Phillies: Where does Carlos Ruiz rank among catchers in last decade?

Carlos Ruiz was a fan favorite throughout his time with the Phillies. Where does he rank among all catchers in the past 10 years?

Carlos Ruiz will always be a favorite among Phillies fans. He caught the 0-2 swing-and-miss by Eric Hinske on October 29th, 2008 to bring the city its second World Series Championship. He was a stalwart defensive catcher. He also had his fair share of clutch hits.

On Sunday, MLB Network’s Brian Kenny and Christopher Russo released their picks for top 10 catchers in the past 10 seasons:

Kenny does not have Ruiz near his top-10, while Russo has him at No. 5. My instant reaction? I think both of these analyses are very good, but I don’t agree with either of them for various reasons. I will explain my thinking throughout the remainder of this post. I do, though, believe Ruiz belongs in this top 10.

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Today, I’ll share where I believe Chooch belongs in this top 10. First, I hope everyone understands that while Ruiz was great, he was not number one. The likes of Buster Posey, a fantastic hitter and terrific fielder, and Yadier Molina, whose bat took a long time to come around but whose defense is tremendous.

When I look at catchers, I don’t care nearly as much about offense as much as I do about defense.

Catcher might be the most important position on the entire field because it is the most amplified by the sheer number of times that he must interact with the baseball.

With all that said, I have developed my list:

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1. Yadier Molina
2. Buster Posey
3. Salvador Perez
4. Russell Martin
5. Carlos Ruiz
6. Jonathan Lucroy
7. Joe Mauer
8. Matt Wieters
9. Miguel Montero
10. J.T. Realmuto

Here is my reasoning for putting Ruiz fifth: he was a solid defensive catcher, as were the first four, but the separation begins when we talk about sustained hitting ability. Posey, Molina, and Martin have all asserted themselves as much better hitters.

Ruiz only has one All-Star selection but was often overlooked by so many other great players on teams of which he was a part. Ruiz was suspended for 25 games after the 2012 season, his lone All-Star year. It was at that point, after only five full-time seasons with the Phillies, that his production started to take a downturn.

Another thing that Ruiz has going against him when compared to these other players is league tenure. Ruiz did not come up to the team until he was 27 in 2007 and didn’t really garner full-time duties until the next year. He was solid in his prime years but did not have the extra time on the front end to really add value.

For my other rankings: I couldn’t give Joe Mauer a better ranking considering he has played 40% of his games at first base and has a career DRS of 3 at the catcher position. Posey has a career catching DRS of 86. Molina? 125. That does it for me.

I had a really tough time coming up with numbers 9 and 10. I couldn’t include the likes of Brian McCann and Yasmani Grandal because they are good hitters, but are not good defensive catchers.

Catcher is also a hard position to evaluate long-term just because of the physical wear-and-tear causes such high turnover. That’s why I decided to go with J.T. Realmuto at number 10 because he is improving in all aspects of the game and has more experience than Willson Contreras.

So, fans, there you have it. I believe that in the last 10 years, Carlos Ruiz ranks fifth among catchers in the league. Pitchers and catchers report in just 23 days. It will be interesting to see if the Phillies continue with Jorge Alfaro and Andrew Knapp next season. Hopefully, they can improve defensively. In the meantime, there are bigger fish to fry: Manny Machado or Bryce Harper.

All statistics in this post are courtesy baseballreference.com.