Gary Carter

Baseball Player Won-Loss Records
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Gary Carter

Hall-of-Famers as Seen Through Player Won-Lost Records: Gary Carter

Gary Carter was elected to the Hall of Fame in his 6th year of eligibility, 2003, with 78.0% of the vote.

Five highlights of Gary Carter's career:

Gary Carter won his age group in the NFL’s first Punt, Pass, and Kick competition in 1961 at the age of seven.

Carter was named to eleven All-Star teams in his nineteen-year major-league career. He won three Gold Gloves and five Silver Sluggers.

Carter finished second in voting for Rookie of the Year in 1975 and received MVP votes seven times, finishing second in 1980 and third in 1986.

Gary Carter hit 20 or more home runs nine times. He had 100 or more RBI four times, leading the National League in RBI in 1984 with 106.

Carter was traded from the Montreal Expos to the New York Mets in the 1984-85 offseason. In his first game as a Met, Carter went 2-for-4 including a game-winning walk-off solo home run with one out in the bottom of the tenth inning to beat the St. Louis Cardinals on April 9, 1985.

The first two tables below present Gary Carter's career as measured by Player won-lost records, in and out of context.

Season	Team	Age	Games	pWins	pLosses	pWORL	pWOPA

Basic Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1974	MON	20	9	1.0	0.6	0.5	0.4
1975	MON	21	144	16.2	15.8	1.2	-0.3
1976	MON	22	91	8.7	9.8	-0.3	-1.2
1977	MON	23	153	15.6	13.7	3.3	1.9
1978	MON	24	157	16.1	14.3	3.5	2.0
1979	MON	25	140	15.2	13.3	3.5	2.1
1980	MON	26	154	16.7	13.7	4.7	3.3
1981	MON	27	100	12.4	9.8	3.9	2.8
1982	MON	28	154	18.8	15.4	5.3	3.7
1983	MON	29	145	15.5	13.8	3.5	2.1
1984	MON	30	159	19.8	16.2	5.6	3.9
1985	NYN	31	149	20.1	14.0	8.1	6.5
1986	NYN	32	132	17.9	13.3	6.4	4.9
1987	NYN	33	139	13.2	13.7	1.4	0.1
1988	NYN	34	130	12.4	11.6	2.3	1.2
1989	NYN	35	50	3.6	4.7	-0.5	-0.9
1990	SFN	36	91	6.0	6.1	0.6	0.0
1991	LAN	37	101	6.2	7.1	0.0	-0.6
1992	MON	38	95	7.3	8.2	0.2	-0.6
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			2,293	242.7	215.2	53.3	31.2
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			30	4.1	3.0	1.6	1.2
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			2,323	246.8	218.2	54.8	32.5

Season	Team	Age	Games	eWins	eLosses	eWORL	eWOPA

Expected Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1974	MON	20	9	1.0	0.6	0.5	0.5
1975	MON	21	144	16.9	15.1	2.7	1.1
1976	MON	22	91	9.2	9.2	0.7	-0.2
1977	MON	23	153	16.3	13.0	4.7	3.3
1978	MON	24	157	16.8	13.6	4.9	3.4
1979	MON	25	140	15.8	12.8	4.6	3.2
1980	MON	26	154	17.2	13.2	5.8	4.4
1981	MON	27	100	12.1	10.1	3.4	2.3
1982	MON	28	154	19.6	14.6	7.0	5.4
1983	MON	29	145	16.1	13.3	4.6	3.2
1984	MON	30	159	20.6	15.4	7.2	5.5
1985	NYN	31	149	18.9	15.2	5.9	4.3
1986	NYN	32	132	16.5	14.7	3.7	2.2
1987	NYN	33	139	12.9	14.0	0.9	-0.3
1988	NYN	34	130	11.6	12.5	1.0	-0.2
1989	NYN	35	50	3.8	4.6	-0.2	-0.6
1990	SFN	36	91	6.3	5.9	1.1	0.5
1991	LAN	37	101	6.7	6.5	1.1	0.4
1992	MON	38	95	7.5	8.0	0.5	-0.2
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			2,293	245.8	212.1	60.0	38.0
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			30	3.7	3.3	0.8	0.5
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			2,323	249.6	215.4	60.8	38.4

Carter was a unique combination of offensive and defensive excellence, winning, for example, five Silver Sluggers and three Gold Gloves.

The next table shows the top 10 players in fielding wins over positional average as a catcher for whom I have calculated Player won-lost records.

		Catcher, Fielding Only
		eWins	eLosses	eWinPct	eWOPA
1	Ivan Rodriguez	30.6	25.2	0.549	5.5
2	Gary Carter	34.9	29.7	0.540	5.2
3	Yadier Molina	23.3	18.6	0.557	4.7
4	Jim Sundberg	26.9	22.8	0.542	4.2
5	Gabby Hartnett	23.8	19.8	0.545	3.9
6	Bob Boone	31.3	27.6	0.531	3.7
7	Tony Pena Sr.	30.0	26.8	0.528	3.2
8	Del Crandall	17.4	14.3	0.550	3.2
9	Johnny Bench	22.5	19.4	0.537	3.1
10	Charles Johnson	14.8	11.9	0.555	2.9

As measured by net fielding eWins, Gary Carter was the second-best defensive catcher of at least the past 100 years.

But Gary Carter was no defense-first catcher, like Jim Sundberg or Bob Boone.

The final table of the article, then, shows the top 10 players in offensive wins over positional average as a catcher for whom I have calculated Player won-lost records.

		Catcher, Offense Only
		eWins	eLosses	eWinPct	eWOPA
1	Mike Piazza	173.2	132.1	0.567	47.0
2	Carlton Fisk	198.7	169.2	0.540	40.2
3	Johnny Bench	170.5	134.7	0.559	39.1
4	Yogi Berra	169.8	140.2	0.548	33.8
5	Mickey Cochrane	138.0	109.3	0.558	33.4
6	Gabby Hartnett	150.5	125.1	0.546	30.3
7	Bill Dickey	152.0	127.3	0.544	30.1
8	Gary Carter	184.2	160.1	0.535	29.2
9	Jorge Posada	130.2	112.6	0.536	26.8
10	Ted Simmons	167.1	146.6	0.533	24.7

Once again, Gary Carter appears in the top 10. In fact, Gary Carter is one of only three players to appear in both of the above tables. Of course, all three of them (Carter, Bench, and Hartnett) are Hall of Famers.

Article last updated: March 23, 2020

All articles are written so that they pull data directly from the most recent version of the Player won-lost database. Hence, any numbers cited within these articles should automatically incorporate the most recent update to Player won-lost records. In some cases, however, the accompanying text may have been written based on previous versions of Player won-lost records. I apologize if this results in non-sensical text in any cases.

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