I honestly did not know that the BBWAA had a Twitter account.
Posey can now add the MVP Award to his impressive collection of two World Series Rings. In my short lifetime of baseball fandom, Posey’s season this year goes down as one of the best seasons from a catcher in the past 30 years. WAR isn’t an infallible stat, but its assumptions are pretty strong, and if you sort through the top 10 best catching seasons since 1980 by Baseball-Reference’s version of WAR, you really get the feeling that what I got to watch — what we got to watch — in 2012 was something really, really special.
That list, in case you were interested. (Sorted by bWAR, 1980-2012, minimum of 75% of games at catcher.)
Rk Player WAR/pos OPS+ Rbat Year Tm BA OBP SLG 1 Mike Piazza 8.5 185 70 1997 LAD .362 .431 .638 2 Gary Carter 8.3 146 34 1982 MON .293 .381 .510 3 Joe Mauer 7.6 171 53 2009 MIN .365 .444 .587 4 Buster Posey 7.2 172 52 2012 SFG .336 .408 .549 5 Gary Carter 7.2 143 33 1984 MON .294 .366 .487 6 Mike Piazza 6.8 153 39 1993 LAD .318 .370 .561 7 Gary Carter 6.8 116 10 1983 MON .270 .336 .444 8 Yadier Molina 6.7 137 28 2012 STL .315 .373 .501 9 Darren Daulton 6.7 156 33 1992 PHI .270 .385 .524 10 Javy Lopez 6.6 169 45 2003 ATL .328 .378 .687
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 11/15/2012.
Hey, look, a who’s who list of the best catchers over the past 30 years.
Eventually, and thankfully for us, Posey overshadowed the injury storyline by hitting the crud out of baseballs. Make no mistake that Posey even stepping on the field in 2012 is a huge testament to how hard he and the Giants staff worked. I can’t even begin to imagine the grueling hours of rehab that Posey had to go through to even get back on the field. But after awhile Posey became less and less about that horrible collision with Scout Cousins, and more and more about the undeniable truth, the undeniable fact: He’s really good at baseball. Sickeningly good at baseball. And he’s a Giant.
It doesn’t get any better than that.
