A New Stat: The Catcher Frame

Framing a pitch is central to any young catchers evolution behind the plate and until now quantifying a catcher’s ability to steal close pitches for his pitchers was done solely by the eyes of a scout.  This Baseball Prospectus article outlines one man’s new statistic which hopes to bring this important facet of the game to the world of sabermetrics.  My problem with most Baseball Prospectus articles is that they are not written for the general public.  The audience to which they cater operates at a slightly higher level of mathematical understanding than does the typical baseball fan.  I hope to basically rewrite and illuminate the above article to explain the new stat and its nuances to our readers here at Off The Bench.  Hope that B-P doesn’t mind because it really is a cool stat.

Basically, what Mike Fast did was calculate how many balls and strikes were called incorrectly with a given catcher behind the plate and then turned that into an extra strike rate (to figure out how many extra strikes a certain catcher gets his guys).  He then used this article to justify that changing a strike to a ball (or vice versa) is worth about .13 runs scored.  Summing the total number of runs saved by the catcher for his extra strike rate shows his skill in framing.  Fast found that Jose Molina saved about 73 runs from 2007-2011 (the top result) while Ryan Doumit has cost his team about 66 runs in the same timeframe.  Other notables were Jorge Posada at -50, Russel Martin at 71, Yadier Molina 37, and Brian McCann 20 (for the complete list visit the b-p article).

We’re talking about just a few runs per year here but, the stat can certainly help to quantify a catcher’s defensive ability outside of simple stolen base percentage.  A catchers job entails far more than simply throwing runners out and perhaps their most vital  job of handling a pitching staff is entirely unquantifiable.  I expect the new stat infused into the calculations of WAR for catchers and other defensive metrics with it going mostly ignored by the general public.

I discussed the stat with a friend of mine who showed me the article and a point that I raised was that should this stat catch on and become a continuously updated stat on say Fangraphs.com, perhaps umpires would catch wind of who steals the most strikes and be conscious of it.  However, we recalled the Braves teams of the 90’s who were constantly charged with getting extra strike calls and yet continued to receive nearly all of those borderline calls.  Additionally, major league umpires make it their business to remain as unbiased as possible and would therefore likely steer away from examining these numbers should they take a prominent role in the sabermetrics world.

A final point about this stat might be that a detailed study of the top guys in this statistic might yield the most effective means of catching.  There seems to be two groups of thought in the Majors currently.  There’s some guys who maintain the smooth, effortless look to framing while others (such as Jason Varitek) prefer a more demonstrative approach.  Studying the top guys here might lead to a better way of teaching young catchers the top techniques.

Any way you slice it, The Catcher Frame is a cool new stat.

Stat of the Day: Henry Rodriguez of the Washington Nationals can throw 101 mph.  He’s really good.

-Sean Morash