Top Catch

The ideal lead-off man gets on base frequently and has the capability to move around the bases quickly. Catchers, on the other hand, need to squat. Managers thus generally don't think of their catchers as lead-off guys. Indeed, in all of the Mets 46-season history only once has a Mets catcher played a full game batting in the lead-off position. That was May 2, 1963, when Casey Stengel's lineup put Choo Choo Coleman behind the plate in the fielding and also in the first spot in the Mets batting order. On the one hand the experiment was not particular successful, as Coleman was on base (with a single) only once in five plate appearances, and Choo Choo neither scored nor batted in a run. On the other hand, by batting first Choo Choo somehow managed to stay out of the way of the rest of the lineup, as the Mets scored 10 runs on 13 hits and demolished Houston by a score of 10-3. Leonard Koppett's beat story summarizing the game for The New York Times the next day is quite amusing -- riffing on the odd spectacle of the early Mets trouncing the opposition -- but does not mention Coleman's unusual place in the lead-off spot. On the other hand, how was Koppett to know that a catcher leading off for the Mets was not to happen again over the next 45 years?

The unquestioned king of lead-off catchers in contemporary baseball is Jason Kendall. Here are the catchers with the most major league games, since 1962, in which they batted in the lead-off spot and had at least 3 plate appearances in the game (the 3 PA minimum is there to try to make sure we are only including true lead-off games, and not merely pinch-hitting, double-switch or defensive replacement games):
Jason Kendall, 446 games
Butch Wynegar, 48 games
Craig Biggio, 35 games
Paul Lo Duca, 33 games
Charlie Moore, 21 games
Johnny Oates, 17 games
Brad Ausmus, 15 games
Ivan Rodriguez 14 games
Ron Brand 12 games
Tim McCarver 10 games

Since 2000, the only catchers to start a game as the lead-off hitter have been Kendall (over 400 games), Lo Duca (who in his spectacular 2001 season was the Dodgers' second most-frequently used lead-off man), I-Rod (the Tigers used him 12 times in the lead-off spot this past April and May), Brad Ausmus (a few times for the Tigers in 2000 and a couple of times for Houston in 2002), and Marty Barrett once for the Cubs in 2004.