Raising Aces: Time to ... (05/03)
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May 3, 2013 Overthinking ItThis Week in Catcher Framing, 5/3Let’s start with the results of last week’s blind framing test. (If you haven't taken it, and you want to know, go back and do it before you see spoilers.) I gave you 10 pairs of pitches, with one called strike and one ball in each pair, and asked you to tell me which was which. The catch was, I cut off the umpire calls at the end of the clips (because, well, it would've been pretty easy otherwise). These were the strikes: 1. Left, Morrow vs. Machado I received 51 responses via comment, tweet, and email. Here are the results:
Not quite a toss-up, but pretty close. The majority got five right (1, 2, 3, 8, 10) and five wrong (4, 5, 6, 7, 9), with about a 55-45 overall correct rate. The results were sort of skewed by no. 1 and no. 8, which almost all of you called correctly. In no. 1, Nick Hundley pushes an outside pitch farther outside by gloving the ball while his glove is still sweeping away from the center of the plate (and he was already set up outside, so he didn't have to do that). In no. 8, Wilin Rosario waits till the last second and stabs at the ball. Most good receivers relax their wrists after initially presenting the target, which allows them to react quickly to the pitch's trajectory. Rosario sets the target and more or less holds it there until the ball gets to his glove. He's not loose and relaxed. Both Hundley and Rosario are poor receivers. You perceived that! Where you didn't do so well was nos. 6 and 7, and, well, I don't blame you—I probably would've said the same. On any particular pitch, an umpire can blow a call, a good reception can go unrewarded, or a bad frame can go unpunished. Over the course of a season, that tends to even out. *** There was an interesting receiving-related exchange in yesterday's Red Sox-Blue Jays game, relayed to me by @SMcEwen_eh on Twitter. J.A. Happ facing Mike Carp, 1-0 pitch:
The next pitch was in almost exactly the same location, but this time Arencibia caught it cleanly and Toronto got the call.
"That's the art of catching," Martinez continued. "Receiving that ball to a point where you really show the umpire that it's a quality pitch." Arencibia rates as a very poor receiver, and certainly that has to do with his technique. But Martinez and Morris suggested that this has been happening often, so maybe it also has to do with simply not knowing what pitch is on the way to the plate. Of course, this exchange raises an interesting question: Did Morris teach his catchers to receive to the score? League Leaders The Best (min. 30 OZoneStrikes+ZoneBalls) Ratio
Runs
The Worst (min. 30 OZoneStrikes+ZoneBalls) Ratio
Runs
This Week in Jose Molina, 4/25-5/01 Weekly Net Strikes: 9 Molina had a heck of a week, saving the Rays nine net strikes in only 22 innings. He was removed from Saturday's game in the fourth inning after being hit by a pitch on the knee, but the 2013 season was saved when he made it back on Monday after a day off on Sunday. Here's his best work of the week: 3. Date: 4/30
2. Date: 4/30
1. Date: 4/30
All of the batters were similarly sad that those were strikes. This Week in Jonathan Lucroy, 4/25-5/01 Weekly Net Strikes: 4 Lucroy padded his league-leading runs saved total with another week in the black. A few weeks ago, I called Lucroy the king of framing low pitches. This is why: 3. Date: 4/26
1. Date: 4/30
It doesn’t seem fair to do that to James McDonald. Pitcher plate appearances should all be caught by Ryan Doumit. Best Frames of the Week 5. Date: 4/30
And he also recorded the 10th- and 11th-best frames of the week later in the same series. He's not much of a hitter, but the Yankees will survive his offense as long as he keeps catching pitches like that. 4. Date: 5/01
3. Date: 4/30
Not hittable. 2. Date: 4/26
1. Date: 4/29
That's an interesting setup. Molina has a tendency to drop to one knee with a low pitch coming and no one on base, and Corporan does something similar here, getting the call on a low pitch on the outside corner. Corporan is also hitting .360, which is totally sustainable. Worst Frames of the Week 5. Date: 4/26
Ross is a good receiver, and it doesn't look like he did anything wrong here. He just had the bad fortune to be catching a batter who is roughly half his height. The PITCHf/x operator notes the top and bottom of the strike zone before each at-bat, depending on the hitter's height, so our strike zone data should correct for the fact that Altuve stands only one Altuve in height. Maybe the operator underestimated Altuve's diminutiveness and set the borders too high, which would explain why it shows up as one of the worst frames. Regardless, it's a borderline pitch that didn't go Ross' way. It would be interesting to see whether Altuve gets ball calls often on high pitches that are technically inside his zone. 4. Date: 4/29
Before you frame a pitch, it has to go into your glove. 3. Date: 4/28
Between Hernandez and A.J. Ellis, the Dodgers just aren't getting any extra strikes. Kershaw misses his target, but Hernandez didn't do a great job of adapting (which isn't to say that a better receiver would have gotten that call). 2. Date: 5/01
Our old pal Wilin Rosario, gloving a ball and nudging it outside of the strike zone again. Again, Outman didn't nail the target—it's not a coincidence that there are more missed targets in the worst frames section, than the best frames section—but a better receiver could have made that pitch look a bit better than that. 1. Date: 4/28
Hernandez brings up the rear with another off-balance stab on a pitch over the plate. A season of that is going to get old in Los Angeles. Thanks to Ryan Lind for research assistance.
Ben Lindbergh is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @benlindbergh
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