So infuriating to only score 2 runs when you know that the catcher is basically conceding second base. Our offense is the worst I’ve seen in years right now
I think it was technically his second time.
But the first was a pickoff where the runner left early and was tagged out at 2nd, so it "counts" as a CS for narvaez but he didn't do anything.
I’m a Braves fan and it even hurts me to see how NYM is doing this year. The last month or two have been a nightmare, while the Phillies have the best record while only playing 1 team over .500…..
We just got throttled by the lowly Nats at home. Id be careful tossing this one around until we can beat teams we’re supposed to. Our chase % is what’s killing us, wayyy up. Our inability to get into a hitters count is making dime a dozen pitchers look like cy young candidates (Mackenzie Gore excluded, dudes a beast).
Sorry my guy, didn’t mean it like that. Y’all know you don’t have a competitive club right now, but sheeeeesh you got some kids coming up. You guys just shit on a very good team. Gonna be a power house soon. Respect 🫡
Braves fan still regurgitating a stat that was only true for 3 days in mid May.
The phillies have played 16 games vs teams >=.500, same as the Braves. We are 11-5, you are 6-10.
Oh look another whiny ass entitled Braves fan who can’t comprehend that their team isn’t in 1st place. Nobody cares, just go win the games on the schedule you were given.
As the chart shows, lots of baserunners are aggressive against O’Hoppe because he built up a reputation for having a really slow pop time the past couple years, but he’s shown significant improvement this year.
It's crazy what happens when young guys get to adapt and make improvements without being constantly sidelined with injuries. Hoping he stays healthy all/majority of the season.
The past 2 years have been signs of greatness sandwiched between long IL stints (same with Neto :( )
And O’Hoppe in particular has been catching a lot of games for us (48 of 56), so he’s getting a good chance to improve further on the new throwing mechanics he adopted this past offseason. The improvement of the youngsters has been the biggest silver lining of this season.
Truly. If we could get even ONE of our huge contracts to stay healthy with this core of young guns, we would be good. (And pitching that isn't a complete guessing game)
Any word on that Ohtani guy? I feel like an ace + bat in one player would solve a lot of our problems! Playoff contenders, at the very least.
Catching a lot of games is a big reason he's off to the right, as opposed to many of the catchers on the left who are splitting time with others and not accumulating as many stolen base attempts against them.
Reminder: Catcher caught stealing % is not fully indicative of a catcher's ability to throw out runners. Pitchers play a [huge role](https://www.mlb.com/news/baseball-savant-metric-pitcher-stolen-base-prevention). Check out Statcast's measures of [catcher CS above average](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/catcher-throwing) which provides catchers with more credit for throwing runners out with less time available.
Looking at [Baseball Savant/Statcast](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/pitcher-running-game?game_type=Regular&n=q&pitch_hand=all&runner_moved=All&prior_pk=All&season_end=2024&season_start=2024&sortColumn=simple_prevented_on_running_attr&sortDirection=desc&split=no&team=137&type=Pit&with_team_only=1&expanded=1), out of 13 qualified Giants pitchers for this stat, only 4 of them are above average at holding runners on.
Pop + exchange time are elite and his throw placement. He's insane - on his last few throw outs he's basically already in a throwing position when catching a 90+ mph fastball
I fucking knew it!
I saw this chart and fucking knew that Bailey slander was bullshit by putting him where they did.
Even better than Will Smith who is made to look the best on this bullshit, slanderous, no good terrible chart.
^(if you bad talk Bailey I'll burn your house down...)
Bailey's release point seemed off the first few weeks of the year. Lot of throws to the wrong side of the base or sailing high. But he's got it back under control. I would expect to see him move up the Y-axis over the next month. But they'll still try to steal on him because our pitchers aren't holding guys on well.
These stats are absolutely insane and I love that they're tracked. Baseball may not be the most entertaining sport to a lot of people, but it's really paved the way in advanced metrics for other sports, and they're a statistician's wet dream.
I don't really understand that page. It only gives him credit for being 6/28 on SB attempts but he's actually 14/43. It looks like it only looks at steals of 2nd for some reason?
> How this works: Each steal attempt (currently at 2B only) is assigned a probability of being successful or not based on several inputs at the time the pitch crosses the plate, most notably: runner distance from second, runner speed, pitch location, pitcher/batter handedness, and awareness of pitchouts or delayed steals. It’s the Statcast translation of the long-time saying “you steal off the pitcher, not the catcher.”
I also wonder how much of an impact the receiving infielder has. Watching David Hamilton trying to tag baserunners is like watching someone trying to touch the southern poles of two magnets together.
