You might have realized that a lot of catchers have been Eddie Royal Jersey on the move this winter, and also you wouldnt be mistaken should you believed that every single one experienced San Diego at some point. (The Padres traded Yasmani Grandal to the Dodgers and Rene Rivera towards the Rays, briefly had Ryan Hanigan before sending him to Boston, and ended up with the duo of Derek Norris and Tim Federowicz.) You probably also noticed the Blue Jays gave Ru sell Martin an enormous contract, the Cubs are thrilled to go from Welington Castillo to Miguel Montero and David Ro s, and, well, yes, this is likely to be about pitch framing.
Its pretty easy to understand the outcome pitch framing makes around the game over the past couple of years, as well as if teams arent nece sarily spending money for it on the market, most of the catchers teams acquired this winter season are considered upgrades over the earlier versions when it comes to framing. Once the Pirates lost Martin to Toronto and understood theyd not be in a position to approximate the offense hed provided, they instead considered former Yankees Francisco Cervelli and Chris Stewart, both considered plus framers.
Its fascinating to consider what impact plus framers may have on their new pitching staffs. Clayton Kershaw, for example, just had one of the most impre sive pitching seasons ever, and that he did it while mainly pitching to some.J. Ellis and Drew Buteraneither considered particularly stellar framers. (Ellis, in fact, ranked one of the worst hanging around, an i sue he was well aware of when I chatted with him about it last spring.)
The extra strikes Grandal can provide over Ellis can only help. Certainly, nowhere Jays were considering giving young arms Marcus Stroman, Daniel Norris and Aaron Sanchez as much a sistance because they could once they spent to upgrade from Dioner Navarro to Martin. Jake Arrieta and friends will benefit from Montero and Ro s, and so forth. To choose one randomly-selected example, Matt Shoemaker faced 219 hitters with the well-regarded Hank Conger behind home plate, and 324 with the below-average Chris Iannetta. With Conger, Shoemakers K% was 26.0% against a BB% of 3.6%. With Iannetta, those numbers dropped to 20.6% and 4.9%, respectively. Its not really simple as that that doesnt adjust for opponent, park, umpire, etc. but its a noticeable difference. This can be a genuine thing.
I considered trying to identify which pitchers could improve the most out of their new backstop partners, but its extremely hard otherwise impo sible to say which pitcher on the staff will benefit probably the most with no actual data from the pair cooperating. That's, Grandal is expected to be an upgrade over Ellis, but exactly how will we know if hell help Kershaw greater than Zack Greinke or Hyun-Jin Ryu? We can gue s, but its difficult to do more than that. A catchers framing skills arent nece sarily going to help every pitcher exactly the same way.
So instead of anticipating, lets think back. A year from now, Ill have an interest to see how Grandal helps Kershaw. Last year, we might happen to be wondering the same thing, simply with last years crop of catcher changes (plus a couple of as-yet-unknown changes that would come around thanks to injury). So that as luck would have it, several of the best and worst pitch framing catchers played their first full season for a new team in 2014, giving us a nice chance to compare pitchers who was simply with similar team in 2013 against the things they did with the new catcher in 2014.
Three of the four worst-regarded framers Kurt Suzuki, Navarro and Jarrod Saltalamacchia were a new comer to their teams last year. Three of the greatest were either new to town or getting their first real playing time in Brian McCann, Rivera and Caleb Joseph. For pitchers who threw a minimum of 50 innings for the similar team in both seasons, did we have seen tangible differences? I really hope so. I dont know where this is going to go. I sure hope its somewhere interesting.
To do that, Im going to borrow one of Jeff Sullivans favorite quick-and-dirty toys Willie Young Jersey , which is expected strikes, a simple way to take a look at zone rate and from zone swing rate to determine the number of more (or fewer) strikes a pitcher received.
As with all things that include relievers and single-year data, sample dimensions are a problem, though its somewhat unavoidable here because the entire point is were referring to a single season price of data. Also of note, this makes up about all catchers on the team, not only a brand new one; as well as the most part, these teams had one primary catcher. Does that make this too unreliable? Perhaps, but it will be interesting to see what comes of it. We pre s on.
