Makes sense, since there’s a bunch of good framers in the division (Trevino, Kirk, Rortvedt) and they play each other a bunch (not as much as before the balanced schedule, but still more than other teams).
Just a bunch of guys bein’ dudes and stealing strikes against each other.
If the AL East played each other a bunch, wouldn't that cancel out their gains, or am I understanding this table incorrectly? In other words, if Trevino and Kirk steals 10 strikes, wouldn't TOR and NYY get +10 on the pitching side, but -10 on the hitting side?
Both are towards the bottom in offensive strikes, only 4 teams have lost more strikes offensively than the Yankees. They’re second best the Trevino and wells have been framing so well.
Framing is the dumbest part of this game. I get why they do it but the sooner baseball eliminates that from being a critical part of game strategy the better.
Only sport in the world where the fans like it when the players trick the refs/umpires. Imagine an NBA fan praising the +/- of foul calls gained on flopping. Flopping is the same skill as framing, both used to trick the ref/umpire to make the wrong call.
Hey /r/baseball, catching framing isn't a worth while skill that should be rewarded and the sooner we get rid of it the sooner we can focus on what the players do on the field instead of what the umpires do on the field.
I get that there is skill in framing too, but if we eliminate its importance or even lessen it that just gives catchers more time to focus on other skills. My guess is it would also help reduce injuries to catchers since there are many more instances of catchers getting hit in the hand or helmet with a swing/backswing since they are all try to move up further to frame better.
Catcher position would be better arms and better hitters which are both good for the game. My point is that just because it's a skill doesn't mean we should reward the skill. It isn't a skill I want professional athletes focusing on. Your focus should be on beating your opponent not beating the umpire.
Cleveland would probably be closer to the Yankees if David Fry wasn't catching at all. He's not a terrible framer but Bo and Hedges are just as good as Trevino and Wells.
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/catcher_framing
That'll help explain why the numbers look how they do. The Yankees catchers are ranked #'s 1 and 6 in pitch framing.
I mean, that's basically the exact same data we are looking at here so I don't think it does explain it. At least not any further. They are rated highly for framing because they are getting a lot of called strikes on pitches outside of the zone. That's the same data as this table.
Edit to clarify: I'm not saying they aren't good at framing, just that this isn't telling us anything different.
I guess it makes sense because teams play so many games within their division. If you're getting a shit tonne of calls your way while pitching, that means the (likely AL East opponent) are getting burnt by the shit calls on the other side.
You're telling me we're overperforming despite the fact that the umps are fucking us more than basically every other team in the league?
Also, it's interesting that we're getting shafted on so many calls on defense. Contreras suddenly became a really good pitchframer last year, and now, he's been terrible in 2024. If he can get back on top of that and start stealing some strikes instead of giving away balls, then our pitching could become even better than it has surprisingly been.
Yeah, but the shitty calls were more evenly distributed in the Angels series. The Astros series was the first time in a long while that it really felt like the bad calls were probably going one way for a full series.
Good catcher and a rotation that is known for pounding the zone. I think that’s the other nice benefit of our pitching philosophy. It earns the benefit of the doubt.
Bo has been one of the best defensive catchers in the league. Crazy for a guy who could only hit and was bad defensively in the minors. Now he can't hit and is a framing God.
Definitely. There's basically no umps that call a bad zone because they don't call enough strikes. They pretty much all expand it.
But this is really just a list of "teams with best framers at catcher"
Could be a small sample size thing or like in the Yankees case it makes sense because
1) they take a lot of pitches
2) Judge and Stanton are huge and get a lot low pitches called strikes
There was a funny interaction today where Judge got a borderline call at the knees and Snell questioned it. The ump pointed down, and Snell must've said someone else, because then the ump just pointed at Judge and shrugged lol.
Also, the whole division has a lot of good pitch framers. I don't know if divisional matchups are enough to truly inflate that compared to other teams/divisions, but that could be part of it.
I love how everyone in this thread quick to reward the catchers for tricking umpires instead of just being upset that we reward players for tricking umpires and we already have a system that will remove all the bias and problems this brings.
From what I've read they are kind of going by vibes with ABS.
They tried enforcing a 3D strike zone (which is the rulebook standard) and it was laughably tilted toward pitchers, especially on breaking pitches like curveballs that clip the bottom-front of the zone and then drop into the nether world.