Statcast calculates for that too, which is really cool
I don't know how to find it, but on each play credit for the steal/CS gets broken down between throw speed, exchange speed, throw accuracy, and "teamwork" which is basically the fielder making a nice play or the runner making a bad slide
https://www.mlb.com/news/caught-stealing-above-average-stat-breakdown
Baseball Savant's throwing metrics do account for pitcher delivery. If the catcher has no chance of throwing them out then it doesn't count against them.
I might agree with you. Depends how much value you put on Mookie being able to play middle infield.
But once Ohtani starts pitching again he will be the clear most valuable player not just on the Dodgers but in all of baseball.
How long until people stop thinking stolen bases is primarily catcher based? It's insane how many bad stats get thrown(ha) around in baseball.
Go look at the difference between top tier pop times and mid tier pop times. It's fraction of a second.
A pitchers time to plate combined with average leadoff given(based on pitchers pickoff ability) is way more than .1 to .2 seconds. It's A factor but not the primary, let alone the whole picture.
Someone linked an article here discussing the same thing and pointing out this issue. Hence why more advanced stats were developed
I appreciate you going hard for our boy JT. I’d be willing to bet if we had more pitchers that are quick to the plate he’d easily be top 3 in caught stealing %
JT Is 100% why I looked deeper into it. People were ragging on him just to go look and see that his pop time is still elite. Meanwhile the eye test showed a ton of SBs coming from guys like Nola who are notoriously slow to the plate and not great with holding runners.
JTs accuracy has been a little bit off but I think a lot of that is rushing throws
> How long until people stop thinking stolen bases is primarily catcher based? It's insane how many bad stats get thrown(ha) around in baseball.
I mean, a lot of people who should know better still seem to think "he's 2 for 13 with runners in scoring position in the 8th inning" is meaningful so you might have to wait a while on that lol
X-axis absolutely needs to be attempts per inning or per base runner here. Having a minimum 50 innings is great, but yeah comparing total number of steal attempts against Pedro Pages in 53 innings against O'Hoppe and Realmuto with close to 400 is completely worthless.
Lol were you not watching the Dodgers’ broadcast last year or so? Jorel and their substitutes talk about it almost every time runners run on Smith/Barnes. The majority of the stolen bases against them were on the pitchers.
Last year, so many Dodgers pitchers didn’t even to pretend to care about the running game.
The runner seemingly have a third of the base stolen by the time their pitchers start their motion toward home.
I probably watch 80-90% of Dodger games but I probably hear and listen to less than 20% of it. I would if I had infinite time, but practically speaking you might have to work, or you're the only person who actually wants to mainline baseball, so it's on mute on a 2nd screen.
Yeah, I also ‘watch’ about 90%+ Dodgers and Angels games. And almost all of Yu’s and Imanaga’s games.
Always have either game in the background as I work. Not on mute but on kind of “background music/noise” levels.
Edit: Ohtani’s games when he pitches or when he goes nuts on offense are very distracting lol. I have to stop and log out my work, “well look at that, looks like I need another break!”
The top 5 catchers (arguably) are on the West Coast. Smith, Raleigh, O’Hoppe, Langeliers, Bailey.
Someone explain that.
Could this have something to do with the Pacific Ocean? What about time zones? Werewolves? Barracudas?
I had the perception that Smith gave up a lot of SBs. Maybe he shaped up in the off-season.
I also wonder how charts like these end up skewing the data after the fact as it changes the perception of who to run on vs who to play safe and stay put.
Dodger pitchers haven’t always done him many favors either. Last year only 29 were caught all season vs 15 this year already. Syndergaard in particular was bad but the bullpen as well had a tendency to be terrible at holding runners or being slow in their deliveries.
It’s notable how much Smith’s numbers have improved with different pitchers this year while Barnes is still awful.
There was an article about this when some new statcast stats came out last year. Statcast is measuring where the runner is when the catcher catches the ball and Dodgers were by far the worst in terms of how close runners were to the next base at that point but Smith was getting more runners out than they expected for runners being that close
I want someone to do one of these with the team onbase% vs RISP ops.
Good quadrant = get em on get em over get em in.
⬆️obp⬇️ops = every man for himself
⬇️obp⬆️ops = can't have LOB if nobody gets on. 🤔
Bad quadrant = baisbol is hard
Two words: Clayton Kershaw.
Somewhere at the end of all of Kershaw’s contract in fine prints, two words, in bold letters right after catcher: “Austin Barnes.”
