The Best Pittsburgh Pirates Seasons That Didn’t Make All-Star Games

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PITTSBURGH, PA – OCTOBER 01: Russell Martin #55 of the Pittsburgh Pirates hits a single in the second inning against the San Francisco Giants during the National League Wild Card game at PNC Park on October 1, 2014 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Justin K. Aller/Getty Images)
PITTSBURGH, PA – OCTOBER 01: Russell Martin #55 of the Pittsburgh Pirates hits a single in the second inning against the San Francisco Giants during the National League Wild Card game at PNC Park on October 1, 2014 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Justin K. Aller/Getty Images) /

Russell Martin, 2014

After an overall solid, but unimpressive season with the bat while being an outstanding defender in 2013, Russell Martin’s 2014 season was a very good year in all facets of the game. However, he missed about a month at the end of April to the end of May, which severely hurt his chances of making the All-Star Game that year. But the injury didn’t slow down his performance for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The first half of 2014 saw the catcher hit .279/.400/.407. Martin was walking at an insane rate of 13.5% of the time. His 136 wRC+ at the time ranked 4th among National League catchers, but it was his defense that truly showed how valuable he was.

His 3.0 fWAR was the 3rd highest among all catchers, and tied with Cardinals’ Yadier Molina, who did make the All-Star Game despite having inferior batting numbers (.287/.341/.409, 110 wRC+). He also well outdid Diamondbacks’ catcher Miguel Montero too (.262/.344/.416, 106 wRC+, 2.8 fWAR) who also went to the ASG.

Martin got even better in the second half, batting .302/.396/.460 in his final 223 plate appearances of the season. All told, Martin had a .290/.402/.430 batting line, 11 home runs, 20 doubles, to go with a 135 OPS+/140 wRC+ through 460 plate appearances. Defensively, Martin had +21 DRS, caught 39% of the runners trying to steal on him, and being worth +15.3 framing runs. Martin ended up having the 3rd highest catcher fWAR at 6.2, and actually had the 8th highest fWAR of all position players as well.