Cardinals crybaby defends overrated teammate who ranked below Reds' Johnny Bench

Somebody call the wham-bulance, Adam Wainwright is all up in feelings again. The longtime St. Louis Cardinals' pitcher — and all-time crybaby — is back at it once again. Wainwright retired from the game after the 2023 season saw him post the worst numbers of his career at age 41. But that hasn't stopped the former Cincinnati Reds' nemesis from continuing to take shots at his longstanding NL Central rival. His latest beef comes courtesy of an online ranking of the best catchers in MLB history.

A ranking of the greatest catchers of all-time was posted to X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday night, and as most of these rankings tend to do, it placed Reds' legend Johnny Bench at the top. Bench is well regarded by almost every single expert, pundit, and former player to be the best catcher the game has ever seen. Well, every one except Wainwright.

Cardinals' all-time crybaby Adam Wainwright defends overrated teammate Yaider Molina in lieu of Reds' Johnny Bench

The ex-Cardinals hurler cried foul at the rankings and immediately responded to the post saying, "Nobody will ever convince me that Yadier Molina isn’t the best CATCHER of all time. You can say there are other catchers that were better hitters. But catcher? Not possible to be better than he was. And WAR can’t measure all that he did."

Wainwright is correct. WAR cannot measure all that Molina did. But it can sure calculate a lot, and what it reveals is that Molina is one of the most overrated players of his generation. In fact, according to Baseball Reference, Molina has no place among the greatest catchers to ever play the game. The average of the 17 backstops in the Baseball Hall of Fame is 53.6 bWAR. Molina's trifling 42.2 bWAR comes in 22nd among all catchers in baseball history, while Bench's 75.1 bWAR is tops.

Even if you want to use a more catcher-friendly version of Wins Above Replacement, FanGraphs puts Bench at 74.8 fWAR ahead of Molina with 55.6 fWAR. Bench has 10 career Gold Glove Awards to Molina's nine. Bench went to 14 All-Star Games while Yadi when to just 10. Both backstops were part of two World Championship teams, but Bench won two NL MVPs and was a top-5 finalist for the award four times. Molina was a finalist twice, but never took home the trophy.

We can sit back and have the argument about whether or not Molina belongs in Cooperstown — he'll probably get in, but in no way should he be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Don't forget it took Gary Carter six years to get into the Hall of Fame. But making the argument that Molina is the best catcher to ever play the game is absolutely ludicrous.

But Wainwright has obvious bias toward his teammate and obvious animus toward the Reds' organization. Maybe it's the 5.83 ERA he had during his career while pitching at Great American Ball Park over the years. Sorry Waino, didn't mean to open up old wounds.

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