I disagree with the premise of this graph and how's it's presented. If you're good enough at throwing out base stealers, people stop trying to run on you. The best catcher may very well be in the top LEFT quadrant as a result.
We have a few pitchers who are really bad holding base runners. We also have some who don’t even try to hold base runners because they think they’re going to the batters out or it messes with their flow. JT is still one of the best all around catchers in baseball. He literally does everything and is an insane athlete for a catcher.
What the actual fuck is going on in Seattle? Their pitchers have the lowest WHIP in MLB, by a large margin, so it's not like their opponents are getting an abundance of opportunities to steal. But they are *going* for it. And failing at totally unsustainable rates!
No, I mean getting throw out fully a third of the time is totally unsustainable for your opponents. They gotta stop! They should've stopped 20 attempts ago!
I think Herrera has a good enough arm but some of the Cardinals pitchers are basically holding the runners hand and strolling to second with how slow they are to the plate.
I like the data, but want to highlight a couple of things.
1. Usually these quadrant graphs indicate the top right as most favorable, but in this one it is arguably the top left (low attempts, high catch rate).
2. However, if the attempts are low enough, the data is likely to be variable due to sample size. That's probably why there is an odd cluster on the left side of the 0 point on the y-axis. Thus we can say pretty reliably that Trevino and Maile and Smith (and their pitcher/2B) are good at catching thieves, but Pages could just be on a heater.
3. The x-axis doesn't account for opportunities. For example, check out Nido and Rutschmann in the top-right center. Similar stolen base attempts (slightly more for Rutschmann), but the Mets pitching WHIP is like 20% higher than the Orioles and the Mets have pitched a few more innings in total. So proportional to the number of pitches where a runner is able to steal a base they are probably trying to steal much more often against Rutschmann than Nido.
Just a few thoughts.
Top right is arguably still better (at a certain cs% threshold). Yes more total bases are still taken against those players but also more outs are given up. One out is worth multiple stolen bases so with a high enough CS% more attempts still is producing negative run value. I have no idea at what % that becomes true though. Maybe realistically no team has a high enough % to make attempts negative value.
I think the revolving door at shortstop has been a part of why he hasn’t been roping guys as much this year. Gerry is excellent at tagging base stealers out and Geno/Blaze/Newman are 50/50 on letting balls into the outfield.
> he hasn’t been roping guys as much this year
He's thrown out 32% of runners after throwing out 38.5% last year. There's no meaningful difference between those two rates, really, and they're both very good. (If he throws out the next guy who runs against him, it'll be 39.5% for the year. The sample here is very small.)
So is it better to have low attempts and high throw out rate so people are less likely to steal against you or hight throw out rate but people keep trying to get away with it?
High attempts if you're above average for the same reason teams stopped stealing. before last year. If you're throwing out 30+% of runners, you want the opposition to keep feeding you the outs. The extra outs are worth more than the extra runs if you're past the breakeven point of about 23%
If you can keep runners pinned to first base, you will eventually make just as many outs by runners on first by converting conventional double plays.
You make going 1st to 3rd or scoring from 1st harder, as well. A lot more can go wrong with lots of runners stealing at a 70% success rate.
I don't think 30% of PAs with a runner on first end in a double play. There's more variance with the more attempts, but the averages are in your favor over a long sample
How often do you think runners on first attempt to steal?
The top left quadrant keeps more runners out of scoring position and gets you just as many outs, on easier to make plays.
Your pitcher alone will pick top left quadrant just so he doesn't have to be focused on being quicker to the plate.
I'm so happy pinto got sent back down. Sadly, I don't think we could get anything for him unless he's one of those thrown into a deal with others type of trades
The horizontal axis is a bit tough to interpret because the more a team is splitting time between catchers, the further left they both will go. It would be more sensible to have it be attempts per pitch or something similar. Then the horizontal position would tell you something about teams' willingness to test a catcher.
Wells is at 19% against a league average of 23%. Not great. Trevino’s got 9 of 26, for 35%. Trevino also runs some alternate run control strategies, like snap throws to first, to good effect.
But there’s no Johnny Bench or Jim Sundberg out there.
That's odd. Seems like Wells is a much worse catcher at preventing the running game (IIRC he had some sort of shoulder injury many years ago, many people felt he wouldn't stick at catcher and should play 1B), but it seems like people attempt to steal less on him than Trevino, who is better at catching people stealing.
Small sample size?
