Replacing Yadi

Molina made everyone around him better. Now St. Louis attempts to reconcile a roster without him.

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From behind the dish, Yadier Molina controlled the game.

Ivan Rodriguez may have done it with more spectacle, more muscle, and a lot more offense. Pudge collected 13 Gold Gloves, made 14 All-Star teams, earned seven Silver Sluggers, and even nabbed an MVP during his Hall of Fame career. But whereas Rodriguez wore six different uniforms as a big leaguer, Molina’s 19 seasons with the Cardinals define him more than any statistic or trophy.

Molina played from 2004-2022, a span of time that fits snugly between the release of the book Moneyball and the implementation of the pitch clock. The game rapidly evolved around Molina. He quietly received everything it threw at him.

Yadi entered the league at the same time and same age as Joe Mauer.

The Twins catcher was the first overall pick in the 2001 draft. He was a hometown boy. He debuted before his 21st birthday and won a batting title two seasons later. In that 2006 season in which Mauer batted .347, Molina hit .216 — and won a World Series. (He hit .412 in the Fall Classic.)

Molina’s impact was more subtle than the numbers on the back of a baseball card. His game was more nuanced than any photo on the front.

He saw things on the field that few others did.

Think about the tension that builds before a climactic moment in a horror film. That was advance scouting the Cardinals. We knew a game-changing play could be coming from Molina. We just didn’t know when or how.

In a game that became more quantifiable during his career, Molina’s intangibles cement him as a Hall of Famer.

I spoke with Brian Giles, who faced Molina in a number of critical games with the Padres, about the catcher.

“It seems like he always came up with the big hit in the playoffs,” Giles says. “They had Albert, they had all these other great players, and it seemed like Yadi was the guy that would come up and get the big hit that they needed.”

Without Molina on the roster for the first time in 20 years, a team that made the playoffs in each of the past four seasons and in nine of the past 12 finds itself at the very bottom of the National League. Dead last.

Not much has gone right for the Cards since they blew a 2-0 lead in the ninth inning of Game 1 of their Wild Card series against the Phillies last October. This offseason, they signed catcher Willson Contreras to an $87.5 million, five-year contract. The Cardinals have since learned that signing a player and replacing a player can be two very different undertakings. (Contreras was unceremoniously relegated to designated hitter duties last weekend.)

The franchise has had some awkward public moments over the past few years, including the firing of manager Mike Shildt. Consideration and clear communication doesn’t seem to be part of the modern day Cardinal Way.

Now I wonder if it wasn’t Molina keeping the team together the whole time.

I’d like to think that in his earlier seasons, when Walt Jocketty was GM and Tony La Russa was manager, Molina’s energy could be focused entirely on efforts on the field.

I have visions of him dictating the action during the 2006 NLDS against the Padres. I’m pretty sure that one of my former colleagues still has nightmares about it.

“I think what struck me the most was how he could get pitches called off the plate because he received the ball so smoothly back there,” Giles offers. “He would set up off the plate a little bit and — the way he received it — it would convince umpires that it was a strike.”

Don’t forget: This was a time before K-Zone. Boxes outlining the strike zone weren’t yet a part of every broadcast. QuesTec, a company that used pitch-tracking technology to evaluate umpires in the early 2000s, wasn’t widely accepted as a definitive authority, nor was it in most stadiums. Molina’s work behind the plate was art. Science hadn’t yet entered the building.

His level of preparedness, though, demonstrated both an incredibly high baseball IQ and a passion for studying the game. We witnessed his on-field capabilities. What might he have also been doing in the clubhouse to propel the franchise forward? How did he impact an entire pitching staff?

Longtime Cardinals coach Jose Oquendo was considered for the Padres’ managerial vacancy after Bruce Bochy left for San Francisco following the 2006 season. I remember hearing that, during the interview with Oquendo, Kevin Towers tried to learn about how the Cardinals schemed and called some of the defensive plays that Molina and his teammates executed against San Diego during the prior season.

Giles was a victim of one such play. In the ninth inning of a one-run game against the Cardinals in May 2006, the Padres were threatening to tie or win. With two outs, Giles was on first base, and Mike Cameron represented the tying run on second. On a 1-0 pitch to Josh Bard, Molina and Albert Pujols took advantage of an aggressive baserunner.

“There was two outs and you have to get a big lead,” Giles remembers. “And they basically just set up way up off the plate. Not a pitch out, but right off the plate. I took an aggressive secondary, and when I did that Albert was breaking right on the pitch."

The pitch was taken for ball two, and then Molina delivered a strike down to Pujols. The slugger applied the tag on Giles, and the game was over.

In the playoffs that season, Molina got Mike Piazza in a similar fashion.

How did the Cardinals pull off these plays? I was resigned to believe that it was much more about the personnel than it was any specific transferable formula.

These are the events, the snippets, the heads-up baseball that, over time and with the right organization, forge a Hall of Fame-caliber career. Why should anyone have expected that such a player could be replaced so easily?

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