Wrapping all method body in try block vs wrapping only particular instructions - coding-style

Question

Looking at the code I recently wrote made me wonder:
public void process(Deque<OperandToken> stack, EvaluationConfig context) {
OperandToken a;
OperandToken b;
try {
b = stack.pop();
a = stack.pop();
} catch (NoSuchElementException e) {
throw new EvaluationException("Syntax error: not enough operands");
}
if (!a.isValueTypeOf(Number.class) || !b.isValueTypeOf(Number.class)) {
throw new EvaluationException("Syntax error...");
}
// more actions on a and b and finally stack.push(result)
}
Same but with catch in the end:
public void process(Deque<OperandToken> stack, EvaluationConfig context) {
try {
OperandToken b = stack.pop();
OperandToken a = stack.pop();
if (!a.isValueTypeOf(Number.class) || !b.isValueTypeOf(Number.class)) {
throw new EvaluationException("Syntax error...");
}
// more actions on a and b and finally stack.push(result)
} catch (NoSuchElementException e) {
throw new EvaluationException("Syntax error: not enough operands");
}
}
Is there any rule about preferred method, or some arguments (e.g. performance) that the first / the second style should be used? In both cases NoSuchElementException is the only exception that can appear, but the question is also valid for cases when there are multiple exceptions that can be thrown on different lines.