Darrell Rasner’s numbers with various catchers
by Gen on Apr.26, 2010 @ 2:05 pm, under NPB
Unlike the States, catchers tend to have a greater responsibility in Japan. If a pitcher gets shelled, they're part of the reason. Likewise, if a pitcher does well, it's usually because they did a good job leading the pitcher.
Darrell Rasner hasn't found a lot of success in Japan. Rasner currently owns a 6.11 career ERA which works out to 71 earned runs allowed over 104.2 innings of work. He has faced a total 469 batters and given up 122 hits (13 homers) and walks 32 for a 1.47 WHIP. His BB/9 works out to 2.75 and his SO/9 to 5.7. Both of these numbers are actually higher than what he was putting up back in States (1.72 BB/9 and 5.05 SO/9 in the Majors).
A newspaper article recently pointed to Rasner's catcher as being a reason for the success he found during his most recent start that ended in a complete game victory. While I'm still on the fence with regards to how important a catcher is to the relative success of a pitcher, I thought it might be interesting to provide a table of catchers that have caught Ranser since he signed on with the team last season.
Catchers that have caught Rasner since 2009
| Player | W-L | G | IP | BF | NP | H | HR | SO | BB/HBP | R | ER | ERA |
| Shima | 2-6 | 10 | 50.0 | 232 | 1024 | 63 | 5 | 27 | 25 | 36 | 36 | 6.48 |
| Fujii | 1-2 | 4 | 21.0 | 94 | 350 | 27 | 4 | 16 | 3 | 21 | 20 | 8.58 |
| Nakatani | 1-2 | 4 | 24.2 | 108 | 419 | 26 | 4 | 17 | 9 | 14 | 13 | 4.74 |
| Ino | 1-0 | 1 | 9.0 | 35 | 126 | 6 | 0 | 6 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2.00 |
| Totals | 5-10 | 19 | 104.2 | 469 | 1919 | 122 | 13 | 66 | 40 | 73 | 71 | 6.11 |
So, just how important is a catcher to a pitcher's relative success?
I would say that the start with Ino was more of an outlier than anything else. Unless the catchers are telling Rasner to lob 80-85 MPH fastballs down the middle of the plate, I think it’s quite a stretch to blame them. He had a 5.52 ERA in yesterdays game, and his ERA probably would’ve been higher if not for Ino’s numerous throwing errors.