In defense of Michael Barrett

Yes, no one would claim that Michael Barrett is the perfect catcher. He's had some baserunning blunders, his hitting has been less reliable this year than usual (though his power numbers are about normal), and his defense is hardly stellar. But before you say that he has to go - as my dad said to me tonight, precipitating all this - let's look at, you know, the actual stats.

Offense
Barrett is hitting .250 this year, which ranks him just 11th among 17 "qualified" catchers on ESPN.com. His .734 OPS ranks him 9th in that group, still not great. But Barrett's career averages are .267 and .756, and last year they were .307 and .885, both career highs. This year's slow start notwithstanding, signs suggest Barrett is getting better as a hitter. He's on pace for more homers and RBI this year than in any previous, as well.

Henry Blanco has a career BA of .224 and a career OPS of .654. So far this year he's hitting .194 and .481 (admittedly in very limited pre-DL time). Koyie Hill, called up when Blanco went on the DL, has one hit in 16 big-league at-bats. (You could talk about Barrett's baserunning blunders here, but it's not like Blanco has any speed to speak of, so it's doubtful he'd make any kind of significant upgrade on the basepaths just because Barrett has made a couple gaffes.)

Yes, it's possible you could replace Barrett's bat if you traded him. But if his defense is as bad as claimed, who would trade as good or better a bat for him? (And you'd really need a better bat to compensate for then having the 8-hole filled with someone who is probably doing pretty much nothing every time up.) On offense, Barrett wins.

Defense
Barrett has eight passed balls this year, which is not good. (By comparison, he had ten all of last year. The Gold Glove winner, Brad Ausmus, had one.) Of course, some of that is the staff he catches; they tend to be kind of wild. Still, 8 passed balls leads the majors. (Although Bengie Molina, who I think most people would say "Oh, good defensive catcher" about, has seven.) But Blanco has two passed balls in just ten starts. Barrett has 48 starts. If Blanco had 48 starts, he would have 10 passed balls, assuming accurate extrapolation. The point is: this is a hard staff to catch and Barrett is probably not doing a significantly worse job of it than anyone else would be, or at least not a worse job than Blanco. (Koyie Hill has no passed balls yet in four starts. Give that man the starting job!)

"Calls a good game"
This is something that is always offered to a catcher as praise even though it's totally nebulous and no one can really define it as anything other than "the pitcher's outing was good." If you have someone like Greg Maddux, say, who studies film rigorously, and he goes out and throws a one-hitter, did the catcher call a good game, or is Maddux hard-working and awesome? I wouldn't say that catchers have no effect on pitchers, but it's one of those probably-overrated intangible things that "baseball men" use as a way of avoiding sabermetrics.

"Catcher's ERA" is a ludicrously rough tool, but it's one way to look at how good a game someone has been calling. It's just the ERA of the pitchers while throwing to that catcher. For the Cubs, it looks like this:

Michael Barrett: 4.11
Henry Blanco: 4.04
Koyie Hill: 1.58

Barrett is #7 among qualified catchers in the majors. Doesn't sound too bad, and aside from Jason Kendall - whose Oakland staff has been ridonkulous so far - Barrett is within just over half a run of the top. But oh, look! Blanco is at 4.04!

In other words, over the course of 162 games, Michael Barrett will give up about 11 more runs thanks to the shittiness with which he calls games. That's one extra run (earned run, to be completely accurate) every 15 games.

Meanwhile, Michael Barrett's career RC/27 (that's runs created per 27 outs) is 4.85; Blanco's is 3.43. Which means that, for his career, Michael Barrett has, as an offensive player, been worth 1.42 runs more than Henry Blanco every seven games or so. Meaning that in the 15 games in which Barrett is allowing one more run, he's leading to roughly three more than Blanco is. Over the course of a season, a team caught exclusively by Henry Blanco and featuring nine Henry Blancos at the plate will give up 654.48 runs and score 555.66, and thus probably lose a lot. A team caught exclusively by Michael Barrett and featuring nine Michael Barretts at the plate will give up 665.82 runs, but it will also score 785.7, and almost certainly win way more games than the Hank White All-Stars.

It should be noted that the RC/27 number is career, since I didn't want to penalize Blanco too unjustly for his limited time this year. I did use his CERA from this year since that's the number my dad was so quick to cite. "Zambrano's ERA was much better to Blanco and Hill than it was to Barrett!" That may be so; it's obvious that Zambrano and Barrett have had their issues. But Zambrano is still just one pitcher on this staff; the others seem to have no more trouble pitching to Barrett than to Blanco. Barrett's slightly higher CERA, after all, was compiled in five times as many innings as Blanco's number, making it a little more impressive. (Hill's 1.58 is in four total starts, which is why I didn't even bother addressing it.)

In conclusion, everybody just calm down. Barrett's having a mediocre stretch, but the stats suggest he's just fine overall, and certainly better than anything else we have, in sum total. The potential slight advantage in Blanco/Hill CERA - if you even buy that CERA has much of anything to do with the actual catcher - is grossly outweighed by the drain on the lineup they'd be compared to Barrett. The stats have spoken.