Last year I began calculating how successful each catcher was at blocking pitches.  I tied together the MLB GameDay data with the Retrosheet play-by-play information to identify how many opportunities each catcher had to make a meaningful block.  I then subtracted away the number of "misses" or wild pitches and passed balls to come up with a percentage of blocked pitches, which I called Catcher Block Percentage.

Since Retrosheet released their updated event files this week, I've run the calculations for the 2008 season which can be found in the table below. As always, results are limited to those catchers with greater than 100 opportunities (I used that correctly, right Sky?).

 A couple of AL West catchers lead up the list.  Mathis easily out-performed Mike Napoli behind the plate, but Napoli was much better at it (147 OPS+ versus 55).  Jason Varitek continues looking good at the defensive aspect of the game while his offense has crumbled.  It's nice to see Russell Martin do well, since he often seems to be overlooked when discussing top catchers.

At the bottom of the list is Chris Iannetta, who broke through offensively this season, but could use some work blocking pitches, although his teammate Yorvit Torrealba didn't do much better.  A.J. Pierzynski continues his poor performance from past seasons.  A lot of his placement comes from how much he played though - his rate performance isn't too bad.  The Yankees replaced Jorge Posada with approximately the same value behind the plate (a relatively low one).  Ivan Rodriguez was better in 2008 than in seasons past, but still was below average.  And we can make another check mark in the reasons to move Jarrod Saltalamacchia to first base column, as he ranks far behind Gerald Laird this season.