JAWS and the 2025 Hall of Fame Ballot: Russell Martin

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Russell Martin was sneaky good. At the plate he combined a compact swing and mid-range power with strong on-base skills and (early in his career, at least) the ability to steal the occasional base. Behind the plate, he was exceptional. Shifted from third base after his first professional season, he took to the new position with the zeal of a convert. Martin combined outstanding athleticism — a strong arm, extraordinary lateral mobility, and elite pitch framing — with an intense competitive drive, an off-the-charts baseball IQ, and a natural leadership ability that was already apparent during his 2006 rookie season with the Dodgers.

The 23-year-old Martin’s arrival went a long way toward turning that squad around. In his first four seasons, he helped the Dodgers to three playoff appearances, including their first two trips to the National League Championship Series since their 1988 championship run. When the tight-fisted team nonsensically non-tendered him after an injury-wracked 2010 season, Los Angeles missed the playoffs in each of the next two years. Meanwhile, the nomadic Martin helped spur his subsequent teams — the Yankees (2011–12), Pirates (2013–14), and Blue Jays (2015–18) — to a total of six straight postseasons.

That wasn’t a coincidence. The general managers of those three teams (New York’s Brian Cashman, Pittsburgh’s Neal Huntington, and Toronto’s Alex Anthopoulos) all recognized that in addition to the softer factors that made Martin such a great catcher and leader, he was consistently among the game’s best at the newly quantifiable and highly valuable art of turning borderline pitches into strikes — an area that landed in the public spotlight with Mike Fast’s 2011 Baseball Prospectus article, “Removing the Mask.” Building on previous research by Dan Turkenkopf and others using PITCHf/x data, Fast showed that the difference between a good framer and a bad one could amount to something on the order of four wins per year, and identified Martin as having accrued more value via framing over the 2007–11 span (71 runs) than any backstop besides Jose Molina.

Viewing him as a transformative addition both on the field and in the clubhouse, Huntington and Anthopoulos each placed Martin atop their winter shopping lists. For signing him — which for Anthopoulous required the second-largest free agent deal for a catcher to that point, at five years and $82 million — they were rewarded with teams that broke epic postseason droughts, then returned to the playoffs the next year as well; no longer flukes or Cinderellas, these were teams expected to contend. Martin, who excelled at framing until he retired, wasn’t solely responsible for those turnarounds, but he certainly played a major role in his teams’ qualifying for the playoffs 10 times during his 14-year career. Alas, Martin never reached a World Series, not even in the twilight of his career with the 106-win Dodgers in 2019.

With the exception of Baseball Prospectus’ WARP (the original basis for JAWS), none of the major value metrics incorporated pitch framing into their calculations until FanGraphs introduced its own methodology in the spring of 2019. That update retroactively added framing to fWAR going back to 2008. While Sports Info Solutions’ Defensive Runs Saved does track what it calls “strike zone runs” (RszC), Baseball Reference does not include them in its WAR calculations. Since framing has been shown to be so impactful — with much wider spreads from top to bottom than catchers’ blocking or throwing out baserunners — I believe we’re doing 21st-century candidates a disservice if we fail to incorporate this crucial area into our analysis. Thus, for this profile and that of fellow first-year candidate Brian McCann, I’ll be using a FanGraphs-based version of WAR, one that incorporates BP’s framing metric (BP Fram) for the years before 2008, as the main value metric. As you can see, this makes a significant difference in understanding Martin’s career, and likewise those of his framing peers:

While framing metrics have been popular in analytical circles since Fast’s article, they were slower to catch on in the mainstream. Martin probably missed out on some of the All-Star selections, down-ballot MVP support, and Gold Glove honors he was due, though having McCann, Yadier Molina, and Buster Posey — all excellent framers in their own right — in the same league for most of his career didn’t help. Though I’ve been anticipating the point when I could write Martin’s name on a Hall of Fame ballot since he entered his final season in the majors, I fear he’ll struggle to gain enough support merely to remain eligible. Nonetheless, I see him as a strong enough candidate to merit enshrinement. It won’t happen overnight; I just hope it doesn’t take 20 or 30 years.

Russell Nathan Coltrane Jeanson-Martin Jr. was born on February 15, 1983 in East York, Ontario, Canada. He was named after his father Russell Martin Sr., an African Canadian carpenter-turned-saxophone player; great-grandfather Nathan; saxophone legend John Coltrane; and his mother Suzanne Jeanson, a French Canadian singer and actress. The young family moved to Winnipeg, Suzanne’s hometown, but she and Russell Sr. split when their son was two. Suzanne remarried and moved to Paris when Russell Jr. was nine, while Russell Sr. moved to Montreal, where he made a living playing his sax in Metro stations. Their son split his year between continents, overindulging on chocolate croissants, to the detriment of his young physique, and missing baseball fiercely.

