signs an old catcher, we hear about how well he handles pitchers, which is a useful thing to rely upon in absence of substantive arguments because it’s difficult to quantify.

One simple attempt to evaluate a catcher’s various game-calling abilities is to determine his Catcher ERA, a stat proven useless here and elsewhere and valuable only because it is abbreviated CERA and so makes me think of George Michael Bluth.

Bengie Molina, for example, had a very low CERA in 2009. Of course, Bengie Molina spent the 2009 season catching one of the National League’s best pitching staffs in one of the league’s best pitcher’s parks.

Anyway, just for kicks, I figured I’d point out that Molina — for all his reputation as a great handler of pitching staffs — actually had the second worst OPS against of the five catchers who caught games for the Giants in 2009.

Of course, there’s a lot of small-sample sizes at play there, but pitchers throwing to Eli Whiteside, the Giants’ primary backup catcher, had a .654 OPS against as compared to a .695 OPS against when pitching to Molina.

What’s more, Whiteside only spent one of his 47 games catching Tim Lincecum.

That’s not to say Eli Whiteside is a better handler of pitchers than Bengie Molina, or much at all, really. It’s only to say that whatever rep Bengie maintains as a good pitcher’s catcher is probably undeserved or at least overblown.