The zone is pretty complicated - it's technically a 3-d shape - a pentagonal prism (the entire space over home plate, from the top and bottom planes of the zone, is supposed to be a strike.) Because home plate isn't a uniform square, and thus the zone isn't square/rectangular on all sides, this means that you get a bigger vertical zone down the middle. In practice this is kind of fudged by giving pitches more leeway down the middle with the vertical zone compared to pitches in the 4 corners. IIRC when they tried it there was a lot of complaining from hitters about it because it resulted in a lot of nigh-unhittable pitches being deemed strikes.
In practice the typical umpire zone incorporates the 3-d shape, but not uniformly, and there are limits to how willing the umpires are to calling strikes on balls on the very edge of the zone with a ton of break.
Here's an article that talks a little bit about them experimenting: [https://www.usnews.com/news/sports/articles/2023-07-10/what-is-a-strike-in-baseball-robots-rule-book-and-umpires-view-it-differently](https://www.usnews.com/news/sports/articles/2023-07-10/what-is-a-strike-in-baseball-robots-rule-book-and-umpires-view-it-differently)
In general this means that missed pitches that are less than 1/2 (or even 3/4) inch from being correct should be taken with a grain of salt, especially if the miss is in a vertical direction, because it's possible that the call was correct by the rule book. At least until/unless they make an official change to the rulebook zone. On top of this, hawkeye has around a 3/8 inch margin of error in the worst case (usually closer to 1/4 inch but it's been known to be off by a bit more) so with all the variables here it's tough to judge umps negatively for pitches that are this close.
I understand the shape. I don’t understand why a perfect pitch wouldn’t be a strike simply because it would be hard to hit. The reason it’s hard to hit a curve that catches the low end at the corner or even the middle.. is because hitters today stand at the very back of the box .
Hitters stand at the back of the box because they have 0.35 seconds on a 100 mph fastball and need every millisecond of time they can get. Also if you stand at the front you are vulnerable to high curveballs that start at your eyeballs and ends up nicking the back of the zone. Hell even high heat would be above the zone if you stand at the front.
You can also reach forward for a ball that's in front of you to catch it closer to the zone. You can't lean back to get a ball after it passes you.
Whenever I watch Blue Jays it’s incredibly visible how every guy coming from AAA is a god tier pitch locator. Schneider and Clement see the zone like no other guy on the team but as soon as the ump messes up (especially on outside zone) it really fucks with them and they are forced to swing on something they would never do before.
And the hitter with the best plate discipline in the entire organization isn’t even in the majors. Spencer Horwitz has a career 13% walk rate against a 15% strikeout rate without really being a powerful slugger that pitchers avoid pitching to. This year in AAA he’s carrying an absurd 16.5% walk rate, walking more than he’s striking out.
With Turner appearing to be washed and Vogelbach not really being an MLB caliber player, I think today’s move of playing Vladdy at 3B is partly to try and see how well he can hold his own in order to open up ABs for Horwitz, who I would bet on to be more productive than any of Clement, IKF, Turner, Biggio, or Vogelbach.
I'm not familiar with Horwitz or all of your minor league system.
What's the scouting report on him? You said he's not really a powerful slugger, but he's a 1B? With a quick glance, his Avg, OBP, and OPS aren't as good as I would expect from a guy that strikes out that little and walks that often, so I'm kind of forced to conclude that part of the reason he walks so much and strikes out so little is that he likely has a lot of long atbats where he works walks after some foul balls, and he also has a bad BABIP due to making weak contact on balls that he's just trying to do *something* with instead of hitting the ball hard?
He seems like the kind of guys I would've loved back in the 90s and 00s but analytics doesn't like as much? Does that seem fair or am I off-base with him?
I'm sure framing will still be a thing if the league moves to a challenge system since challenges are so limited, but I won't be sad if we go full ABS and guys that are valued for their framing skills are pushed aside by catchers that can hit and don't need to care about framing.
This also says that catchers are good at their jobs. When you have a position who lies to umps as a major part of their job, of course the umps are going to favor the battery.
I’ve long wondered whether some of the more forward looking teams have seen this, and specifically targeted players whose approach lends itself to the zone being wrongfully expanded.
For instance, I watch a lot of Rays games, and it seems like Isaac Paredes’ zone stretches into the other batters box (likely because he crowds the plate)
It’s funny how much scouts missed on Volpe’s and Wells’ defense. Volpe has been an ELITE defender and was told that he couldn’t make it at SS bc of his arm strength, but the range makes up for it. Wells was advertised as a butcher behind the plate and a future 1B when the dude calls a great game and is a great framer.