“Soccer is the main sport over there [in France]. I love soccer, but not having baseball and not having hockey was kind of torture for me,” Russell Jr. told Sportsnet’s Steven Brunt in 2015. He had been a quick study when it came to the sport; after learning to walk at just nine months old, he was swinging a bat at two; he skipped t-ball, and by the time he was seven, he was pitching against 12-year-olds. Father and son would bike around Montreal, stopping at diamonds along the way to practice throwing, catching, and hitting. Riding the Montreal Metro to Olympic Stadium to see Expos stars such as Marquis Grissom and Larry Walker, Russell Sr. would play the part of a radio broadcaster. “He invented scenarios in which local phenom Russell Martin, just up from the minors, knocked the dirt off his cleats, stepped in the box and belted one over the fence,” wrote ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick in 2006. “As Little Russ listened from his seat on the train, his 10-year-old heart pounded feverishly.”

At the end of sixth grade, Suzanne relocated from Paris to Chelsea, Quebec. Russell Jr. enrolled at Polyvalente Edouard-Montpetit, a Montreal high school that emphasized sports — and produced former Cy Young winner Eric Gagne — and lived with his father year round. While he dabbled in hockey, he was already focused on becoming a professional baseball player. In high school he pitched and played shortstop, eventually making the national junior team; at the World Junior Championship in 2000, he hit a team-high .414 with two home runs.

In June 2000, the Expos drafted Martin in the 35th round, but instead of signing he headed to Chipola College, a junior college near Tallahassee, Florida. A year younger than his peers, he struggled to keep up, but a Dominican outfielder/pitcher named José Bautista — his future teammate in Toronto — made an impression. “I played a year with him and saw the work ethic behind him and saw how passionate he was about the game. I learned a lot from him,” Martin told Brunt.

To his disappointment, Martin went undrafted at the end of his freshman year (2001), but the Dodgers chose him in the 17th round in 2002. Bypassing a scholarship offer from North Carolina State, he signed for a $40,000 bonus, and began his pro career with the Dodgers’ Gulf Coast League affiliate, playing third base — his primary college position — and hitting .286/.412/.357. He had a smattering of experience catching in college, and his athleticism and arm strength impressed catching coordinator Jon Debus, who suggested the Dodgers move him behind the plate, a conversion that began in the instructional league. The going was rough, initially; Martin allowed 95 steals and 31 passed balls in 63 games split between Rookie-level Ogden and A-level South Georgia in 2003, but he hit .276/.360/.437 with nine homers. He improved on both sides of the ball at High-A Vero Beach in 2004, with Baseball America writing in part, “He’s quick, uses his excellent footwork to help him block balls in the dirt and has a well-above-average arm.”

After placing 89th on Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospects list in the spring of 2005, Martin broke out to hit .311/.430/.423 at Double-A Jacksonville, stealing 15 bases to go with his nine homers. He played for the World Team in the All-Star Futures Game, and climbed to 42nd on BA’s Top 100 list for 2006, with the publication lauding his ability to absorb instruction and his advanced receiving and blocking skills relative to his experience.

The Dodgers had gone 71-91 in 2005 with Jason Phillips and Dioner Navarro doing most of the catching (and not well). The team retooled that winter, with general manager Ned Colletti and manager Grady Little taking over, and free agents such as Rafael Furcal, Nomar Garciaparra, Kenny Lofton, and Bill Mueller bolstering the lineup. The 22-year-old Navarro, a Top 100 prospect himself in 2004, began the ’06 season as the starter, but in early May, he landed on the disabled list with a right wrist contusion. The Dodgers, off to a 12-17 start, called up the 23-year-old Martin after just 23 games at Triple-A Las Vegas. He debuted on May 5, 2006 against the Brewers, going 2-for-4 with a pair of doubles off Chris Capuano, the first of which drove in two runs in a Dodgers 4-3 win. Two days later, he hit his first home run, off Dave Bush.

By the end of May, the Dodgers had gone 18-4 in Martin’s starts. Navarro was optioned to Las Vegas once he was healthy, and in late June was traded to the Devil Rays in a five-player deal that brought in backup catcher Toby Hall and back-end starter Mark Hendrickson. Navarro would earn All-Star honors while helping Tampa Bay reach the World Series in 2008, but the Dodgers had decided upon their catcher not only of the future, but of the present.

