Jorge Posada in the Hall of Fame?

Summer is traditionally slow for sports, with only baseball and soccer being played and half the country not interested in soccer. As evidence of this paucity of sports stories ESPN devoted a rather long segment to the hot dog eating competition. Luckily there was a Yankee game on today. Watching the game today, one of the announcers mentioned that Reggie Jackson said Posada is a borderline Hall of Famer. When I think about it, I believe this is the case, but I know most non-Yankee fans will say that’s ridiculous. So the easiest way to prove something like that is clearly statistics.

To me if you are to be considered a Hall of Famer you need to be one of the top 2-3 players at your position for your era. So I looked for catchers who have made the all-star team at one point or another during Posada’s career. As of now there are 14 catchers who have made the all-star team at least once in that time and have over 500 career games (which excludes Mauer and McCann). These catchers are Posada, Sandy Alomar Jr, I-rod, Ramon Hernandez, Todd Hundley, Charles Johnson, Kendall, Javy Lopez, Victor Martinez, Damien Miller, Piazza, Pierzynski, Benito Santiago, and Jason Variteck.

Among these catchers Posada ranks 2^nd in OBP, 4^th in slugging and 2^nd in OPS. In each of these categories he ranks ahead of the new hot shot hitting catcher Victor Martinez. Posada ranks 5^th overall in home runs, but will pass Santiago with 10 more home runs and Lopez with 53. Assuming he has his average season of around 20 homers a year over the next 3 years he will certainly pass him. He ranks 5^th in RBI’s and will pass Lopez with 48 more RBI’s and Santiago with 98. There’s no reason to believe Posada doesn’t have at least 3 good years left in him as he’s having, so far, one of his best seasons offensively. The two catchers that rank ahead of Posada in many categories in this era are Piazza and Ivan Rodriguez. Both of those are sure fire Hall of Fame candidates; despite the fact Piazza was one of the worst defensive catchers to play the game. If Posada finishes his career with over 250 HR’s, over 1000 RBI’s and the second highest OPS of any catcher in his generation I’d say that’s hall of fame worthy. He also will also have been been the plate handling the pitching staff for a minimum of 4 World Series winners, compared to 0 by the other hall of fame catchers of his era.