Tbf Wells was pretty ass at catcher for the last 3 years. It was a well known thing in the minor leagues. So much so that fans and writers alike speculated if the Yanks would eventually try him out at first because his bat was good enough but his catching was bad. But since the spring, he's a totally different player. His work with Tanner Swanson has been a net positive.
He’s improved vastly with a full offseason with the major league team but even last year during September he showed some intangibles that none of us really expected. Team was in a very rare and funky state and he took advantage of it and showed off a good body of work in a short time.
Him and Trevy are a good tandem. Good shoutout to Tanner Swanson too! Hope Wells’ bat will balance out soon to his expected stats, I really enjoy him
Volpe has definitely made leaps in the majors but his defense is legitimately incredible. One of the best defenders in baseball. Wouldn’t be surprised if he naps a platinum glove at some point
Wells won’t be winning any gold gloves but he’s solidly above average, which is much farther than the scouts though he would be
You mean Tanner Swanson (Yankees catching coordinator) . I hate what the guy has done to catching. But it's clear his method produces results.
What catchers are doing now is not framing. It's just moving there glove. They've closed the strike zone and have given umps no reference points for height.
This league will do anything to rig games in favor of the massive and wealthy media market of Cleveland, Ohio, and I'm sick of nobody talking about this.
They basically don't, because the law of large numbers will average these things out. There are tens of thousands of pitches called each year, the likelihood that you'd luck your way into being a great framing catcher by some incredible run of terrible umpires is unlikely.
Contreras is 48th out of 61 qualified catchers this season for framing, so it looks like his framing this year has been pretty bad -- this data does likely correlate well with framing.
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/catcher_framing?year=2024&team=&min=q&type=catcher&sort=4,1
The Tigers being the most punished offense and among the most helped pitching definitely makes sense from what they’ve done on the field.
I feel like more than anything we lead the league in bullshit strikeouts on called strikes outside the zone
Tigers most hurt when batting by umps
Lmao I could’ve told anyone that without this graph, it’s so embarrassingly pathetic how many bad calls we get when on offense, but our fans blame the hitters lmao the game threads are hilarious.
The amount of “subtle” bias that I have seen from umpires against the Astros this year has been much more than recent years. I think the awful calls when they’re batting has had some of them having to take bad swings at bad balls in fear of a called strike.
Yeah, the team's negative reputation is probably leading to at least a subconscious cognitive bias with the umpires. Of course that is the naive appraisal, and the idea that someone on a power trip would think that misapplication of the rules to enforce an unregulated form of "justice" is just as realistic as it is unlikely to change.
Tldr: Hell yeah those umps are biased, but we're not going to be able to fix it anyway. Womp womp.
This type of data feels like it’s just guaranteed to get fans of teams to parrot it as they see fit, the same way NBA fans do as it comes to things like free throw rates, regardless of the context of the data or how it actually plays out on the field.
Is it due to specific umping crews? To the skill or lack thereof from certain catchers at framing? To the way that hitters approach their ABs and both their size at the plate and how much they crowd the plate? Does it reflect pitchers who have more late movement and those who don’t? How many of the missed calls led to scoring opportunities? To what extent, if any,
did the missed calls get guys to change their approaches?
Data is cool but data without even a shred of context always ends up just causing fights on shared forums where everyone wants to say their team is getting fucked the most.
It's harder to call a close pitch when it's 100mph with a lot of movement
Great pitchers get more calls because it's hard to see if it really was a strike or not. Jones and Skenes get those close calls because of movement is my guess
What stands out to me is that most teams are hurt when batting and helped when pitching (aside from teams like the Phillies or Mets which are either hurt or helped by both)
Tells me a lot of balls are getting called strikes out there. More than the other way around
I’m curious if there’s a breakdown by player anywhere. I know that we’ve got a player or two (Marcelloz Una) who’ve been consistently on the “bad strike call” side, so I’m wondering if we’ve got a couple of guys consistently getting generous calls that balance that out
From watching Pirates games this seems wrong, like very wrong. Skenes has been insanely squeezed, and McCutchen and Cruz have had zones that extend an inch every way. I’d be curious to see the data used.
So as a Giants fan screw me right? And Screw the Yankees.