Martin hit .282/.355/.436 (101 OPS+) with 10 home runs and 10 stolen bases for an 88-win Dodgers team that secured the NL Wild Card spot. One of those homers, on September 18, was the third in a series of four consecutive ninth-inning solo shots — Jeff Kent and J.D. Drew off Jon Adkins, Martin and Marlon Anderson off Trevor Hoffman — that tied the game; a Garciaparra homer won it in the 10th. Writing about Martin’s dark-horse Rookie of the Year candidacy, Crasnick found scouts, executives, and a future Hall of Famer lauding him:

The kid never warmed to a musical instrument, but he plays the position of catcher as if it’s a means of expression. Scouts rave about his soft hands and lateral movement, his quick feet and ability to frame a pitch, as if he was born to be a backstop.

Dodgers assistant GM Roy Smith, who once worked in Pittsburgh, says Martin’s toughness and leadership skills bring to mind a young Jason Kendall.

… “He has very good baseball sense,” [Greg] Maddux says. “If you can’t throw to this guy, you can’t throw to anybody.”

Though Martin went 4-for-12 in the Division Series against the Mets, the Dodgers were swept. The team receded to 82 wins in 2007 despite the emergence of homegrown youngsters Chad Billingsley, James Loney, and Matt Kemp, but Martin caught a league-high 145 games, hit .293/.374/.469 (116 OPS+) with 19 homers and 21 steals, won the NL All-Star voting at catcher, and claimed a Gold Glove as well. His 5.5 fWAR ranked ninth in the league, and that doesn’t even account for his framing; according to the updated version of Baseball Prospectus’ Retroframing methodology, he was estimated to have added another 24.8 runs there (after 22.9 in 2006), the majors’ second-highest total.

While drawing 90 walks and again catching a league-high 149 games in 2008 — with 11 appearances at third base as well — Martin hit .280/.385/.396 (108 OPS+) while again reaching double digits in homers and steals (13 and 18, respectively) and making his second All-Star team. Per FanGraphs’ PITCHf/x-based methodology, he added 30.3 framing runs, third in the majors behind McCann (34.5) and Jose Molina (32.4); his 7.3 fWAR ranked sixth in the NL. The Dodgers, whose deadline trade for Manny Ramirez helped paper over the disaster that was Andruw Jones’ lone season with the team, allowed a league-low 4.0 runs per game and eked out out an NL West title with just 84 wins in Joe Torre’s first season at the helm.

To that point, the Dodgers had gone 1-12 in postseason games since winning the 1988 World Series, but they swept the 97-win Cubs in the Division Series, with Martin hitting a solo homer off Jason Marquis in Game 1, breaking open Game 2 with a bases-loaded second-inning double off Carlos Zambrano, and doubling twice off Rich Harden in Game 3. Alas, he was held to a 2-for-17 performance as the Phillies beat the Dodgers in a five-game NLCS.

Whether it was his heavy workload or a 2008–09 offseason in which he lost strength while trying to improve his flexibility, Martin tailed off in ’09. He caught “only” 137 games, but still led the NL in innings behind the plate; the third base cameos were curtailed, but he slipped to seven homers and an 86 OPS+. His framing still elevated his value to 3.6 fWAR, and the Dodgers won 95 games and the NL West flag. Martin hit just .200/.355/.240 in a Division Series sweep of the Cardinals and another five-game NLCS loss to the Phillies.

In response to his flagging power, Martin bulked up after the season, reportedly adding 25 pounds to push his weight to 231. He still hit for just an 88 OPS+ in 2010, and his season ended in early August when he stumbling into home plate on a sacrifice fly instead of sliding, sustaining a hairline fracture of his pelvis and a small labral tear in his right hip. The Dodgers sank to 80-82, and in the pennywise and pound foolish way that marked the latter-day era of Frank McCourt’s ownership, Colletti non-tendered Martin rather than taking him to arbitration and having to risk giving him a raise from his $5.05 million salary.

