Fun With Numbers: Matt Wieters vs Bengie Molina

After comparing Bengie Molina to Pablo Sandoval, I wanted to see how some of Molina's AA stats matched up against Matt Wieters, the #1 prospect in baseball. I was really shocked by the comparison, and it really left me scratching my head. Is Matt Wieters really the next Bengie Molina?

Here are each catchers numbers from AA.

Weird, huh? Of course, the sample sizes are sub-optimal, especially for Molina. But then again, anything over 200 plate appearances is large enough that you can't just completely dismiss it.

As I noted in the Sandoval vs Molina post, Molina bounced around between levels quite a bit in the minors, so it's hard to get a good read on how much of his production was talent and how much was luck. At the age of 21 he posted an OPS of .735 at AA, then went on to post an OPS of .956 and 1.003 at AA ball as a 22 and 23 year old respectively. I used his stats as a 21 year old in the Sandoval comparison since Sandoval played at AA as a 21 year old, and because that was the age at AA that Molina had the largest sample size.

In both the Molina vs Sandoval match-up and the Molina vs Wieters match-up we aren't really considering the whole picture, but it's just enough information that it creates a few problems with various solutions.

I think the most obvious thing to note here is that Molina had a career year during his time at AA at the age of 22 and 23, and for whatever reason he wasn't able to recreate the same level of production later is his career. It's possible that Sandoval also just went through a career year in 2008, and might plummet back down to his previous production level (.788 OPS at A+ in 2007), and it's possible that Wieters experienced a career year in 2008 as well.

There's something unsettling about the whole situation. My gut tells me that Wieters and Sandoval are both very much the real deal, and that Molina is the outlier in this situation, so I'll take that route for now, but I'll definitely keep this match-up in mind.




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Pablo Sandoval vs Bengie Molina

After posting a few times about Pablo Sandoval, I was a bit curious to see how he matched up against current Giants catcher Bengie Molina.

Molina spent time at advanced A ball during 2 separate seasons, and played at AA ball during 3 separate seasons, so the first thing I had to do was to determine which years to include in the comparison. Ultimately, I went with the largest sample size closest to the age the Sandoval played at each level. It might not be a perfect approach, but I think it provides a moderate baseline of stats for each player.

Here's their advanced A ball stats.

To keep things short and simple, using these numbers it looks like Sandoval is about 2 years ahead of Molina in terms of power and contact capacity, and about a year behind him in plate discipline.

On to AA stats (Notice that the best numbers I could come up with for Molina at AA ball were before the numbers used for the advanced A comparison. Like I said, Molina went back and forth between levels, so I went with what I felt matched up best).

Once again, Sandoval looks to be much more advanced in the power and contact departments, while falling a bit behind in plate discipline.

So, what does this all mean for Sandoval? Well, Molina has hit in the .275 to .295 range most of his career, with between 15 and 20 home runs a year (he usually averages about 450 to 500 plate appearances a year, so if you stretch his home run total out to 600 to 650 plate appearances you get 20 to 25 home runs a year). Not bad numbers for a catcher, but pretty lousy numbers for a guy who hits in the middle of the order.

If Sandoval gets 600 plate appearances, I think he could hit 20 to 40 points higher than Molina, and hit anywhere from 5 to 15 more home runs per year. That puts him in the .295 to .315 range with 25 to 40 home runs on the high side. That's pretty much in line with my other projections for Sandoval. I'm thinking maybe David Wright without the stolen bases and about half the walks? ...Read more