Poor framers (Navarro, Saltamacchia, Suzuki)Blue JaysSeasonNameExpected Strikes/1000Difference2013Aaron Loup-29.932014Aaron Loup-13.5916.342013Brett Cecil-10.202014Brett Cecil-32.64-22.442013J.A. Happ-5.172014J.A. Happ-16.78-11.612013Mark Buehrle11.672014Mark Buehrle-0.17-11.842013R.A. Dickey-8.582014R.A. Dickey-2.346.242013Todd Redmond-11.242014Todd Redmond-20.90-9.66Going from J.P. Arencibia, 2013s primary catcher, to Navarro was a clear step down, since framing is one of the fewthings Arencibia does well. Four from the six Jays pitchers to throw 50 innings both seasons took a big step back, particularly Cecil, although a large velocity spike allowed him to achieve succe s nonethele s. So far, this is e sentially as expected.
Im not even likely to pretend to know what occurs when you cro s a knuckleball with pitch framing total world destruction, I suppose. (Josh Thole caught a great deal of Dickeys innings, anyway.)As for Loup,that huge jump was surprising to me, however i make a walk rate which more than doubled (and a release point that never stayed exactly the same this past year) introduced some additional variables to this.
MarlinsSeasonNameExpected Strikes/1000Difference2013A.J. Ramos-32.122014A.J. Ramos-39.41-7.302013Henderson Alvarez-11.832014Henderson Alvarez-11.650.182013Jose Fernandez-26.992014Jose Fernandez-15.0911.912013Mike Dunn-23.842014Mike Dunn-23.370.472013Nathan Eovaldi-15.992014Nathan Eovaldi-13.792.202013Steve Cishek-14.722014Steve Cishek4.4719.192013Tom Koehler-26.242014Tom Koehler-13.0213.21The 2013 Marlins featured five catchers, but mostly Rob Brantly (an undesirable framer) and Jeff Mathis (an average one, despite his reputation). Saltalamacchia was the only worst framer in baseball in 2014, according to StatCorner. And yet theres considerable improvement here from three from the seven pitchers shown.
What gives? This one provided pause. This one helped me go over the numbers four times, specifically in regards to Koehler. Im not sure I've got a great answer here, but I can offer some hypotheses: First, Saltalamacchias performance has been somewhat all over the place, going from pretty decent in Boston to awful in Miami, to the point that Jeff felt the nece sity to specifically investigate it late around. I additionally wonder if something about Koehler just makes him particularly hard to catch. Heres a July 2013 midseason framing update post that noted Koehler was the pitcher getting hurt the most of anyone in baseball by indifferent framing, and that had Jay Cutler Jersey nothing to do with Saltalamacchia. Unlike Cishek, the numbers in 2014 for Koehler arent a lot good as they are le s bad.
TwinsSeasonNameExpected Strikes/1000Difference2013Anthony Swarzak-4.642014Anthony Swarzak-10.93-6.292013Brian Duensing-31.952014Brian Duensing-31.610.342013Casey Fien-12.822014Casey Fien-6.756.072013Glen Perkins-24.602014Glen Perkins-35.71-11.112013Jared Burton-32.562014Jared Burton-35.07-2.502013Kyle Gibson-4.892014Kyle Gibson-3.771.12The main Twins catchers in 2013 were the atrocious Ryan Doumit and Joe Mauers last gasp behind the plate. Doumit is probably the worst framer of this century, and Mauers final season involved average. Baseball Prospectus had the Twins ranked as the worst framers in2013 and 2014 a fact I wish Id had handy after i was talking about lousy Minnesota defense recently and thus theres very little improvement here. Though Doumit wasnt a full-time catcher in 2013, it says a lot when you are able move ahead from him and not get all that better.
What about the teams that imported better catchers?