Martin soon signed a $4 million-plus-incentives deal with the defending-champion Yankees, a team that was ahead of the curve in valuing pitch framing and particularly eager to move on from the aging Jorge Posada’s struggles in that area. Though he hadn’t needed surgery for his hip, Martin did go under the knife to repair a torn meniscus in early February, but he was ready by Opening Day, and rebounded to hit .237/.324/.408 (95 OPS+) with 18 home runs while making his third All-Star team and tying for 12th in the AL with 5.4 fWAR. The Yankees won 95 games and a division title, but they were knocked out in a soggy five-game Division Series against the Tigers. Re-signed to a one-year, $7.5 million deal, Martin wasn’t quite as sharp in 2012, setting a career low in batting average (.211/.311/.403), but his 4.0 fWAR and 91 OPS+ for a catcher was still plenty of bang for the buck. The Yankees reached the ALCS before bowing to the Rangers, not that Martin was much help in October, hitting .161/.235/.290.

After Cashman told the going-on-30-year-old free agent backstop that money was tight, Martin listened to a sales pitch from Pirates manager Clint Hurdle. The Pirates hadn’t finished above .500 since 1992, but they had just gone 79-83 in 2012 after having assembled a promising core. According to Travis Sawchik’s book Big Data Baseball, Hurdle told Martin how much the team would value his veteran presence within the clubhouse and with handling a young pitching staff, not to mention his strong arm and ability to control the running game. What Hurdle did not tell Martin was how the nascent attempts to quantify the value of pitch framing had singled him out as one of the best, and that Fast had specifically identified Pirates incumbent Ryan Doumit as the majors’ worst framer, costing his teams 66 runs over the previous five seasons. (Modern-day estimates at BP and FanGraphs place the spread between Martin and Doumit even wider.) As with the Moneyball-era A’s roughly a decade earlier, the small-budget Pirates needed to capitalize on market inefficiencies to get an edge, and here they felt they’d found one. Within the Pirates’ front office, quantitative analyst Mike Fitzgerald was pounding the table to advocate signing Martin.

Though the Rangers and, to a lesser extent, the Yankees showed some interest, the Pirates’ two-year, $17 million offer was Martin’s strongest. The signing paid off; while his offense was again modest (.226/.327/.377, 100 OPS+), with his framing he was worth 5.0 fWAR, tied for 11th in the NL on a framing-heavy leaderboard that also included the Cardinals’ Molina, the Giants’ Posey, and the Brewers’ Jonathan Lucroy, all of whom outhit Martin. The team — which featured MVP winner Andrew McCutchen, rookie Gerrit Cole, and reclamation projects A.J. Burnett and Francisco Liriano — won 94 games and ended its 21-year playoff drought by capturing a Wild Card berth. Martin dominated the Reds in the Wild Card Game, going 3-for-4 with solo homers off Johnny Cueto (who was rattled by the crowd to the point of dropping the ball) and Logan Ondrusek to key a 6-2 win.

Martin went just 2-for-13 in the Division Series against the Cardinals, but drove in two runs in each of the Pirates’ two wins with a single and a sacrifice fly; even so, the Bucs lost the series in five games. While they dipped to 88 wins in 2014, they claimed another Wild Card spot, with Martin hitting .290/.402/.430 with 11 homers to set career highs on OBP and OPS+ (135) and rank sixth in the NL with 6.1 fWAR. This time the Giants steamrolled the Pirates in the Wild Card Game, 8-0.

By the time Martin hit free agency again, the baseball world was much more aware of what he brought to the table — particularly Anthopoulos. Martin’s teams had qualified for the postseason seven times in nine seasons, while the Blue Jays had missed the playoffs every year since winning the 1993 World Series. They had won 83 games in 2014 with Navarro (!) behind the plate despite subpar framing (-23.9 runs by FanGraphs’ current measure), so Anthopoulos saw the need for an upgrade. He signed his top offseason priority to a five-year, $82 million deal, at that point the second-largest free agent contract for a catcher after the five-year, $85-million contract McCann inked with the Yankees in December 2013, though the extensions of Posey and Joe Mauer exceeded both.

The signing reunited Martin with Bautista, by this point one of the game’s top power hitters. Martin drove in a pair of runs with an Opening Day single off the Yankees’ Masahiro Tanaka, but then went 0-for-22 before homering off Julio Teheran and Jim Johnson of the Braves on April 17. He went on a tear in early May, and followed a dreadful August with a strong September in which he hit six homers and slugged .559. The Blue Jays were just 50-51 as of July 28, but they won 24 of their next 29, taking over first place in the AL East in late August and finishing first with 93 wins. Martin hit .240/.329/.458 (112 OPS+) with a career-high 23 homers and 4.5 fWAR. Though he scuffled in the postseason (.154/.333/.231), the Blue Jays beat the Rangers in an epic Division Series punctuated by Bautista’s bat-flip home run off Sam Dyson.

