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if you use fangraphs' WAR, posada comes in at 11th best catcher of all time. ahead of him are the names you would expect - bench, fisk, pudge, carter, berra, piazza, bill dickey, mickey cochrance, ted simmons, and gabby hatnett. of those names, neither pudge nor piazza are yet eligible, but are expected, whispers and suspicions aside, to sail into the hall of fame. only ted simmons is unenshrined.
of all the catchers behind him in WAR, only roy campanella was elected to the hall through the popular vote. there are a bunch of really weak hall of famers who came in through either the veterans committee or the old timers committee.
ted simmons, with 50.4 WAR got only 3.7% of the vote in 1994, and dropped fmor the ballot.
posada sits at 44.9 WAR.
just behind him are wally schang at 43.8 WAR, who got a meager 4.1% of the vote in 1960 and dropped, thurman munson, whose 43.4 WAR and untimely death netter him a peak of 15.5% of the vote in 1981, his first year on the ballot, and bill freehan, whose 43.4 WAR was good enough for only 0.5% of the 1982 vote.
and it's not like all of posada's postseason experience should boost him much - his postseason OPS is some 100 points lower than his regular season OPS.
i think the hall of fame has a really weak batch of catchers in there. posada would be the worst catcher admitted by the writers who did not die young. not by much, but by enough.
bbref, btw, is less kind to posada. in addition to the afore mentioned ten catchers who are ahead of him in their WAR metric, bbref also has bill freehan and lance parrish.
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