Catchers CERA Leaders, 01-03

THE FORMULA

CERA= (ER/IP) X 9

CERA is the Catchers ERA or the ERA of the pitching staff of that team when that catcher is behind the dish.


SOURCES and ISSUES

What follows is a list of CERA leaders for the past three full seasons taken from the Bill James Handbooks.

As noted in Mr. Rosciams' article (see link below), these figures are not necessarily the best available. The reason for this is that CERA is calculated in this series of works by taking the total innings caught by a catcher without recording who was pitching during those innings. In essence what these numbers relate is how an individual catchers ERA compares to the overall team mark regardless of whether or not that catcher caught Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder or Rich Harden and Mark Redman.

We should also mention that CERA should also be normalized meaning that the teams overall ERA should play a part when discussing CERA. For Example Ra. Hernandez catches the wonderful A's pitching staff so of course his CERA will be lower than that of A.J. Pierzynski's totals on the Twins without necessarily meaning that Ra. Hernandez is a better catcher. A more indicative total is that of the DIFFERENCE column which show how each catcher performed in relation to his teams ERA.

In the following leaders lists CERA is listed first, followed by Team ERA in (parenthesis), followed by the difference between the Catchers CERA and his teams mark. A negative score in the difference column is good meaning the catcher improved his teams ERA by that much).


2003 LEADERS
Minimum 100 Games Caught

P.LoDuca-2.73 (3.16), diff: -0.43
Ra.Hernandez-3.48 (3.63),diff: -0.15
B.Santiago-3.53(3.73),diff: -0.20
Olivo-3.80(4.17),diff: -0.37
I.Rodriguez-3.84(4.04),diff: -0.20
D.Miller-3.88(3.83),diff: +0.05
J.Lopez-3.96(4.10),diff: -0.14
M.Lieberthal-4.11(4.04),diff: +0.07
J.Posada-4.13(4.02),diff: +0.09
A.Pierzynski-4.15(4.41),diff: -0.26

REFERENCES

Please also read Chuck Rosciam's review of CERA at:
http://wildpitch.blogspot.com/2004/08/catchers-era-new-defensive-measure.html

Please also refer to Keith Woolner's article
http://baseball-analysis.com/article.php?articleid=432]