Eephus said:
38 year old Jose Molina resigns with Tampa Bay for 2/$4.5M. Maybe framing pitches is the new market inefficiency because he's coming off a .233./.290/.304 season.
I read the other day they had him at 2 WAR this season for pitch framing. Maybe I misread that but seems to be what I recall.Found it:
Marveling at his first season with the team, Bradley Woodrum published a study on DRaysBay speculating that Jose Molina was worth 2.5 wins above replacement simply by framing the strikezone, thanks to an estimated 24.4 runs prevented, and thereby a contender for Team MVP -- hence "Most Valuable Molina." Brad would receive harsh criticism in the comment section, and shortly after we found out he was incredibly wrong.
According to calculations by Max Marchi and further investigation by Ben Lindbergh, who dedicates much of his research to catcher framing, Jose Molina was able to prevent 50 runs from scoring over the course of the season, worthy of five wins above replacement -- double Woodrum's estimate, and again, using the strikezone alone.