I had to play Devil's Advocate with myself in arriving at consistency in catcher ratings, since my entire study covers defense at all position except pitchers, from 1901 through the present.
Starting with 1901 data and going largely by trial and error at first, I did the following:
1. since catchers' caught stealing and stolen bases records defensively were non-existent, I turned to assists, double plays, errors, passed balls and wild pitches;
2. with trial and retrial done through 1921 I found that the number weighting and inputs themselves gave great hints into the "unknowns" by reviewing over again the patterns of sacrifice bunts, catcher assists, catcher double plays, etc.;
3. passed balls, I opted to add them to errors as a composite negative against the catcher, based on the basic observation that plate blocking is indeed critical to the cather's function and wild pitches DO charge pitchers with a fair measure of balls that get by;
4. I used the same approach in estimating catcher caught-stealing rates, weighing into the equations the fact that some bases are stolen on inattentive pitchers, pitchers with poor moves to first, pitchers slow in their delivery, or pitchers that throw "junk;"
Since the late 1960s the CS % is a known. I still add PB+E as a negative charge in catcher ratings.
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