2008 Rangers Catcher (who to keep for next year)

We’ve known all year that the Rangers have a really difficult decision to make.  They have 4 guys that can hit as good or better than an average catcher.  They have some guys that have the ability to play multiple positions.  Point is, they have 4 major league caliber catchers when they need no more than 2, and really they can dump 3 of them and pick up a veteran out of the trash heap (a guy that can hit lefties if Laird is dealt?).  And their max value is at catcher, none are particularly valuable at any other position.  The question is who to keep and who to dump, along with how many?  Before looking into this I really have no opinion on who to keep (I have had many opinions, but they changed weekly).  We know what Laird is capable of.  Salty, we have a good idea of, but he's also the youngest. He can't throw anybody out but he can hit, he started slow but really turned it around before getting injured.  Teagarden and Maxram haven’t gotten really good long looks, but I’ll still post their info just to get some kind of look. Will look at team win/loss with player, batting, throwing out base runners, club era with player, fielding %, and throwing errors.  For Maxram and Teagarden I’ll also post their minor league batting stats.  These stats are for comparison and to my best ability are accurate, but i cannot guarrantee that there isn't any errors.  I've posted links at the bottom to check up on.

team wins/losses (will include melhuse so games add up)

games and position distribution:

Now for team records with certain catchers in the game. I'm going to include all games played with at least 3 at bats for the wins and losses.  Mainly because I'm too lazy to bring up the boxscores for all 120+games to see where they played when. Since we have some guys that DH'd or played a corner infield, some of these games would have 2 of the guys in them.

That adds up to 79-79 (.500)

The rangers are 0-4 (.000) when no catcher gets 3 at bats.

The rangers finished  79-83 (.488).

There is no clear supreme player in this regard.  Teagarden as the best record, but got 3 ab's in only 10 games and any win loss is a 10% swing.  Same thing for maxram.  Both Teagarden and Maxram are essentially .500 on the year.  We can say the same for melhuse, except he sucked.  Laird and Salty both performed above the Rangers record, over the course of a full season, they Laird has Salty beat by 3 wins.

HITTING

Laird for his career is a good hitter against lefties (better than righties even), what happened this year? This season, Laird was the only one that was acceptable against lefties.  All hit very well against rigthies. Laird, Salty and Maxram mostly hit in the 8 spot, Teagarden in the 9 spot. Laird was the worst hitter considerably against righties, but also the best by a considerable amount against lefties. Teagarden was just amazing in his short time.

Teagarden went to AAA after Salty got called up after the Melhuse injury (if I remember correctly).  Maxram stayed behind in AA despite hitting much better.  When Laird (I think) went on the DL, Maxram got called up and skipped AAA.  Teagarden went to the big club after Salty went on the DL and Maxram went up to AAA.  Maxram got called up to the bigs again when rosters expanded. This gave the big team 3 catchers on the roster. Neither hit GREAT in AAA, but neither was THAT bad, look at Teagarden’s OBP despite his AVG.  Maxram tore up AA while Teagarden wasn’t good and actually improved in AAA.Overall Maxram hit quite a bit better.

THROWING OUT RUNNERS

The numbers favor Laird.  Salty was abysmal, how bad would it be if he caught for the Padres? Maxram was slightly better than Salty, but you'll notice how many attempts were made in a short time against him, teams don’t respect his arm.  Teagarden was respectable. 

CLUB ERA

Self-explanatory.  Laird and Salty are a push, Teagarden was much better than all of them. Maxram was worse than Melhuse (6.86) An interesting thing about Maxram.  From July 2 to the 19th he played in 7 games.  Salty played in 6 games.  In 6 of Maxram’s 7 games, the Rangers gave up 9 or more runs.  In 2 of Salty’s 6 games the Rangers gave up 9, so I don’t think the staff hitting a rough patch is a usable excuse.  Inexperience could be an excuse however, I guess.

FIELDING %

Another Win by Laird, followed closely by Maxram.  Salty is a way back, and then Teagarden brought up the rear.

Wild pitches and passed balls

Teagarden has numbers comparable to Kurt Suzuki and Jason Varitek here.  Laird is about average, maybe a little above average.  Salty is below average to bad.  And Maxram is really bad here.

Throwing Errors (from hardballtimes)

Laird just absolutely demolishes the competition here.  Salty of course was last, surprisingly he's tied for last...with Teagarden.

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That's it.  I am not drawing any conclusions here, that's up to anybody to do and post them here hopefully.  Below are links to where I got the stats and there are so many more stats i didn't include.

http://www.lonestarball.com/2008/9/12/613057/charting-the-organization (zywica  article on lsb)

http://www.baseball-reference.com/l/lairdge01.shtml (laird baseball-reference)
http://www.baseball-reference.com/s/saltaja01.shtml (salty baseball-reference)
http://www.baseball-reference.com/m/melhuad01.shtml (melhuse baseball-reference)
http://www.baseball-reference.com/t/teagata01.shtml (teagarden baseball-reference)
http://www.baseball-reference.com/r/ramirma03.shtml (maxram baseball-reference)

http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/R/maximiliano-ramirez.shtml (maxram baseballcube)
http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/T/taylor-teagarden.shtml (teagarden baseballcube)

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/teams/fielding?team=tex#c (espn rangers defensive stats)

http://www.hardballtimes.com/thtstats/main/player/?lastName=laird&firstName= (laird hardball times)
http://www.hardballtimes.com/thtstats/main/player/index.php?playerId=5039&firstName=Maximiliano%20R&lastName=Ramirez (maxram hardball times)
http://www.hardballtimes.com/thtstats/main/player/index.php?lastName=teagarden (teagarden hardball times)
http://www.hardballtimes.com/thtstats/main/player/?playerId=5557&firstName=Jarrod%20S&lastName=Saltalamacchia (salty hardball times)

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=1698&position=C (laird fangraphs page)
http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=5557&position=C (salty fangraphs page)
http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=5199&position=C (teagarden fangraphs page)
http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=5039&position=C (maxram fangraphs page)