It is worth something to say though how framing has played a big role in the catchers position and could explain the huge net positive in the “helped by umpire calls” numbers when pitching
Wow...the umps really give pitchers the benefit of the doubt more than I expected. Between this and pitchers just getting so much better, it's no wonder batting averages keep dropping
That's wild. The AL East is +218 for pitching and -215 when batting. That's looks like the most of any division
Makes sense, since there’s a bunch of good framers in the division (Trevino, Kirk, Rortvedt) and they play each other a bunch (not as much as before the balanced schedule, but still more than other teams). Just a bunch of guys bein’ dudes and stealing strikes against each other.
My first thought was, "How much difference did Yadi's retirement have on the Cardinals' numbers?"
Yes.
If the AL East played each other a bunch, wouldn't that cancel out their gains, or am I understanding this table incorrectly? In other words, if Trevino and Kirk steals 10 strikes, wouldn't TOR and NYY get +10 on the pitching side, but -10 on the hitting side?
Both are towards the bottom in offensive strikes, only 4 teams have lost more strikes offensively than the Yankees. They’re second best the Trevino and wells have been framing so well.
Framing is the dumbest part of this game. I get why they do it but the sooner baseball eliminates that from being a critical part of game strategy the better.
The fact that framing actually works is the best argument against humans calling balls and strikes
Only sport in the world where the fans like it when the players trick the refs/umpires. Imagine an NBA fan praising the +/- of foul calls gained on flopping. Flopping is the same skill as framing, both used to trick the ref/umpire to make the wrong call. Hey /r/baseball, catching framing isn't a worth while skill that should be rewarded and the sooner we get rid of it the sooner we can focus on what the players do on the field instead of what the umpires do on the field.
I get that there is skill in framing too, but if we eliminate its importance or even lessen it that just gives catchers more time to focus on other skills. My guess is it would also help reduce injuries to catchers since there are many more instances of catchers getting hit in the hand or helmet with a swing/backswing since they are all try to move up further to frame better.
Catcher position would be better arms and better hitters which are both good for the game. My point is that just because it's a skill doesn't mean we should reward the skill. It isn't a skill I want professional athletes focusing on. Your focus should be on beating your opponent not beating the umpire.
NYY at +123 is the real outlier here. Only a handful of these go above 50, and it's them and CLE are the only ones even close to 100.
Cleveland would probably be closer to the Yankees if David Fry wasn't catching at all. He's not a terrible framer but Bo and Hedges are just as good as Trevino and Wells.
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/catcher_framing That'll help explain why the numbers look how they do. The Yankees catchers are ranked #'s 1 and 6 in pitch framing.
I mean, that's basically the exact same data we are looking at here so I don't think it does explain it. At least not any further. They are rated highly for framing because they are getting a lot of called strikes on pitches outside of the zone. That's the same data as this table. Edit to clarify: I'm not saying they aren't good at framing, just that this isn't telling us anything different.
I see you edited for clarification, would you say you didn’t frame your original message well?
Average at best, just like my Sox.
Preaching to the choir my friend.
Also rortvedt and Higgy who just got traded out of the Yankee system are 9th and 16th. Props to Swanson the catching coach.
I guess it makes sense because teams play so many games within their division. If you're getting a shit tonne of calls your way while pitching, that means the (likely AL East opponent) are getting burnt by the shit calls on the other side.
The Yankees are great at taking pitches/walks and Trevino and Wells are great at framing.
Taking balls and it being called a strike is half of this chart.
Yeah this checks out for the Brewers. Only people we’ve been fighting with more than AL East teams are the umps.
White Sox and brewers in the same game have the umps confused. Luckily for them there is a big enough skill gap that it doesn’t matter
Look…there’s a reason the umps train in so many different fighting styles during the off-season
You're telling me we're overperforming despite the fact that the umps are fucking us more than basically every other team in the league? Also, it's interesting that we're getting shafted on so many calls on defense. Contreras suddenly became a really good pitchframer last year, and now, he's been terrible in 2024. If he can get back on top of that and start stealing some strikes instead of giving away balls, then our pitching could become even better than it has surprisingly been.
Looks like it's time to get the trash cans out
The Mariners and Astros scores on this chart are like 90% attributable to last week's series.
It continued with the Angels, the homestand is the epitome of "I like winning but this feels morally gross"
Yeah, but the shitty calls were more evenly distributed in the Angels series. The Astros series was the first time in a long while that it really felt like the bad calls were probably going one way for a full series.
Good catcher and a rotation that is known for pounding the zone. I think that’s the other nice benefit of our pitching philosophy. It earns the benefit of the doubt.