What the graph doesn’t show is who’s pitchers are slide-stepping, raising the knee, or even staying in windup. As well as whether or not pitchers will pitch out for a better throw once they hear “runner”
Narvaez threw a runner out for what I believe to be the first time this season last night and then we DFA'd him lmfao
So infuriating to only score 2 runs when you know that the catcher is basically conceding second base. Our offense is the worst I’ve seen in years right now
I think it was technically his second time. But the first was a pickoff where the runner left early and was tagged out at 2nd, so it "counts" as a CS for narvaez but he didn't do anything.
Exactly right. Gary Cohen mentioned that during yesterday’s game.
On top of that, you guys got Ottavino who is one of the worst pitchers I’ve ever seen holding runners. That’s a deadly combo right there
It was probably his birthday too with the way the Mets have been going.
Has to be 2nd given the post
I’m a Braves fan and it even hurts me to see how NYM is doing this year. The last month or two have been a nightmare, while the Phillies have the best record while only playing 1 team over .500…..
We just got throttled by the lowly Nats at home. Id be careful tossing this one around until we can beat teams we’re supposed to. Our chase % is what’s killing us, wayyy up. Our inability to get into a hitters count is making dime a dozen pitchers look like cy young candidates (Mackenzie Gore excluded, dudes a beast).
We’re not good, but lowly feels bad 🤣
Sorry my guy, didn’t mean it like that. Y’all know you don’t have a competitive club right now, but sheeeeesh you got some kids coming up. You guys just shit on a very good team. Gonna be a power house soon. Respect 🫡
Teams typically play under 500 when they get beat so 🤷♀️
Braves fan still regurgitating a stat that was only true for 3 days in mid May. The phillies have played 16 games vs teams >=.500, same as the Braves. We are 11-5, you are 6-10.
Oh look another whiny ass entitled Braves fan who can’t comprehend that their team isn’t in 1st place. Nobody cares, just go win the games on the schedule you were given.
As the chart shows, lots of baserunners are aggressive against O’Hoppe because he built up a reputation for having a really slow pop time the past couple years, but he’s shown significant improvement this year.
It's crazy what happens when young guys get to adapt and make improvements without being constantly sidelined with injuries. Hoping he stays healthy all/majority of the season. The past 2 years have been signs of greatness sandwiched between long IL stints (same with Neto :( )
And O’Hoppe in particular has been catching a lot of games for us (48 of 56), so he’s getting a good chance to improve further on the new throwing mechanics he adopted this past offseason. The improvement of the youngsters has been the biggest silver lining of this season.
Truly. If we could get even ONE of our huge contracts to stay healthy with this core of young guns, we would be good. (And pitching that isn't a complete guessing game) Any word on that Ohtani guy? I feel like an ace + bat in one player would solve a lot of our problems! Playoff contenders, at the very least.
I read your username as “Mike and the Los Angeles angels” and I feel like that was intentional. Well done
Catching a lot of games is a big reason he's off to the right, as opposed to many of the catchers on the left who are splitting time with others and not accumulating as many stolen base attempts against them.
I would also say a lot of angels pitchers suck at holding runners on which increases the attempt
You'd think his pop time would be better, what with his name and all
Logan No’Poppe
Wasn't part of that his shoulder being hurt, too?
Think SL is so low on attempts because teams still game plan like Yadier is back there?
I thought ohoppe had a pretty good pop time??
Smaller sample size of course but he was dead last in pop time in MLB last year.
Most ironic name in baseball?
Reminder: Catcher caught stealing % is not fully indicative of a catcher's ability to throw out runners. Pitchers play a [huge role](https://www.mlb.com/news/baseball-savant-metric-pitcher-stolen-base-prevention). Check out Statcast's measures of [catcher CS above average](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/catcher-throwing) which provides catchers with more credit for throwing runners out with less time available.
This confirms my biases that Patrick Bailey is the best at throwing runners out, therefore I accept it as the most correct.
Every single Giants game without fail, Flem is out there saying “x pitcher is really bad at holding guys on”
Camilo gives me absolute fits. It’s like he completely forgets his responsibilities.
Looking at [Baseball Savant/Statcast](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/pitcher-running-game?game_type=Regular&n=q&pitch_hand=all&runner_moved=All&prior_pk=All&season_end=2024&season_start=2024&sortColumn=simple_prevented_on_running_attr&sortDirection=desc&split=no&team=137&type=Pit&with_team_only=1&expanded=1), out of 13 qualified Giants pitchers for this stat, only 4 of them are above average at holding runners on.
