The Real Value Of Ryan Doumit

The Pittsburgh Pirates have had a lot of question marks in their lineup for the last several years. Most recently one of the biggest question marks there has been catcher.

Ryan Doumit was called up by the Pirates in 2005 and has started more games behind the plate than anybody since then. There are many Doumit-haters around Pittsburgh, and his name shows up in trade rumors every year. However, injuries have kept him out of the serious trade talk the last couple years and there hasn't been a competent back-up for him in the system since he's been the starter. When Tony Sanchez was drafted in 2009, it seemed that Doumit's days were numbered. However, Sanchez had a 2010 full of setbacks and hasn't performed well in 2011 thus far, which has me questioning the future of the catching position once again.

Now, my question is, what about Ryan Doumit? How is he as a major league catcher? Let's take a look.

There are 3 elements with any major league player, offense, defense, and health. Doumit struggles mightily in 2 of those 3 things, but actually performs quite well in the 3rd. Let's do the good news first.

I compiled the 2010 statistics for all the catchers that had over 300 plate appearances. After running the numbers, here is your average major league catcher, excluding the ones that didn't get over 300 plate appearances. (note, Doumit had the 9th most plate appearances last year, he's on pace to be much lower than that this year):

Catcher: 458 PA, 408 AB, .266 AVG, .337 OBP, .405 SLG, .742 OPS, 1.75 K/BB

and here's what Doumit would do if he played 162 games in one season, which is of course completely implausible, but the numbers will help us:

Doumit: 582 PA, 525 AB, .268 AVG, .332 OBP, .440 SLG, .772 OPS, 2.5 K/BB

You can tell from those numbers that Doumit outperforms the average catcher pretty easily offensively. It's safe to say that Doumit is a top 15 offensive catcher in the league, easily. That puts him in the top half and makes him a no brainer as a major league starter. However, we can't only look at the offensive numbers.

Defense is a huge part of the catcher position. In fact, most teams will take a superior defensive catcher over a superior offensive catcher, because they feel that defense behind the plate and management of the pitching staff can save more runs than the bat can contribute. Doumit certainly doesn't fall into that stereotype, because he has been a well below average defender his whole career.

The Fielding Runs Above Average for Doumit is -13.9 for his career. He has saved his team more runs than a replacement level catcher would have only once in his career. In 2010 he cost the Pirates 15.5 runs over what a replacement player would have done. His career total is -13.9. His career total in runs added offensively over a replacement level player is 15.4, which shows you that he's been better than a replacement player would be (at least we can say that). He's not a great base-runner, and costs the team runs in that area of the game every year. All of that gives Doumit an 8.6 wins above replacement for his career. His average yearly WAR over the years is just over 1.

The injury issue is taken into account with the numbers I just mentioned. Obviously, you can't lose or contribute your team any runs or wins when you aren't playing, so you can basically look at those numbers as averages; you can't expect them to be any different if he starts playing more often or less often.

That said, when Doumit goes on the DL, another player has to take over for him, which is often detrimental, as it has been this year. Michael McKenry is an absolute fan favorite, but he just isn't as good an option at the Major League level than Doumit (McKenry owns a career .239/.274/.371 line, most of which came from minor league ball). It goes without saying that Doumit being so prone to injury hurts this team and lessens his value.

Knowing all of that, we can say that Doumit isn't an extremely valuable piece of this organization. He is one of the better hitting catchers in the league, which I think the Pirates get more value out of than most other teams because they are offensively weak at almost all of the other positions. However, Doumit hurts the team with his defense and baserunning, and when you put everything together he doesn't get you more than a win or two more than a guy like McKenry would over an entire year.

Having said that, I think Doumit takes more criticism than he should. Pittsburghers love to focus on the negatives with their baseball team, since that is seemingly all there has been (up until this year), which has magnifified Doumit's weaknesses and made the good parts of his game go unseen. It's nice to have a catcher that can hit the ball over the fence 15-20 times a year, even if he does cost you some runs on defense and won't play more than 120 games for you. If the Pirates can get Chris Snyder back next year or find another solid back-up catcher (possibly McKenry), I think Doumit is a much better option than people think he is.