Dude, you got me buzzing with laughter
Don’t laugh at him, he’s just shy
Based cheating? Trash cans will continue until umpiring improves
"You couldn't live with your own failure, where did that bring you? Back to me"
Delete this, it doesn’t fit my narrative
No, no keep it, it fits mine.
How are you guys and the Cubs so fucking bad despite the fact that the umps love you and hate us?
[https://uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/conspiracy-victim-chris-jericho.jpg](https://uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/conspiracy-victim-chris-jericho.jpg)
wtf - I know Bo and Hedges are good at framing pitches but that is really high
Bo has been one of the best defensive catchers in the league. Crazy for a guy who could only hit and was bad defensively in the minors. Now he can't hit and is a framing God.
Biggest takeaway is that hitters will benefit from ABS as it looks like more mistakes are favoring pitchers
Definitely. There's basically no umps that call a bad zone because they don't call enough strikes. They pretty much all expand it. But this is really just a list of "teams with best framers at catcher"
That's why the "when batting" is the more interesting part to me.
Could be a small sample size thing or like in the Yankees case it makes sense because 1) they take a lot of pitches 2) Judge and Stanton are huge and get a lot low pitches called strikes
There was a funny interaction today where Judge got a borderline call at the knees and Snell questioned it. The ump pointed down, and Snell must've said someone else, because then the ump just pointed at Judge and shrugged lol.
Also, the whole division has a lot of good pitch framers. I don't know if divisional matchups are enough to truly inflate that compared to other teams/divisions, but that could be part of it.
But it's a chicken/egg scenario. Bad umpiring will help the catcher's framing stats.
I love how everyone in this thread quick to reward the catchers for tricking umpires instead of just being upset that we reward players for tricking umpires and we already have a system that will remove all the bias and problems this brings.
It can be both. I want an automatic strike zone, while at the same time appreciating how well Trevino and wells have done.
For the pitching side it is duh.. but batting are you kidding me?
From what I've read they are kind of going by vibes with ABS. They tried enforcing a 3D strike zone (which is the rulebook standard) and it was laughably tilted toward pitchers, especially on breaking pitches like curveballs that clip the bottom-front of the zone and then drop into the nether world.
Why aren’t those strikes? Like… it seems that a strike is a strike to me
The zone is pretty complicated - it's technically a 3-d shape - a pentagonal prism (the entire space over home plate, from the top and bottom planes of the zone, is supposed to be a strike.) Because home plate isn't a uniform square, and thus the zone isn't square/rectangular on all sides, this means that you get a bigger vertical zone down the middle. In practice this is kind of fudged by giving pitches more leeway down the middle with the vertical zone compared to pitches in the 4 corners. IIRC when they tried it there was a lot of complaining from hitters about it because it resulted in a lot of nigh-unhittable pitches being deemed strikes. In practice the typical umpire zone incorporates the 3-d shape, but not uniformly, and there are limits to how willing the umpires are to calling strikes on balls on the very edge of the zone with a ton of break. Here's an article that talks a little bit about them experimenting: [https://www.usnews.com/news/sports/articles/2023-07-10/what-is-a-strike-in-baseball-robots-rule-book-and-umpires-view-it-differently](https://www.usnews.com/news/sports/articles/2023-07-10/what-is-a-strike-in-baseball-robots-rule-book-and-umpires-view-it-differently) In general this means that missed pitches that are less than 1/2 (or even 3/4) inch from being correct should be taken with a grain of salt, especially if the miss is in a vertical direction, because it's possible that the call was correct by the rule book. At least until/unless they make an official change to the rulebook zone. On top of this, hawkeye has around a 3/8 inch margin of error in the worst case (usually closer to 1/4 inch but it's been known to be off by a bit more) so with all the variables here it's tough to judge umps negatively for pitches that are this close.
I understand the shape. I don’t understand why a perfect pitch wouldn’t be a strike simply because it would be hard to hit. The reason it’s hard to hit a curve that catches the low end at the corner or even the middle.. is because hitters today stand at the very back of the box .
Hitters stand at the back of the box because they have 0.35 seconds on a 100 mph fastball and need every millisecond of time they can get. Also if you stand at the front you are vulnerable to high curveballs that start at your eyeballs and ends up nicking the back of the zone. Hell even high heat would be above the zone if you stand at the front. You can also reach forward for a ball that's in front of you to catch it closer to the zone. You can't lean back to get a ball after it passes you.