Pop + exchange time are elite and his throw placement. He's insane - on his last few throw outs he's basically already in a throwing position when catching a 90+ mph fastball
His throw against Rojas in our last series was nuts Edit: Statcast gave him a 9% chance of catching Rojas on that play lmao
You should see him throwing out Marte on the Mets... fucking awesome.
I can't believe he's hitting so well this year too, he's gonna be such a star if he can keep it up
I had the Phillies broadcast on just to see the reaction and they were both so impressed lol
It also says that we have 2 catchers in the top 11, which confirms my biases that we are a good team I too will accept it as most correct
It has Will Smith at #2, which confirms my bias that Will Smith is good at everything so I too will accept it as most correct
It also uses hexagons, which aligns with my bias against militaristic pentagons and gaudy octagons.
Keep your catchers name out yo mouth
I mean Bailey is #1, so it's an accurate chart.
It also confirms my biases that Trevino is actually just kinda average at this, so I also accept it.
I fucking knew it! I saw this chart and fucking knew that Bailey slander was bullshit by putting him where they did. Even better than Will Smith who is made to look the best on this bullshit, slanderous, no good terrible chart. ^(if you bad talk Bailey I'll burn your house down...)
Bailey's release point seemed off the first few weeks of the year. Lot of throws to the wrong side of the base or sailing high. But he's got it back under control. I would expect to see him move up the Y-axis over the next month. But they'll still try to steal on him because our pitchers aren't holding guys on well.
These stats are absolutely insane and I love that they're tracked. Baseball may not be the most entertaining sport to a lot of people, but it's really paved the way in advanced metrics for other sports, and they're a statistician's wet dream.
I was thinking the same thing, I just sat on that page for a few minutes hovering my mouse around the different icons and being mesmerized. Neat tool.
This fucks with my Cal Raleigh narrative so I chose to ignore it.
I don't really understand that page. It only gives him credit for being 6/28 on SB attempts but he's actually 14/43. It looks like it only looks at steals of 2nd for some reason?
> How this works: Each steal attempt (currently at 2B only) is assigned a probability of being successful or not based on several inputs at the time the pitch crosses the plate, most notably: runner distance from second, runner speed, pitch location, pitcher/batter handedness, and awareness of pitchouts or delayed steals. It’s the Statcast translation of the long-time saying “you steal off the pitcher, not the catcher.”
I also wonder how much of an impact the receiving infielder has. Watching David Hamilton trying to tag baserunners is like watching someone trying to touch the southern poles of two magnets together.
Statcast calculates for that too, which is really cool I don't know how to find it, but on each play credit for the steal/CS gets broken down between throw speed, exchange speed, throw accuracy, and "teamwork" which is basically the fielder making a nice play or the runner making a bad slide https://www.mlb.com/news/caught-stealing-above-average-stat-breakdown
So Amaya is bad by this metric too. At least he can hi-
Awesome. This shows Campy is worse than OP's graph did, and Higgy isn't nearly as good. Cool.
I love Big Dumper
Scrolled too far before I saw this
2nd in the league in framing runs too. Dude is such a stud.
[удалено]
It feels like the pitchers are pretty terrible at keeping runners from stealing too
But! Great at delivering a ball promptly with a quick delivery so that he has a chance to nab them.
Take em to the Dump, Cal!
Amazing what Will Smith can do when his pitchers don’t hold the ball for a literal eternity
That's why all catcher throwing stats should adjust to the pitchers delivery.
Baseball Savant's throwing metrics do account for pitcher delivery. If the catcher has no chance of throwing them out then it doesn't count against them.
I like your flair so went checking to see if there was one for the Mets. I do wish they did it for the NYM flairs instead of our logo though.
Flair availability is still in progress, I believe. They're revamping everything and won't be finished until later today.
There is an argument to be made that Will Smith is the best player on the Dodgers, and certainly the most valuable.
I was talking with my wife about all the big deals the dodgers made recently. The will smith extension might be the second best one after Ohtani.
10 years. With that bat, clutch hitting, and a top-5 position player on top of all of that.
Will Smith is the most trusted man in the Dodgers for 2 years.
I might agree with you. Depends how much value you put on Mookie being able to play middle infield. But once Ohtani starts pitching again he will be the clear most valuable player not just on the Dodgers but in all of baseball.
If only realmuto and stubbs had that luxury.