The Jays fell to the Royals in the ALCS, but Martin’s impact had resonated. In a 2016 Sportsnet article where All-Star Marco Estrada and his rotation-mates lauded Martin, manager John Gibbons told Arden Zwelling, “I think we take Russell for granted around here… Just the way he moves around behind the plate, blocks balls, some of the acrobatic plays he makes. You know, he’ll go flying into dugouts after foul balls. There’s no fear at all. I think when you see one of your own players do that so often, you end up kind of expecting it. But when you see somebody on the other side who doesn’t make those plays, it reminds you that the guy you’ve got is pretty special.”

The abandon with which Martin threw himself around caught up. Hampered by frayed cartilage in his left knee over the final two months of the 2016 season, he still homered 20 times with a 96 OPS+ and 3.7 fWAR as the Blue Jays won 89 games and claimed a Wild Card berth. Unfortunately, between his knee and a freak left pinky injury that required stitches following a celebratory low-five from Troy Tulowitzki, Martin’s pain made him an offensive non-entity during the team’s postseason run, which ended with a five-game ALCS loss to Cleveland. After the season, he underwent surgery to repair a torn meniscus in the knee. A battle with the insurance underwriters for the World Baseball Classic prevented him from representing Canada in the tournament. After catching for the 2009 squad, he had wanted to play shortstop for Team Canada, first in ’13 and then in ’17, but knee soreness doomed the first attempt and the bean-counters quashed the second one. Instead, he served as a coach.

Upon turning 34 years old, Martin said his knee felt great entering the 2017 season, but with shoulder and oblique injuries sending him to the injured list twice, he caught just 83 games and totaled 1.7 WAR in 2017, then dropped to 71 games caught — but 21 at third and even three at shortstop (!) — in ’18. The Blue Jays finished under .500 in both seasons. Eager to retool, in January 2019 Toronto traded Martin and $16.4 million to the Dodgers for a pair of prospects who never panned out.

By this point, the Dodgers were coming off back-to-back World Series losses — to the Astros and Red Sox, respectively — and the departure of starting catcher Yasmani Grandal via free agency, leaving them with backup Austin Barnes as the incumbent and going-on-24-year-old prospect Will Smith polishing his game at Triple-A Oklahoma City. Martin spent most of the first half backing up Barnes, though lower back inflammation sent him to the IL for 17 days in April. Smith forced the issue, swapping places with Barnes in late July and quickly securing the starting job, which he still holds today. In his reserve role, Martin additionally spotted at third base in the late innings seven times, and even threw four scoreless innings — three when the Dodgers had leads of nine or more runs. In his first one, on March 30, 2019, he became the first position player to close out a win since Senators outfielder Willie Smith on Sept. 23, 1963.

With 106 wins, the Dodgers took the NL West for the seventh straight time, and sought their third straight pennant. Facing the Nationals in the Division Series, Martin started Game 3, catching Hyun Jin Ryu, with whom he’d paired 20 times during the regular season. He went 2-for-4 with a two-run double off Patrick Corbin that gave the Dodgers a 3-2 lead in the sixth inning, then added a two-run homer off Hunter Strickland in the ninth as the Dodgers won 10-4 to take a two-games-to-one series lead. However, the Nationals won the final two games, eliminating the Dodgers.

Though the going-on-37-year-old Martin announced his intent to continue his career in 2020, he never played again. The A’s and Mets, along with a few other teams, showed interest over the winter, but he didn’t sign then, and likewise when his name surfaced as an option after Posey opted out of playing due to the COVID-19 pandemic in July. On May 28, 2022, he finally made his retirement official with an Instagram post.

…

By traditional measures, Martin doesn’t appear to be a strong Hall of Fame candidate. His four All-Star appearances and Gold Glove are respectable but not exceptional totals, and even while helping his teams to 10 playoff appearances — including five in his first year with clubs (not that the 2019 Dodgers really needed the help) — he never reached the World Series. He finished with a modest 1,446 hits and 191 homers, and even with his basic advanced stats (101 OPS+, 38.8 bWAR, 33.0 JAWS), he appears short of the mark. His .248 career batting average is five points below that of catcher Ray Schalk, whose .253 is the lowest mark of any Hall of Fame position player.