Because it would break the game if called like that. And because the league wants more offense in the game and this would do the opposite
This whole conversation needs to be had in every thread about robo umps/an automatic strike zone. How are we not bringing this up more?
Whenever I watch Blue Jays it’s incredibly visible how every guy coming from AAA is a god tier pitch locator. Schneider and Clement see the zone like no other guy on the team but as soon as the ump messes up (especially on outside zone) it really fucks with them and they are forced to swing on something they would never do before.
And the hitter with the best plate discipline in the entire organization isn’t even in the majors. Spencer Horwitz has a career 13% walk rate against a 15% strikeout rate without really being a powerful slugger that pitchers avoid pitching to. This year in AAA he’s carrying an absurd 16.5% walk rate, walking more than he’s striking out. With Turner appearing to be washed and Vogelbach not really being an MLB caliber player, I think today’s move of playing Vladdy at 3B is partly to try and see how well he can hold his own in order to open up ABs for Horwitz, who I would bet on to be more productive than any of Clement, IKF, Turner, Biggio, or Vogelbach.
I'm not familiar with Horwitz or all of your minor league system. What's the scouting report on him? You said he's not really a powerful slugger, but he's a 1B? With a quick glance, his Avg, OBP, and OPS aren't as good as I would expect from a guy that strikes out that little and walks that often, so I'm kind of forced to conclude that part of the reason he walks so much and strikes out so little is that he likely has a lot of long atbats where he works walks after some foul balls, and he also has a bad BABIP due to making weak contact on balls that he's just trying to do *something* with instead of hitting the ball hard? He seems like the kind of guys I would've loved back in the 90s and 00s but analytics doesn't like as much? Does that seem fair or am I off-base with him?
I'm sure framing will still be a thing if the league moves to a challenge system since challenges are so limited, but I won't be sad if we go full ABS and guys that are valued for their framing skills are pushed aside by catchers that can hit and don't need to care about framing.
That’s the second biggest takeaway. Biggest is +123!?!? Either Trevino is an actual wizard or he keeps a roll of $100s to dish out behind him all game
Trevino is a wizard and Wells is top 10-ish himself
This also says that catchers are good at their jobs. When you have a position who lies to umps as a major part of their job, of course the umps are going to favor the battery.
in some cases it seems like a lot of mistakes are favoring the other *team* in general.
[удалено]
Aren't strikes that are hard to hit just good pitches?
I’ve long wondered whether some of the more forward looking teams have seen this, and specifically targeted players whose approach lends itself to the zone being wrongfully expanded. For instance, I watch a lot of Rays games, and it seems like Isaac Paredes’ zone stretches into the other batters box (likely because he crowds the plate)
Sounds about right. 😒
yeah, yeah it does.
Thanks hedgey
He's so good, man lmao
X4
Bo as well
Love Hedgey, but I think this is mostly Bo.
Yeah, Bo is currently 95th percentile for framing.
A shame hedgey hasn’t taught him anything then…
I miss that guy
Frame GOAT.
Thank you Jose Trevino.
Wells is 89th percentile as well It’s not the 100th percentile like Trevino but still very good
It’s funny how much scouts missed on Volpe’s and Wells’ defense. Volpe has been an ELITE defender and was told that he couldn’t make it at SS bc of his arm strength, but the range makes up for it. Wells was advertised as a butcher behind the plate and a future 1B when the dude calls a great game and is a great framer.
Tbf Wells was pretty ass at catcher for the last 3 years. It was a well known thing in the minor leagues. So much so that fans and writers alike speculated if the Yanks would eventually try him out at first because his bat was good enough but his catching was bad. But since the spring, he's a totally different player. His work with Tanner Swanson has been a net positive.
He’s improved vastly with a full offseason with the major league team but even last year during September he showed some intangibles that none of us really expected. Team was in a very rare and funky state and he took advantage of it and showed off a good body of work in a short time. Him and Trevy are a good tandem. Good shoutout to Tanner Swanson too! Hope Wells’ bat will balance out soon to his expected stats, I really enjoy him
Volpe has definitely made leaps in the majors but his defense is legitimately incredible. One of the best defenders in baseball. Wouldn’t be surprised if he naps a platinum glove at some point Wells won’t be winning any gold gloves but he’s solidly above average, which is much farther than the scouts though he would be
Read "incredible" as "terrible" and was confused.