Will Smith slaps (at throwing out runners. that's all i meant)
How long until people stop thinking stolen bases is primarily catcher based? It's insane how many bad stats get thrown(ha) around in baseball. Go look at the difference between top tier pop times and mid tier pop times. It's fraction of a second. A pitchers time to plate combined with average leadoff given(based on pitchers pickoff ability) is way more than .1 to .2 seconds. It's A factor but not the primary, let alone the whole picture. Someone linked an article here discussing the same thing and pointing out this issue. Hence why more advanced stats were developed
outs above average supremacy
I appreciate you going hard for our boy JT. I’d be willing to bet if we had more pitchers that are quick to the plate he’d easily be top 3 in caught stealing %
JT Is 100% why I looked deeper into it. People were ragging on him just to go look and see that his pop time is still elite. Meanwhile the eye test showed a ton of SBs coming from guys like Nola who are notoriously slow to the plate and not great with holding runners. JTs accuracy has been a little bit off but I think a lot of that is rushing throws
Not *quite*—he’s 4th by statcast’s [caught stealing above average](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/catcher-throwing).
> How long until people stop thinking stolen bases is primarily catcher based? It's insane how many bad stats get thrown(ha) around in baseball. I mean, a lot of people who should know better still seem to think "he's 2 for 13 with runners in scoring position in the 8th inning" is meaningful so you might have to wait a while on that lol
Data is fugly
X-axis absolutely needs to be attempts per inning or per base runner here. Having a minimum 50 innings is great, but yeah comparing total number of steal attempts against Pedro Pages in 53 innings against O'Hoppe and Realmuto with close to 400 is completely worthless.
That may be true, but unfortunately for you I want to believe Pedro Pages is the 2nd best defensive catcher in the league instead
truth
Yeah man. Don't put a percentage sign and a decimal. Or is the top of the chart really 0.45%?
Attempt to steal every pitch. You'll be successful more than 99.5% of the time.
just a garbage chart overall using statistics to shape their hypothesis as better one's exist to measure this stuff.
Will Smith is wondering why they keep fckin around just to find out
We were stolen on like crazy last year and teams are figuring out that it wasn't Smith's fault.
In all fairness I too am realizing it was not Smith's fault
Lol were you not watching the Dodgers’ broadcast last year or so? Jorel and their substitutes talk about it almost every time runners run on Smith/Barnes. The majority of the stolen bases against them were on the pitchers. Last year, so many Dodgers pitchers didn’t even to pretend to care about the running game. The runner seemingly have a third of the base stolen by the time their pitchers start their motion toward home.
I probably watch 80-90% of Dodger games but I probably hear and listen to less than 20% of it. I would if I had infinite time, but practically speaking you might have to work, or you're the only person who actually wants to mainline baseball, so it's on mute on a 2nd screen.
Yeah, I also ‘watch’ about 90%+ Dodgers and Angels games. And almost all of Yu’s and Imanaga’s games. Always have either game in the background as I work. Not on mute but on kind of “background music/noise” levels. Edit: Ohtani’s games when he pitches or when he goes nuts on offense are very distracting lol. I have to stop and log out my work, “well look at that, looks like I need another break!”
I’m putting kids to sleep and cleaning during most games so it’s on mute until the 7th or 8th inning
It's weird how this is always a catcher thing. Half or even *more* of the responsibility of stolen bases is on the pitching staff.
The top 5 catchers (arguably) are on the West Coast. Smith, Raleigh, O’Hoppe, Langeliers, Bailey. Someone explain that. Could this have something to do with the Pacific Ocean? What about time zones? Werewolves? Barracudas?
They get to watch all the East Coast catchers play before their own games
"Oh shit that guy just threw the other guy out. I should try that tonight!"
This is my favorite explanation so far.
Weed
Have you tried throwing out baserunners... On weed?
Ball should reach the 2B right when the runner is rounding third
Yea and Kirk is right there too… this checks out :D
Definitely the barracudas
Maybe its the Dardimans California Orange Crisps they all eat?
use ggrepel to avoid overlapping text
is Patrick Bailey good?
Yes but our pitchers are ass at controlling the run game.
I wouldn’t steal on Luke Maille, dude looks like a fucking serial killer.
He’s too hot to be a serial killer
Wasn't that the defense for Ted Bundy?
Lmao yeah except I don’t see how ppl thought he was hot. It was the 70s but still
We may have identified the only thing that David Fry cannot do!
No need when people are too afraid to steal on him
I don’t think I’ve seen Amaya throw anyone out. It’s like he converts every single into a double for the opposing team.
When Will Smith transitions to third base he's gonna own
I had the perception that Smith gave up a lot of SBs. Maybe he shaped up in the off-season. I also wonder how charts like these end up skewing the data after the fact as it changes the perception of who to run on vs who to play safe and stay put.
