Potential Bright Spots in Fenway Tire Fire

[Petagine in a Bottle]

Wong had a 5.5% bb rate and 33.3% k rate. His overall numbers were driven by a BABIP 50 points higher than league average despite lower than league average hard hit / line drive %. If the bb / k rates don’t improve while the BABIP normalizes, it could be a rough year offensively. He was also really bad away from Fenway and vs LHP.

He could be fine, but I’m not sure there’s a ton to be excited about.

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/connor-wong-657136

 

[nvalvo]

Wong had a 5.5% bb rate and 33.3% k rate. His overall numbers were driven by a BABIP 50 points higher than league average despite lower than league average hard hit / line drive %. If the bb / k rates don’t improve while the BABIP normalizes, it could be a rough year offensively. He was also really bad away from Fenway and vs LHP.

He could be fine, but I’m not sure there’s a ton to be excited about.

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/connor-wong-657136

I hear you, but that terrible September contributed a lot to the extremity of those K and walk rates. Particularly the walk rate: he walked once in September, while striking out 21 times.

 

[cantor44]

I agree with basically all of this, but why are we down on Wong?

Here are his month-to-month wRC+ splits last year:

Marpril: 82
May: 119
June: 52
July: 95
August: 99
Septober: 23

He's small, and McGuire missed five-ish weeks in late June/July which added some to his workload. It looks to me like he just wore down. On August 30th, he had a .700-ish OPS. That's very good for a catcher.

Not down on him - I like him! I just don't expect him to improve much. Whereas, the year-end totals at every other position stand to potentially improve in one way or the other.

 

[TomRicardo]

I agree with basically all of this, but why are we down on Wong?

Here are his month-to-month wRC+ splits last year:

Marpril: 82
May: 119
June: 52
July: 95
August: 99
Septober: 23

He's small, and McGuire missed five-ish weeks in late June/July which added some to his workload. It looks to me like he just wore down. On August 30th, he had a .700-ish OPS. That's very good for a catcher.

Mainly for his handling of pitching staff. He is not a good game manager nor does he have the bat to make up for it. A decent part of the Red Sox issues is the pitch calling gets rather predictable by the third time around the line up. Wong tends to call a lot high fastballs (cutters and four seamers) mixed with the pitcher's best offspeed pitch down and out of the zone. Hitters were sitting on the fastballs knowing the secondary pitches weren't going to hit the zone. It is why Breslow is so set on working on getting pitchers who religiously hit the zone. It doesn't help that Wong's pitch framing is bad especially when there are baserunners as he tends to get preoccupied with stopping runners (which he is fantastic at). Apparently Teel is much better at this part of the game.

 

[Rovin Romine]

Mainly for his handling of pitching staff. He is not a good game manager nor does he have the bat to make up for it. A decent part of the Red Sox issues is the pitch calling gets rather predictable by the third time around the line up. Wong tends to call a lot high fastballs (cutters and four seamers) mixed with the pitcher's best offspeed pitch down and out of the zone. Hitters were sitting on the fastballs knowing the secondary pitches weren't going to hit the zone. It is why Breslow is so set on working on getting pitchers who religiously hit the zone. It doesn't help that Wong's pitch framing is bad especially when there are baserunners as he tends to get preoccupied with stopping runners (which he is fantastic at). Apparently Teel is much better at this part of the game.

I'd be hesitant to put this all on Wong, as opposed to Cora/Varitek/Bush's strategic and tactical input re: Wong and McGuire. If it were just Wong, we'd see a split in catcher ERA, especially given McGuire's reputation as a defense-first catcher.

In fact, we see that McGuire is a full run worse than Wong. https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/split.cgi?t=p&team=BOS&year=2023#all_catch

The 2022 data looks even odder. McGuire is again the worst, with St. Vazquez of the Immaculate Receiverage not substantially different from Wong or Plawecki. https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/split.cgi?team=BOS&t=p&year=2022#all_catch

2021's sample size is too small for Wong to be meaningful, but we do see Vaz coming in ahead of Plawecki by about 1/3rd of a run.

***
Some of the above may be a caddying effect, but at first blush, I'm not seeing anything that points to Wong being a significant outlier in terms of grand-scheme final results. He might be a catcher that goes too deep into counts or is very poor the 3rd time through (as you propose) have some other flaw we can't see from the data we have. We'd need something more granular.

 

[TomRicardo]

I'd be hesitant to put this all on Wong, as opposed to Cora/Varitek/Bush's strategic and tactical input re: Wong and McGuire. If it were just Wong, we'd see a split in catcher ERA, especially given McGuire's reputation as a defense-first catcher.

In fact, we see that McGuire is a full run worse than Wong. https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/split.cgi?t=p&team=BOS&year=2023#all_catch

The 2022 data looks even odder. McGuire is again the worst, with St. Vazquez of the Immaculate Receiverage not substantially different from Wong or Plawecki. https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/split.cgi?team=BOS&t=p&year=2022#all_catch

2021's sample size is too small for Wong to be meaningful, but we do see Vaz coming in ahead of Plawecki by about 1/3rd of a run.

***
Some of the above may be a caddying effect, but at first blush, I'm not seeing anything that points to Wong being a significant outlier in terms of grand-scheme final results. He might be a catcher that goes too deep into counts or is very poor the 3rd time through (as you propose) have some other flaw we can't see from the data we have. We'd need something more granular.

I don't think anyone is holding up McGuire is a good pitch framer however his K/BB is better than Wong's as was Vasquez's. I mean there are numbers around framing which is more concrete and granular than ERA when a catcher is in (those splits are not cERA). K/BB is better than the numbers you are pointing at.

In terms of framing Vasquez is good, Reese is meh, and Wong is bad

Pitch calling is a bit harder to nail down. I don't think Cora is calling the pitches from the dug out, so the catchers are responsible for the progressions as well as working through the game plan. That said pitchers have the final say. Though if pitchers are ultimately failing you can lay that on catcher not having the faith and communication of the pitchers. The catchers are responsible for studying the game plans made from advanced scouting and analytics.