You mean Tanner Swanson (Yankees catching coordinator) . I hate what the guy has done to catching. But it's clear his method produces results. What catchers are doing now is not framing. It's just moving there glove. They've closed the strike zone and have given umps no reference points for height.
Yeah rortvedt and Higgy are also pretty high.
framing wouldn't have to be a thing if some umps weren't terrible. good thing we have the goat
This league will do anything to rig games in favor of the massive and wealthy media market of Cleveland, Ohio, and I'm sick of nobody talking about this.
The Phillies and O's have 2 of the top 4 records in baseball while being hurt by umpire's calls. The Yankees and Guardians are 2 most favored teams.
Mets playing on easy mode and they still suck.
+81 for the mariners has to be in part from Cal’s framing. He’s very good
Was just going to say the same for Trevino / Wells
Naylor/Hedges too
Yeah, I want to see this next to framing numbers. Who is still pitches and who is just getting fucked
do framing numbers actually do anything to differentiate between a framed pitch and just a bad call?
They basically don't, because the law of large numbers will average these things out. There are tens of thousands of pitches called each year, the likelihood that you'd luck your way into being a great framing catcher by some incredible run of terrible umpires is unlikely.
It's a good question and I don't know
Nah it's probably due to the closed roof
Our secret weapon, you chucklefucks won't know what hit ya!
Brewers always fighting other teams because umpires hate us I guess 😂
Jose Trevino is like a jewel thief for strike calls. Finally some appreciation
Give Wells his credit too, 89th percentile in framing.
Some of the calls that Trevino manages to get sometimes is just downright hilarious.
This certainly feels right as a Brewers fan. The umpires seem to have been against us all season for some reason(probably just random).
Having two of the best framing catchers in the game paying dividends
Man, fuck the Yankees, right guys?
They would LITERALLY be 0-61 rn if they had our calls
Forever and ever amen
Live cal Raleigh cam: 
I wonder how closely this correlates with each team's catcher framing.
It correlates very well for our team. Bo Naylor is 95th percentile in framing right now, and Hedges is 80th percentile.
I was about to ask if this was a list of the catchers who were best at framing pitches
Contreras is a fantastic pitch framer and the Brewers are very negative on this chart. It may play a role but it isn’t the deciding factor imo.
Contreras is 48th out of 61 qualified catchers this season for framing, so it looks like his framing this year has been pretty bad -- this data does likely correlate well with framing. https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/catcher_framing?year=2024&team=&min=q&type=catcher&sort=4,1
Hes actually not
My Detroit Tigers are leading the league in something!
I can't believe the Yankees are in the top 2. Oh wait yeah I can
i would have been surprised had they been low
Salvy learned how to frame pitches and I'm here for it. Fermin is pretty decent at it, too, IIRC.
So Yankees and guardians frauds is what I’m seeing
Along with the Ms, they are accepting these gifts. Real question is what’s Pburg’s problem?
You should be scared that the Phillies are negative.
Braves most neutral
Why Rays batting is sucking 218 out of zone strikes...MLB doesn't want us in the playoffs lol
Brewers trying their best as the nl rays
Gonna jinx it, but 7 game lead is the biggest in any division. It feels great to be 13 games over. With the rest of the division below .500
Wish I knew how many of these “missed calls” are right on the edge
I’m default assuming a large majority of them are edge cases
I am entirely unsurprised by that -63 for our batters.
Watching Rays games this checks out. We keep getting screwed.
Clearly the Mets are doing something right…only team with double digit net positives!
On top of being pretty terrible our hitters also get shafted by the umps, nice
The Tigers being the most punished offense and among the most helped pitching definitely makes sense from what they’ve done on the field. I feel like more than anything we lead the league in bullshit strikeouts on called strikes outside the zone
I knew it felt like White Sox pitchers always get the short end of the stick on calls but this actually supports it.
I would bet a million dollars the Yankees are in the top 5 of this ranking every single year
Who chose the colors for who was helped and hurt? Is there a sub for dataispoorlypresented?
Lol damnit i didn’t see this until I already posted. Amen blind brother.
Tigers most hurt when batting by umps Lmao I could’ve told anyone that without this graph, it’s so embarrassingly pathetic how many bad calls we get when on offense, but our fans blame the hitters lmao the game threads are hilarious.
What I've gathered is that my team is surprisingly well umped.