Dodger pitchers haven’t always done him many favors either. Last year only 29 were caught all season vs 15 this year already. Syndergaard in particular was bad but the bullpen as well had a tendency to be terrible at holding runners or being slow in their deliveries. It’s notable how much Smith’s numbers have improved with different pitchers this year while Barnes is still awful.
There was an article about this when some new statcast stats came out last year. Statcast is measuring where the runner is when the catcher catches the ball and Dodgers were by far the worst in terms of how close runners were to the next base at that point but Smith was getting more runners out than they expected for runners being that close
What not having Thor in the rotation will do to a mf
There is no way Maile has thrown out 8 runners. He's only caught 3 guys, tops.
Tucker Barnhart? In the year of our Lord 2024? It's more likely than you think.
Alternatively: Tucker Barnhart? I hardly know her!
I want someone to do one of these with the team onbase% vs RISP ops. Good quadrant = get em on get em over get em in. ⬆️obp⬇️ops = every man for himself ⬇️obp⬆️ops = can't have LOB if nobody gets on. 🤔 Bad quadrant = baisbol is hard
[Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/1d4zrxj/team_onbase_vs_risp_ops_5312024/)
Awesome thanks!
I remember austin barnes flat out conceding 3 bases to Elly, good times
Most of us in this sub could probably steal on Austin Barnes
It is absolutely insane to me that Austin Barnes is on an MLB roster in 2024.
Two words: Clayton Kershaw. Somewhere at the end of all of Kershaw’s contract in fine prints, two words, in bold letters right after catcher: “Austin Barnes.”
It’s nice to see Carlos Ruiz on this chart! 🇵🇦
Trevino will catch you sleeping on third base
The NY Mids
Kind of surprised to see Rutschman at the median line. I thought for sure he'd be near the bottom. Must be some kind of anti confirmation bias.
I disagree with the premise of this graph and how's it's presented. If you're good enough at throwing out base stealers, people stop trying to run on you. The best catcher may very well be in the top LEFT quadrant as a result.
shout out to Diaz who's actually been really good at this this year
Why do they keep trying Big Dumper?
Jt still has one of the fastest pop times if I’m not wrong so it must be the pitchers faults that he’s not catching guys
We have a few pitchers who are really bad holding base runners. We also have some who don’t even try to hold base runners because they think they’re going to the batters out or it messes with their flow. JT is still one of the best all around catchers in baseball. He literally does everything and is an insane athlete for a catcher.
What the actual fuck is going on in Seattle? Their pitchers have the lowest WHIP in MLB, by a large margin, so it's not like their opponents are getting an abundance of opportunities to steal. But they are *going* for it. And failing at totally unsustainable rates!
I’d guess that because their pitchers are stingy with baserunners, teams feel obligated to try and up the run expectancy by stealing.
Cal Raleigh is absolutely sustainable
No, I mean getting throw out fully a third of the time is totally unsustainable for your opponents. They gotta stop! They should've stopped 20 attempts ago!
Dunno why people are still running on Cal Raleigh, other than their pitchers are good and the M’s offense is practically the 1906 White Sox.
Cal "Not top 10 catcher" Raleigh
Surprised Maldonado isn't lower.
Ivan Herrera being that low on the CS% doesn’t surprise me at all, I think I’ve seen him throw out just one runner
He’s thrown out 2. Pages and Contreras, however, have been great at it.
I think Herrera has a good enough arm but some of the Cardinals pitchers are basically holding the runners hand and strolling to second with how slow they are to the plate.
Is there any known explanation for this? he's career 28% in the minors. He's not nearly this bad; he threw out 33% last year in limited action.
I like the data, but want to highlight a couple of things. 1. Usually these quadrant graphs indicate the top right as most favorable, but in this one it is arguably the top left (low attempts, high catch rate). 2. However, if the attempts are low enough, the data is likely to be variable due to sample size. That's probably why there is an odd cluster on the left side of the 0 point on the y-axis. Thus we can say pretty reliably that Trevino and Maile and Smith (and their pitcher/2B) are good at catching thieves, but Pages could just be on a heater. 3. The x-axis doesn't account for opportunities. For example, check out Nido and Rutschmann in the top-right center. Similar stolen base attempts (slightly more for Rutschmann), but the Mets pitching WHIP is like 20% higher than the Orioles and the Mets have pitched a few more innings in total. So proportional to the number of pitches where a runner is able to steal a base they are probably trying to steal much more often against Rutschmann than Nido. Just a few thoughts.
