The Launch Angle

I had been working on pitchers, but to be perfectly honest, profiling pitchers is my least favorite part of the process. It also has been awhile and it always is good to go back to the very beginning. There is no better player to do that with than Salvador Perez. Perez will likely be retiring after the season, so his lengthy and storied career is coming to a close.

Most casual fans and Hall of Famer voters look at counting numbers first when deciding whether someone is worthy of a vote. Perez certainly has some impressive ones when we look at the Hall of Fame register at catcher. His numbers certainly line up with the positional median and mean as we will see in a minute.

Based on that alone it would seem like he would be a slam dunk when his time comes to be on the ballot. However, the Hall of Fame Index requires us to look deeper. We not only use the formula I have created, but we also look at the components of that formula to explain why things happened the way that they did. First, let’s take a look at the counting numbers for all of the Hall of Fame catchers with Perez included with his numbers accurate to Saturday August 29th.

Catcher Counting Numbers

The Hall of Fame catchers averaged 1967 hits and Perez ends up pacing the group in home runs as well as runs and RBI. So, it would seem like he would be a fit. The entire idea behind the Hall of Fame index is not to say who is better than who, but who is a good fit for Cooperstown. If you are similar to other Hall of Famers then you likely should be in.

However, what we know is that counting numbers don’t tell the whole tale. We have problems with the differences in era, home ballparks, and other environmental factors like racism, war service, and other considerations. This why we utilize the index and all of the other tests. We will not compare Perez with the whole group. There are some people that will not make sense to compare Perez to. Obviously, comparing him with the legends of the position doesn’t make sense. So, we are going to look at the players most similar to him in counting numbers and compare them using the index.

If you are new to the index, the index is similar to Jay Jaffe’s JAWS formula. We were devising these formulas at the same time. Mine used to include win shares, but win shares is no longer being actively tracked. So, we use both baseball-reference.com WAR and Fangraphs WAR. We combine that with a peak value element where we take the top ten seasons for both formulas. When we add up all of those we get the index score.

Catcher Index

The whole idea behind the index is to compare players with other like players. We only compare players with others from the same position and we aren’t rank ordering players. We aren’t saying Torre was better than Hartnett. We are saying he is more fit for the Hall of Fame. At any rate, we can eliminate Hartnett and Torre because they are not similar at all.

One of the things we do not do is label any Hall of Famer as a mistake. That is less than kind and it ignores the individual reasons why someone might be included without the requisite numbers. So, instead we would label them as an outlier. The whole idea is to avoid what we might call the “if…then” argument. In other words, we should avoid the notion that if Rick Ferrell or say Ray Schalk are Hall of Famers then Perez must be one. We should not base someone’s fitness on an outlier.

So, it’s not that we should ignore someone’s candidacy either, but that there should be extenuating circumstances to warrant their enshrinement. If you have read my past articles then you know that Ernie Lombardi and Rick Ferrell are both outliers. That means that their numbers alone are not Hall of Fame quality numbers. Obviously, the Veterans Committee had their reasons for voting for them, but their numbers alone do not justify them.

What we will do from here is look at the offensive, defensive, MVP voting, and playoff numbers to back up this assertion. WAR can explain a great many things, but it should never be the only basis for doing something. Moreover, these numbers help explain why baseball-reference.com and Fangraphs.com landed where they did.

Offensive Numbers

In sabermetric circles, ten runs is equal to one win. So, Rick Ferrell is two wins better than Perez in terms of base running. That is probably enough to make up for the difference in OPS+ and the offensive winning percentages are very close. The runs created are very similar as well. So, we can say that they are very similar offensively.

Lombardi is clearly a step ahead of them even when you account for the era. The offensive winning percentage indicates that a team of Lombardi’s would likely advance to and win the World Series. A team of Perez’s or Ferrell’s would miss the playoffs. That is a pretty significant difference.

Obviously, offense is not the only thing that value is pinned on and we need to understand why BWAR and FWAR treat Perez so differently. We don’t see that here, so we need to look at the fielding numbers. That will likely explain the difference between BWAR and FWAR.

Fielding Numbers

So, as we can see, baseball-reference.com and Fangraphs.com treat Perez’s defense very differently. This is because baseball-reference.com largely leans on defensive runs saved which does not include pitch framing data. The methods used by Fangraphs include pitch framing data and they obviously don’t like Perez’s work behind the plate.

I include both because it is not my place to prefer one over the other. When we include both we get a much clearer picture of how he is viewed by a wide selection of sabermetric minds. It is also the reason why the index does not rank order players. It is not a precise instrument. It is also why we rely on multiple tests like offensive, fielding, and awards voting to give us an idea of who is most similar.

The MVP test is one where we compare a player’s MVP voting with how many times they were in the top ten in BWAR. A player is awarded ten points for an MVP, five points for a top five finish, three points for a top ten finish, and one point for a top 25 finish. Then, we look at how many times they finished in the top ten in BWAR with the same points attached.

Awards Voting

Based on all of the information we have seen so far we can safely say that Lombardi was a more qualified catcher than Perez. He is superior offensively and the defensive numbers are mixed as we have seen. Clearly, the MVP voters thought more highly of Lombardi than they did for Ferrell. So, we are basically down to Ferrell and Perez as the most apt comparison.

Officially, playoff performance is not a part of the index, but we know that voters and fans alike consider it when they are voting, so we shouldn’t ignore it. I am skeptical of relying too heavily on the numbers. They are smaller samples and some players don’t get the opportunity (as we will see). We can only blame them so much because baseball is a team sport.

I use playoff performance as more of a tiebreaker when a player is close. So far, Perez is not particularly close to being a legitimate Hall of Famer. Ferrell is his most relevant comparison point and he really wasn’t fit either based purely on the numbers. However, maybe we are missing something.

Playoff Numbers

Perez and his .661 postseason OPS are not particular compelling and certainly not enough to make up for his shortcomings everywhere else. Ferrell never had the opportunity to play in the postseason and Lombardi played five games worth of games. So, neither really had an opportunity to add to or detract from their Hall of Fame resume.

So, while Perez has some impressive counting numbers, the underlying numbers are just aren’t good enough. For one, he just didn’t draw enough walks to have the OBP necessary to stand out. Secondly, the pitch framing also limited his ability to stand out defensively.

There is no doubt he will get support when his time will come and it will be a mistake, but the voters are inclined to make those when they don’t look deeply at the numbers. Ironically, there are other active catchers that are eligible (J.T. Realmuto and Willson Contreras) that might be more fit. We will look at them next time.

Originally published in Thoughts from A Native Texan on August 29, 2026. Feature photo by Arturo Pardavila III, Creative Commons License.