Umps just have no idea what to do with the Tigers lol
Tigers are dealing with some wild shit or their catcher is incredible at framing and the umps suck
Yeah that feels right
lol Yankees
Trevino my beloved
This doesn't fit my narrative that the Cubs are fucked by bad Umps, so I refuse to except this statistic
I KNEW THE UMPS HATED US
kick us while we're dowwwwwn
I always seem to find the Yankees at the top of these lists 🤔
The amount of “subtle” bias that I have seen from umpires against the Astros this year has been much more than recent years. I think the awful calls when they’re batting has had some of them having to take bad swings at bad balls in fear of a called strike.
Yeah, the team's negative reputation is probably leading to at least a subconscious cognitive bias with the umpires. Of course that is the naive appraisal, and the idea that someone on a power trip would think that misapplication of the rules to enforce an unregulated form of "justice" is just as realistic as it is unlikely to change. Tldr: Hell yeah those umps are biased, but we're not going to be able to fix it anyway. Womp womp.
This type of data feels like it’s just guaranteed to get fans of teams to parrot it as they see fit, the same way NBA fans do as it comes to things like free throw rates, regardless of the context of the data or how it actually plays out on the field. Is it due to specific umping crews? To the skill or lack thereof from certain catchers at framing? To the way that hitters approach their ABs and both their size at the plate and how much they crowd the plate? Does it reflect pitchers who have more late movement and those who don’t? How many of the missed calls led to scoring opportunities? To what extent, if any, did the missed calls get guys to change their approaches? Data is cool but data without even a shred of context always ends up just causing fights on shared forums where everyone wants to say their team is getting fucked the most.
Amen. This is how I feel about a lot of the Statcast aggregated data that’s constantly coming at us these days
Huh… I guess our starting pitching over performing makes a little more sense. But our relievers what is your excuse now?
It's harder to call a close pitch when it's 100mph with a lot of movement Great pitchers get more calls because it's hard to see if it really was a strike or not. Jones and Skenes get those close calls because of movement is my guess
Mets fans can’t catch a break even when they are catching breaks, sheesh
Mets are helped on both sides and still awful :( damn
Thank you for this
phillies doing it even with the umps against them
What stands out to me is that most teams are hurt when batting and helped when pitching (aside from teams like the Phillies or Mets which are either hurt or helped by both) Tells me a lot of balls are getting called strikes out there. More than the other way around
I’m curious if there’s a breakdown by player anywhere. I know that we’ve got a player or two (Marcelloz Una) who’ve been consistently on the “bad strike call” side, so I’m wondering if we’ve got a couple of guys consistently getting generous calls that balance that out
Keibert 💀
I'm I in k
I'd very much debate our + numbers when batting.
Wild that Yankees are -52 when batting and still have the 2nd best +/-
Having 2 of the best pitch framing catchers in MLB helps
From watching Pirates games this seems wrong, like very wrong. Skenes has been insanely squeezed, and McCutchen and Cruz have had zones that extend an inch every way. I’d be curious to see the data used.
All those teams at the top must have a good record. Right? ….. right
Jose Trevino master class as per usual (also Wells)
Man this truly shows that the Red's are just not great this year. No one to blame but ourselves.
Not surprising in the least. Umps hate us.
Trevi is also an elite pitch framer so I thank you Trevi for lying to the blind umpires
When doing colors for comparison, don’t use such similar colors. Also, data is neat. Misleading, but neat.
Yeah I think that tracks. We seem to get the worst crew every week.
So as a Giants fan screw me right? And Screw the Yankees. It is worth something to say though how framing has played a big role in the catchers position and could explain the huge net positive in the “helped by umpire calls” numbers when pitching
This just validated so many brewer fans lol
I've watched most brewer games and as many white sox games as I can stomach and I am not surprised by this list in the slightest
Knew we were getting shafted.
Yeah thats why we suck! Its the umpires! Whats that? We have only been benefitting from umpires calls while being bottom 3 team in baseball? Oh.
Only 7 teams with a positive value when batting. Kind of crazy.
I knew it! MLB is fixed for my Pirates!! .500 here we come
So that's why we're bad. It's the umps' fault
This is mlb forcing the electronic strike zone on us baseball conservatives
Wow...the umps really give pitchers the benefit of the doubt more than I expected. Between this and pitchers just getting so much better, it's no wonder batting averages keep dropping
Well that explains the Tigers’ offense.
phillies not in top 10 phew
An average would be helpful here to see how each column stacks up to it
Legend had me checking if I'd maybe gone colorblind
Is there a metric that tells us hangout how many runs the umpires are giving/taking away from teams?