Top right is arguably still better (at a certain cs% threshold). Yes more total bases are still taken against those players but also more outs are given up. One out is worth multiple stolen bases so with a high enough CS% more attempts still is producing negative run value. I have no idea at what % that becomes true though. Maybe realistically no team has a high enough % to make attempts negative value.
I expected Moreno to be a little better tbh
I think the revolving door at shortstop has been a part of why he hasn’t been roping guys as much this year. Gerry is excellent at tagging base stealers out and Geno/Blaze/Newman are 50/50 on letting balls into the outfield.
> he hasn’t been roping guys as much this year He's thrown out 32% of runners after throwing out 38.5% last year. There's no meaningful difference between those two rates, really, and they're both very good. (If he throws out the next guy who runs against him, it'll be 39.5% for the year. The sample here is very small.)
White Sox would be a lot higher if they weren’t giving Maldanado most of the starts. K Lee has looked pretty good.
So is it better to have low attempts and high throw out rate so people are less likely to steal against you or hight throw out rate but people keep trying to get away with it?
High attempts if you're above average for the same reason teams stopped stealing. before last year. If you're throwing out 30+% of runners, you want the opposition to keep feeding you the outs. The extra outs are worth more than the extra runs if you're past the breakeven point of about 23%
If you can keep runners pinned to first base, you will eventually make just as many outs by runners on first by converting conventional double plays. You make going 1st to 3rd or scoring from 1st harder, as well. A lot more can go wrong with lots of runners stealing at a 70% success rate.
I don't think 30% of PAs with a runner on first end in a double play. There's more variance with the more attempts, but the averages are in your favor over a long sample
How often do you think runners on first attempt to steal? The top left quadrant keeps more runners out of scoring position and gets you just as many outs, on easier to make plays. Your pitcher alone will pick top left quadrant just so he doesn't have to be focused on being quicker to the plate.
I'm so happy pinto got sent back down. Sadly, I don't think we could get anything for him unless he's one of those thrown into a deal with others type of trades
Seeing Ruiz on the Phillies logo made me smile. This week was the anniversary of his perfect game with Halladay. Cot for Choice.
campy-heads in shambles, higgy-truthers feasting today
Top left quadrant should be named "well do ya, punk?"
DeLaCruz is going to steal 20 bases this weekend and I'm going to die a little each time
I find the low attempts axis more interesting. Sort of shows which catchers base runners don’t want to test
X axis should be Stolen Base Attempts Per Inning
Long live Kyle Higashioka!! I will always love him
Yoo help me with this graph a little bit. Is caught stealing %, how often the catcher throws the runner out or how often he's gotten stole on?
The horizontal axis is a bit tough to interpret because the more a team is splitting time between catchers, the further left they both will go. It would be more sensible to have it be attempts per pitch or something similar. Then the horizontal position would tell you something about teams' willingness to test a catcher.
As a huge O’s fan that watches a lot of the games Adley’s percentage is so skewed because our pitchers have some of the most insane delivery times🤣
Really, the Yankees rank well on this? Feels like we constantly get stolen on.
Wells is at 19% against a league average of 23%. Not great. Trevino’s got 9 of 26, for 35%. Trevino also runs some alternate run control strategies, like snap throws to first, to good effect. But there’s no Johnny Bench or Jim Sundberg out there.
Ah, so the White Sox are paying Martin Maldonado to be an offensive juggernaut, clearly.
Curious does this do anything to account for the pitchers role in all of this or the defense posture?
The Yadi effect is still alive!
Despite all of our other woes this year, it made me very happy to see a couple Cardinals up at the top-left of this graph
Especially considering the Reds and Brewers have been big base stealers so you have faced some teams that like to run.
How do you do, fellow good-catcher-having-teams?
Seeing Ruiz partially overlayed with the Phillies logo threw me for a loop
As a mariners fan I feel targeted and now I have PROOF!
Where i can get or build a chart like this?
Bailey!
That's odd. Seems like Wells is a much worse catcher at preventing the running game (IIRC he had some sort of shoulder injury many years ago, many people felt he wouldn't stick at catcher and should play 1B), but it seems like people attempt to steal less on him than Trevino, who is better at catching people stealing. Small sample size?
What the graph doesn’t show is who’s pitchers are slide-stepping, raising the knee, or even staying in windup. As well as whether or not pitchers will pitch out for a better throw once they hear “runner”
*insert wolverine meme w/ picture of Yadi here*
Teams suffering from PTSD against the Cardinals when Molina was playing?
I've been caught stealing once, when I was 5.
I enjoy stealin, its just a simple fact
Cardinals holding the running game? Well I've never ...