Good framers (Rivera,Joseph, McCann)PadresSeasonNameExpected Strikes/1000Difference2013Andrew Cashner-2.282014Andrew Cashner24.7327.022013Dale Thayer-27.132014Dale Thayer-1.6025.532013Eric Stults19.432014Eric Stults30.9411.512013Robbie Erlin11.052014Robbie Erlin17.246.192013Tim Stauffer0.582014Tim Stauffer3.572.992013Tyson Ro s-1.792014Tyson Ro s6.788.57Unsurprisingly, the differences listed here are huge, because Rivera was beloved by framing metrics and Grandal also scored well. Its not that 2013 primary starter Nick Hundley was bad StatCorner had him as only slightly below-average but Rivera, as has been documented, was elite. Stults, for instance, received 87 extra strikes. Thats e sentially a whole games price of outs, just from having an excellent framer.It didnt nece sarily help Stults have a good season, because even great framing cant save a HR/FB that doubled, but its valuable.
OriolesSeasonNameExpected Strikes/1000Difference2013Brian Matusz-17.092014Brian Matusz-0.3716.732013Chris Tillman-10.702014Chris Tillman-5.695.012013Darren ODay8.742014Darren ODay-2.34-11.082013Miguel Gonzalez-22.012014Miguel Gonzalez0.7722.792013T.J. McFarland-8.572014T.J. McFarland14.5123.082013Tommy Hunter-12.282014Tommy Hunter2.7415.032013Wei-Yin Chen-2.102014Wei-Yin Chen2.965.06In Baltimores case, obtaining a new catcher wasnt the program, but then again, Matt Wieters having Tommy John surgery after playing just a couple weeks wasnt the program, either. Hundley came over from San Diego to add support, and theres some Steve Clevenger in there too, but Joseph took over and provided value behind home plate despite a woeful 72 wRC+. This is the situation that had the least regular starter, but since Wieters had ranked poorly in framing within the last few seasons, to go from that towards the average Hundley or above-average Joseph, well, you can observe the result.
The Os showed improvement acro s the board, save for precisely the pitcher you would expect to be the outlier sidearmer ODay and his unusual delivery. Just like Dickey, well mentally note that and move on. Were constantly talking about what the Orioles do in order to outperform our projections, the things that dont show up in WAR, and here you are. This really is one of these.
YankeesSeasonNameExpected Strikes/1000Difference2013Adam Warren-0.592014Adam Warren2.032.632013David Phelps2.612014David Phelps4.872.262013David Robertson21.632014David Robertson29.347.712013Hiroki Kuroda9.922014Hiroki Kuroda9.31-0.612013Shawn Kelley-2.822014Shawn Kelley16.3319.15Theres le s improvement for the Yankees even though McCann was considered a very good framer, despite his offensive woes, however that is sensible: The Yankees have valued framing ever since Jorge Posada retired. Martins skills are well-known, although the 2013duo of Stewart and Austin Romine was hideous offensively, they were solid framers.So even though McCann is also excellent, theres simply le s room for improvement here, and Pat O'Donnell Jersey thats why the numbers sneak in only ever so slightly, other than Kelley, who changed his pitching style considerably.
So exactly what does all of this mean? For the most part, during these six examples, we see what we should expected. Pitchers got a lot more a sist in North park, Baltimore and Ny. They didnt, really, in Minnesota or Toronto. The Marlins results were a little unexpected, though thats a staff going in one flavor of bad to a different.
When we glance back on this after the entire year, it might be difficult to find out if Kershaw gained whatsoever, because its almost inconceivable that he could improve. However for someone like Nathan Eovaldi, moving from one of the worst framers hanging around to 1 of the best might make a serious difference. The trio of young Jays might be thrilled, going from Navarro to Martin. The D-Backs starters might not get sound advice with themselves, going from Montero to Tuffy Gosewisch? Or whoever ends up there.
However this shakes out, weve learned enough about framing at this time to understand its real. We may not be sure about the actual run values, and some catchers work better with particular pitchers, but the effect is real. For several teams, that specifically went directly into 2015 thinking.