Jonathan Lucroy: Best Baseball Player in the World?

[SRB]

With renewed talk of Lucroy being a potential MVP candidate this season after another monster game tonight, I was pretty amazed looking at some of Lucroy's advanced metrics.

 

We all know by now that both metrics and industry insiders alike praise Lucroy's pitch-framing abilities as a defensive catcher, but how does Lucroy's value stack up to the rest of MLB when you add everything together?

 

This is not sophisticated analysis, but I started by looking at the Fangraphs fWAR leaderboard for the past two and a half seasons (2012-2014). Lucroy is the #26 position player in baseball over that span using fWAR.

 

1) Mike Trout, 24.7 fWAR

2) Andrew McCutchen, 18.3 fWAR

3) Miguel Cabrera, 16.9 fWAR

...

5) Carlos Gomez, 14.0 fWAR

...

22) Ryan Braun, 10.7 fWAR

...

26) Jonathan Lucroy, 10.3 fWAR

 

However, fWAR does not currently take into account pitch-framing, which most analysis agree is perhaps Lucroy's asset as a catcher. There aren't any clearly accepted metrics to measure pitch-framing (or to cleanly distinguish the impact of the catcher from the impact of the pitcher), but one existing leaderboard is Matthew Caruth's at StatCorner: see here and here.

 

Over the past three seasons, Lucroy has been quite impressive according to this metric:

 

2012: +22.9 RAA (#5 in MLB)

2013: +29.7 RAA (#1 in MLB)

2014: +14.6 RAA (#1 in MLB)

 

If you buy the metric, that means Lucroy has saved an additional 67.2 runs on defense over the past three seasons just through his ability to get called strikes through pitch framing. Now, the two statistics may not be directly translatable, but if you add this value to Lucroy's existing 2012-2014 fWAR he shoots up the leaderboards:

 

1) Mike Trout, 24.7 fWAR

2) Andrew McCutchen, 18.3 fWAR

3) Jonathan Lucroy, 17.0 fWAR

 

However, this is sort of like comparing apples to oranges, because catchers are almost always going to get less playing time due to the rigor and difficulty of the position compared to a position like centerfield. Over this same time frame, Lucroy has 309 G versus Trout's 361 G and McCutchen's 382 G. (Lucroy also hit lower than #3/#4 in the order for most of the last three seasons, so he was also missing out on PA that way.)

 

If we simply average each player's fWAR to a standardized 350 G, then you get the following leaderboard:

 

1) Mike Trout, 23.9 fWAR

2) Jonathan Lucroy, 19.3 fWAR

 

So on a per-game basis, Trout is still a little ways ahead. But there is always going to be a fairly large margin of error in this type of statistic, and I would argue that a guy who is the #2 player in baseball over an expanded timeframe should a least be in the discussion for "best player in baseball." You also have to take into account whether catcher is an inherently more difficult position to fill than centerfield (even beyond the weighing involved in fWAR), as well as the fact that Lucroy is trending up while Trout is trending down to a certain extent (not that Trout isn't still at an MVP-level). You also have to remember that this "analysis" is based on stats prior to Lucroy's huge, 2-HR game tonight, which will surely bump his 2014 fWAR up a few runs.

 

I'm not claiming that these statistics are especially precise or definitive, but I think it is interesting to see. I'm not cherry-picking stats or going out of my way to make Lucroy look good: I'm just adding pitch-framing to his existing fWAR totals, and the numbers suggest that he is at least in the same tier as Mike Trout. Really quite incredible.

[3and2Fastball]

Catcher>Outfielder

 

I'd still take Trout

 

However yes, Lucroy is fantastic

[dlk9s]

Probably best player of all-time.

[Pugger]

Its a darn shame he won't start the ASG this season.

[saget]

Catcher>Outfielder

 

I'd still take Trout

 

However yes, Lucroy is fantastic

 

Trout can't pull this off this kind of swag. GOAT.

 

https://twitter.com/Brewers/status/478318866976604160/photo/1

[DoubleSwitch]

Jonathan Lucroy: Best Baseball Player in the World?

 

Nope, best person in the world.

[Bombers]

Just to put some comparison to his season vs the other catchers in MLB

AVG

1. Lucroy - .340 (2nd place in all of MLB)

2. Suzuki (MIN) - .305

 

OBP

1. Lucroy - .401 (6th place in MLB)

2. Ruiz (PHI) - .382

 

SLG

1. Lucroy - .537 (14th place in MLB)

2. Montero (ARZ) - .441

 

OPS

1. Lucroy - .937 (10th place in MLB)

2. Montero - .798

 

#OurCatcherRakes

[vegasbrewcrew1993]

If Lucroy played for a big market team everyone on tv would be kissing his butt. He barely gets any respect because he plays in Milwaukee. It's a damn shame too because Lucroy is such a great player. A catcher's main responsibilities are on the defensive side of the game. Lucroy handles those responsibilities very well. When you add into the equation that he can hit at an MVP level, it makes it all the more impressive. Molina is better defensively. In fact I think he's tied with Pudge Rodriguez for best defensive catcher over the last 25 years. However, I think Lucroy beats him when it comes to hitting. Luc and Gomez are this team's 2 best players by far. If Braun goes back to being Braun, then that's 3 MVP level players the Brewers will have in their lineup.

[SRB]

Probably best player of all-time.

 

Hey, I know the title sounds like absurd homerism, but I'm just adding the numbers here. Nothing fancy about it.

 

If Lucroy: (1) didn't play in Milwaukee, and/or (2) had been an elite prospect coming up, I feel like there would be a lot more discussion of how great he has been the last few years.

[Dead Simmons]

St. Louis got up in arms when they saw this video. But JL is clearly better this year. But Yadi will be "grandfathered" in this year, and Lucroy will get the nod next year. Now Jeter starting for the AL is a different (worse) situation.

 

http://thecardinalnationblog.com/2014/06/18/brewers-lucroy-draw-all-star-attention-any-way-possible/

[Funketown]

World? Dude could star for the Monstars in Space Slam.

[Point Beer Is Best]

If Molina had the same stats playing on a first place team, he's likely the runaway MVP candidate.