youth catches on

yadier molina is the cardinals’ youngest starting catcher (see yesterday's post) since ted simmons, who was only 21 when he became the fulltime regular in 1971. simba had split the job with joe torre in 1970 and struggled — 15 passed balls in just 79 games, batting average only.243. but bing devine and red schoendienst deemed him fit for the part anyway, and he rewarded their faith with an excellent 1971: a .304 average with 77 rbis. he also called bob gibson’s no-hitter and handled a pitching staff that featured two hall-of-famers (hoot and steve carlton). but the cards’ staff era ranked just 11th out of 12 nl teams, nullifying the work of an excellent offense that ranked 2d in runs scored. such would be the pattern throughout simmons’ long sojourn at the position — he caught only one staff that placed higher than 6th in era (1973: 3.25, 2d place).

the catcher simmons inherited the job from, tim mccarver, also became a starter at age 21. he made his debut in 1959 at just 17 years of age and logged 100 major-league at-bats before he turned 20. in 1963 he replaced the productive platoon of gene oliver and carl sawatski and did himself credit, batting .289 with 4 hr and 51 rbi. but as a handler of pitchers, mccarver did not perform as well as the lore would suggest. in the three seasons before he began calling the signals (1960-62), st louis ranked 4th, 1st, and 2d in league era. in mccarver’s first three years — with roughly the same arms — st louis ranked only 7th, 6th, and 6th. they won a world title anyway in mccarver's 2nd year, but it was in spite (not because) of their pitching staff, which regressed after mccarver took over. even bob gibson went temporarily stagnant: his era, hits per inning, and strikeouts per inning were all worse with mccarver in 1963-64 than they had been with oliver/sawatski in 1962. not until the cardinals moved into spacious busch stadium in 1966 would the st louis pitching staff reclaim its spot in the top half of the league in era.

of more recent vintage, 24-year-old tom nieto caught 95 games for the 1985 cardinals and handled the staff just fine, thank you: st louis finished second in the league with a 3.10 era. the following year, 25-year-old pudge lavalliere caught 108 games and the card staff finished fourth at 3.37. but the 1998 staff threw half its games to 24-year-old eli marrero and labored to a 4.32 era, 8th in the 16-team league.

in the 42 seasons since mccarver took the job in 1963, only 11 featured a starting cardinal catcher aged 24 or younger. they won pennants in two of those years, with one world title.