That said, by multiple methodologies, Martin’s pitch framing was elite, not only reinforcing observations regarding his receiving skills despite his comparatively late conversion, but undergirding the view of him as a transformative player. I’ve been saying this since Martin and McCann neared the tail end of their careers: We simply can’t take a proper measure of 21st-century catchers without incorporating framing data. So as with relievers, here the off-the-shelf version of JAWS won’t suffice. Baseball Reference’s version of WAR (which is used in JAWS) has no framing component, and there are no framing numbers anyway for 13 of the 17 enshrined catchers. BP’s pre-PITCHf/x stats only cover the last few years of Carlton Fisk’s career, which ended in 1993, though between that version and the PITCHf/x, FanGraphs, and Statcast numbers, we have the full careers of Ivan Rodriguez and Mike Piazza covered. Rodriguez, while known for his all-around defensive excellence, was not much of a framer, whereas Piazza, often derided as a poor defender for his low caught stealing percentages, was tremendous at framing.

When Jared Cross introduced FanGraphs’ framing numbers for 2008–18 in March ’19, he noted that McCann and Martin gained the most value, followed by Yadier and Jose Molina. The methodology has since been tweaked, and time has passed, but here are the top 10 framers according to our data:

According to the latest iteration, one-tenth of a run separates Martin and McCann, though Martin is “only” fourth on a rate basis. Note that just two of the 10 backstops above are still active, and that the spread between the best and worst framers has decreased significantly since teams began reacting to the data, both by weeding out the Doumits of the world and by training catchers to improve their receiving. Thus these early adopters are at something of an advantage, not unlike starting pitchers who pitched deeper into games decades ago. That may make cross-era comparisons more difficult, but if we have the data, we ought to incorporate it into our analysis.

While FanGraphs’ framing numbers (FRM) only go far back enough to cover the PITCHf/x era, BP’s pre-2008 numbers — which go back to 1988, the start of the pitch-count era, and use called strikes above average via Max Marchi’s Retroframing methodology — can help fill in the gaps. For the seven catchers with at least 50 WAR by our existing methodology, I have done that, using our runs-to-wins converter to adjust their individual WARs for the 1991-2007 period, and calculating seven-year peak totals along with revised career totals in order to generate a FanGraphs WAR-based version of JAWS (frJAWS) for this group:

Including the pre-2008 framing numbers results in about an 11-WAR swing for Piazza relative to Rodriguez, with the game’s greatest-hitting catcher putting some distance between himself and the rest of this pack. Rodriguez is closer in frJAWS to the more recent catchers, who are closely grouped together, though McCann has fallen a bit further behind the pack due to tweaks in our framing methodology and that of BP. On our end, a 2024 switch from Ultimate Base Running (UBR) to Statcast’s baserunning metric (labeled XBR) reduced Martin’s fWAR from 55.0 to 54.5, and McCann’s from 54.5 to 52.1.

I wish we had framing numbers for more catchers, but as we don’t, we’re left to compare the ones we do have, and everyone in the table above is head and shoulders above the rest. The next-highest ranked catcher is Grandal (36.8 frJAWS), while Posada, with -113.4 framing runs between BP and FanGraphs, is down at 31.6 frJAWS.

To these eyes, the fact that Hall of Famers Rodriguez and Mauer are clustered with the highly regarded Posey and Molina, both likely to join them — and that Martin is right there in the mix — suggests that they’re all reasonable choices for Cooperstown. I can understand the temptation to ding Martin for not having the hardware the other guys have, but if the data we have now had been more widely circulated 10–15 years ago, I think he would have been held in higher regard. Not only might he have snagged another couple of All-Star appearances and perhaps another Gold Glove somewhere along the way, but a smarter Dodgers organization probably wouldn’t have non-tendered him in the first place.

We can muse on the what-ifs, but my point is not to write an alternate history of Martin’s career. Rather, it’s to explain the one he had. Whether or not it was universally appreciated in his day, Martin’s career was outstanding. From 2006–16, his 50.6 fWAR ranks fifth in the majors, behind only Miguel Cabrera (62.5), Albert Pujols (52.7), Adrian Beltré (52.1), and Chase Utley (51.8) — a quartet of current or likely future Hall of Famers. None of those four ranked second in innings caught behind Yadier Molina (whose 44.4 WAR ranked 14th) — and remember, the FanGraphs rankings don’t include Martin’s two big years before PITCHf/x framing.

Having spent over two decades recognizing underappreciated Hall of Fame candidates and promoting their cases, I see Martin as one who belongs in the same sentence as Tim Raines, Edgar Martinez, Larry Walker, Billy Wagner, Scott Rolen, Todd Helton, and Utley — and one who belongs in the same plaque gallery in Cooperstown. I’ll be checking the box next to his name on the ballot, hoping he garners enough support that I can check it again.

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