Framing a pitch

[Guest d'Kong76]

Umps got 47 pitches wrong, it doesn't support that he framed them.
If it does, you'll have to explain it me. Slowly, please.

[Ceetar]

d'Kong76 wrote: Umps got 47 pitches wrong, it doesn't support that he framed them. If it does, you'll have to explain it me. Slowly, please.

Because all the data supports the idea of framing over umpire 'error'. But technically they're all umpire error, it's the REASON behind the error. The catcher has the ability to make the umpire err.



nymr83 provided a link to an article that has two gifs. With roughly the same pitch thrown to the same umpire. The two catchers in question are ranked first and last in pitch framing from that time period, so this is meant to highlight the difference.


These pitches are both in roughly the same spot. The pitcher hit the spot in both cases, meaning the catcher expected the ball right there. lefty batter. righty pitcher. Almost every variable the same except catcher.




One is called a ball, the other a strike.

[Guest d'Kong76]

I ain't buying that 47 times this year a pitch was framed and
the umpire fooled. I'll concede that it happens, but it's certainly
not something that can be measured in the manner that you
are claiming.

Still waiting on that 50 runs per year analysis, but I have all
weekend!

[Ceetar]

The whole concept is in flux, stats are tough!

Here's a more recent article with a leaderboard.

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2015/7/5/8893867/cubs-giants-pirates-catcher-framing-revisited

It's not quite an exact science for figuring out value, but the data all backs it up, guys that are good framers are consistently getting calls. This isn't just random umpire-sucks luck.

50 runs seems like it might be high, looks like the best guys are getting closer to 25ish for a full season. Still, that's more than 2 wins just on framing.

[Guest d'Kong76]

If an ump is fixated on the catchers mitt, and I'm not convinced that that's
where he is (or should be) fixated, he can see the catcher move his glove.

I think this used to be frowned upon when I was younger. Now it's hailed
as some kind of skill and like I said in my opening post I find it annoying.

[Edgy MD]

The thing is, the data certainly shows that catchers who tend to turn borderline balls into strikes and the catchers who tend to turn borderline strikes into balls are tend to repeat from year to year, which suggests that some guys are good at this and some guys are not.

[Guest d'Kong76]

I'm gonna go to the store and frame me a twelve pack of data.

[dinosaur jesus]

I'd say that if umpires are consistently making the same wrong calls with the same catchers, year after year, then you have to say it's due to something the catchers are doing. Framing is an obvious guess, and I don't know a better one. As for how many runs a catcher saves or costs a team with those calls, that's really not that difficult to calculate. The data is out there on run-scoring probabilities with a given count in a given situation. So if an umpire's call makes the count 3-1 instead of 2-2 with a runner on second and one out, there's a real, measurable difference in the number of runs that are likely to score. And those things add up. Obviously there's a lot of randomness involved, and we're talking about probabilities, not actual results. But it seems very plausible to me that a catcher could save his team a lot of runs over a year just by how he catches the ball. Fifty? Sure, why not?

And I don't know what umpires are supposed to do about it. They make their calls based on whether a pitch looks like a ball or a strike, and they get fooled sometimes. There's no way around that. They know that catchers are working a kind of sleight of hand with them, but they can't just make a mental correction and say to themselves, "That looked like a strike, but Grandal's really good at framing, so it probably wasn't." They have to go on what they actually see, whether or not it's what actually happened.

[Edgy MD]

Fifty is probably a stretch.

Here's a good place to look at some of the numbers. They have Francisco Cervelli leading the league at 26.1. He was pulling in 1.47 calls per game in 2014 as a part-time with the Yankees, but upped that to 1.83 as a regular this year. That's a nice little improvement, but not random. And certainly, you can do different work with a different staff.

[Guest d'Kong76]

I'm amazed at the number of people who subscribe to this voodoo.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

d'Kong76 wrote: Let's get an ex-ump on here and see what he has to say about how pitch framing affected his game!

The ump doesn't need to be STARING at a catcher's mitt to be affected-- however minimally-- by the way the ball is caught. Our eyes are fooled by background motion and all manner of other context information all day, every day, in situations that are a lot easier to process than 100-mph spinning ball against mottled background in bright light under various stressors. Also, do you really think that umps are the people to make honest assessments of their own error rates, much less the source of said errors?

Looking at stolen strike numbers and saying "bad umping" is like looking at the number of balls that fall in on Cuddyer in the outfield and saying, "they're just hitting them where he ain't."

[Guest d'Kong76]

I'm clearly in the dog house on this topic... oh well.

[Edgy MD]

Tough inning. Good thing d'Arnie got them out of it by framing a pitch.

[Guest Rockin' Doc]

He didn't get a hit, but what a nice at bat by Dilson Herrera.*

*Never mind me. I thought I was in the IGT when I posted this. It's hell getting old.

[batmagadanleadoff]

http://grantland.com/features/studying-art-pitch-framing-catchers-such-francisco-cervelli-chris-stewart-jose-molina-others/

Start here and you'll get to "saving his team 50 runs a year". Granted, it takes an extraordinarily skilled outlying pitch framer to save his team the 50, but it can be done. Ozzie Smith never saved his team 50 runs a year on defense. Never came close. Pitch framing is scientifically proven. Like with numbers and all. BTW, I posted this same article the day it ran, two years ago and your response was to fucking mock me, which is what you've been doing for like eight years now.

Catchers have been engaging in all sorts of trickery since the dawn of baseball. Why shouldn't they? It shouldn't surprise anyone that baseball at its highest level should be a cutthroat affair. I remember reading about an old-time (Pre WWII) catcher -- I forget his name -- who, at the right moment, would snap his fingers to mimic the sound of a bat nicking the pitch. He would do this on certain checked swings to trick the ump into thinking that the batter made contact with the pitch in order to induce an incorrect strike call.

The umpire's blind spot exists because the ball is smaller than the catcher's mitt and as it approaches the mitt, it disappears from the umpire's vision. Think about it. The umpire can't see the ball hitting the catcher's mitt. He can only "hear" that sound of ball hitting mitt.

[Guest d'Kong76]

batmagadanleadoff wrote: http://grantland.com/features/studying-art-pitch-framing-catchers-such-francisco-cervelli-chris-stewart-jose-molina-others/ Start here and you'll get to "saving his team 50 runs a year". Granted, it takes an extraordinarily skilled outlying pitch framer to save his team the 50, but it can be done.

Thanks, I'll read it during the week. I'm as open minded as the next
guy, but I'm having trouble with such a high number of runs. It's one
pitch and who knows what the batter will do the next one regardless
of wonderfully he may have stole the one before.