In June 2016, Willson Contreras made his first career start against the St. Louis Cardinals, the team of one of his catching idols, Yadier Molina. That day, Molina told Contreras to keep doing what he was doing and he'd be an All-Star someday. It was a really cool moment that will forever link the two players in my mind, but for many people, that connection no doubt already existed.
Before the start of the 2016 season, ESPN analyst Keith Law ranked Contreras as the best catcher prospect in baseball, and Contreras made it to Law's No. 18 overall prospect ranking in the weeks leading up to his promotion. It's not every day that the game discovers a catcher with an impact bat and a 70-grade arm, so it's natural to want to compare Contreras to Molina, who is the epitome of that kind of player in the modern game.
It's also the case that the modern game is particularly short of good hitting catchers at the moment. Weighted runs created plus (wRC+) measures offensive production relative to league average such that a hitter with 120 wRC+ is 20 percent better than league average and a hitter with 80 wRC+ is 20 percent worse than league average. Mike Trout has exceeded 170 wRC+ the past two seasons, so that 120 threshold isn't extreme; it captures hitters who produce like an above-average MLB regular. After a five-year period from 2010-14 in which at least six catchers produced 120 wRC+ seasons with 300 or more plate appearances each season, only four catchers have accomplished the feat the past two seasons.
Buster Posey and Jonathan Lucroy each produced one of those four seasons, but they are the only two catchers since 2002 with three or more such seasons who could reasonably be considered still in their primes. Jorge Posada and Ivan Rodriguez are both retired. Joe Mauer and Victor Martinez have both moved to new positions to prolong their careers. Brian McCann and Yadier Molina are 33 and 34 years old, respectively, which is practically ancient for a position that puts so much wear and tear on players' bodies.
Contreras is just 24 years old, and though he fell just short of 300 plate appearances in his rookie season in 2016, he crossed that 120 wRC+ threshold. He and maybe one or two other promising young catchers are the few developing new stars in what looks like a low point for catching talent. It might not be fair, but Contreras' lack of peers to share the spotlight will keep the pressure on him to become a great player.
But even considering the circumstances motivating these types of comparisons, is Molina too high a standard to hold Contreras to? After all, Yadi's career accomplishments are incredible. He has seven All-Star appearances, eight Gold Glove Awards, six Fielding Bible Awards and two World Series rings. Apart from earning a ring in his rookie season, Contreras cannot hold a candle to Molina's résumé. That said, there are a number of similarities between the players that justify the conversation.
Offensively, Contreras and Molina have broadly similar career batting lines, as far as their slash stats. You could accurately say that Contreras trades some contact ability for extra power, but that misses some of the subtleties of their differences, the most glaring of which is that Molina didn't reach his career average mark of .285 in a season until his fifth season in the majors. Contreras should be given time to develop too.
It's not yet fair to say that Contreras will never become a great contact hitter just because he hasn't been one so far, in about 400 career plate appearances, but there are some indicators that he might not become that type of player. Contreras has struck out in just more than a quarter of his major league plate appearances. Molina's career-high strikeout rate in a season -- which came in his rookie year -- was 13.2 percent, practically half of Contreras' rate so far. Contreras isn't chasing a lot more pitches out of the zone -- captured by the O-Swing percentage statistic -- but he is making less contact when he swings in general. Couple that with a .326 batting average on balls in play (BABIP) that will be tough to sustain given his lack of speed, and I would project Contreras to hit in the .250 range for his career.
Contreras might give up 30-40 points of batting average to Molina, but if he continues to walk and hit for better power, his net offensive contributions could easily add up to more runs on the scoreboard. So far, they have: After his two-homer outburst on Friday, Contreras' 115 career wRC+ is 15 percent better than Molina's.
Defensively, Contreras is more difficult to argue for. The good news is that he has definitely lived up to his reputation of having a great arm. His 1.85-second average pop time on throws to second base is the second-best in baseball the past three seasons, and he and Molina are two of just 15 catchers with at least 600 innings since 2002 and a caught stealing rate above 33 percent (through Thursday's action). Most of the catchers on that list are defensive specialists, such as Christian Vazquez and Roberto Perez. Contreras will be a great player if he hits like he has and holds baserunners the way he has so far in his career.
Still, what has made Molina a perennial Gold Glove and Fielding Bible Award winner is his exceptional defense across the board. In career stats, Molina has the edge over Contreras in pretty much every category of catcher defense.
Take receiving skills. Molina blocks about 2 percent more pitches that are thrown in the dirt than Contreras does. Although that might not seem like a big deal, each base a runner moves up on a passed ball or wild pitch contributes about a third of a run to opponents.
Then there's pitch-framing. Molina draws a bit more than three extra strikes per 1,000 called pitches than Contreras does. An iron man such as Molina sees about 10,000 called pitches per season, so that produces a difference of more than 30 extra strikes per season, many of which directly result in strikeouts his pitcher might not have otherwise been able to secure.
For me, Molina's most interesting advantage is with his catcher ERA and adjusted earned runs saved. Molina has always had an incredible reputation as a game caller and strategist, and while those things are difficult to quantify, catcher ERA and adjusted earned runs saved get at that skill. Although the former stat is influenced by the incredible pitchers Molina has caught over the years -- from Chris Carpenter to Adam Wainwright to Carlos Martinez -- adjusted earned runs saved compares a catcher's success with his pitchers to that of the other catchers who have caught him. Molina has 33 adjusted earned runs saved in his career, nearly double that of the next catcher in the DRS era (Paul Lo Duca, 18). Meanwhile, Contreras has been a bit below average, with minus-4 adjusted earned runs saved since 2016, whereas his former teammate David Ross had plus-5 adjusted earned runs saved in two seasons with the Cubs.
In total, Molina has saved the Cardinals 167 runs with his defense in his career, which are 48 more runs than that of Russell Martin, the closest catcher to Molina in the DRS era (2003-present). Contreras isn't bad at any of the catcher skills we measure, but his total package has resulted in just one run saved, which prorates to maybe twice that over a full season. A catcher with above-average offense and above-average defense is a great player, but the statistics suggest it's premature to label Contreras the next Yadi behind the plate, unless he can further develop some of his other defensive skills.
Scott Spratt is a research analyst for Baseball Info Solutions. You can follow him on Twitter (@Scott_Spratt).