Is a half-year actually that small a sample for framing, though? A half-year for a starting catcher is roughly 60 games * league average of 145 pitches per game = over 8,000 pitches. Assuming a swing rate in the 50% range that's 4,000-ish called pitches. That seems like a lot of events. I don't know if the fact that the events accumulate over a relatively short time frame matters that much. I'd be curious to hear what our statistical gurus have to say.
Good research. Still, they were teammates and if Swihart starts and Hanigan catches his rest days, pairing him with Price makes some sense if only because that's the one day when Swihart's better bat is less likely to be needed.
Umm... limited, but not at all meaningless. And it's not as if the data conflicts what is obvious to even casual observers, that Vazquez is much better defensively than Swihart. It just attempts to quantify that difference.
Well, except this is the guy the team penciled in as the starter a year ago, based on what he did in 2014 at the ML level and previously in the minors. Prior to his injury, the team clearly had designs on starting with Vazquez and slowing down Swihart's movement toward the majors. So some of us may think that Vazquez belongs in the minors moreso than Swihart, I have some doubt that the organization feels that way. I suppose they could change their mind if they see enough in Swihart's progression last year in all phases of the game, but wouldn't just assume this is the case.
Those 4000 caught ball sample sizes are not the actual sample. The sample size is actually much smaller. You need to look at caught balls that are around the edges of the de facto strike zone, not at every caught ball.
Good point. Borderline calls are about 10% of all pitches, so one season's worth is about 800 pitches, a larger sample size than a full season of plate appearances.
Well, yes, it's easier to improve at something if you suck at it. But he could improve considerably at it and still not be good at it. And this skill turns out to be hugely important to the value of the defensive position he is playing.
I hadn't seen that article, thanks for pointing it out. The other example I know of where a catcher abruptly and dramatically improved his framing is Saltalamacchia, who went from a moderately bad framer pre-2011, to quite a good one in 2011, gaining around 1.5 strikes per game from his previous level. He's not the most encouraging example, though, since he promptly went into a framing tailspin, dropping year after year until he was legendarily terrible in 2014 and 2015.
How many pitches we are talking about has nothing to do with plate plate appearances when talking about stabilization. A batter's strike out rate stabilizes after a different number of PA's than their batting average, for example. 800 might be enough for pitch framing to stabalize, but that number compared to PA's tells us absolutely nothing.
I'm just an old-timer lurking about these pages but I can still recognize a"straw man argument" even when it comes from such a distinguished source as Prometheus. According to Dr York and others, Swihart doesn't suck at it, he was basically about league average and, in fact, improved a bit as the season went on according to the BP article I posted.
It may already. 188 points of OPS is a lot to overcome. Of course, it's possible that Swihart's second half is not representative of where he is right now as a hitter, but at his age it's not a bad bet to make. OPS supposedly has a .95 correlation to run scoring.
If his second half is representative of where he is as a hitter, his bat would certainly play at 1st. His 2nd half .805 OPS would have placed him 26th in the majors which is an every day starter, though on the back end of that list. If, at 22 years old he was already at that level, there's a pretty good chance he's going to hit well enough to be an average 1st baseman at the plate over the long haul. Now add in defense, and we're probably talking about a comfortably above average player, as his athleticism would probably translate to solid range, his arm would probably be better than most at the position and as a catcher, I imagine he would scoop throws really well.
I'm not sure how to ask this question. Does worth of the OPS gap change if we're talking about the bottom guy being average or well-below average with the bat? Meaning, if Vaz is adequate offensively (i.e., there's no extra negative synergistic worth in his being an "easy out" in the lineup), does Swihart have to be better by the same amount he's currently projected to be, or does he have to be much much better? On the other hand, if Vaz is very bad offensively, is there an extra hidden synergistic penalty for playing that kind of a bat? Meaning a more modest OPS gap between the players would be more significant?
and
That simply doesn't pass the smell test. I suppose it's somewhat like DIPS theory - which initially seemed crazy - then it didn't - and now is settling in somewhere in between.
For someone with the time and inclination, it shouldn't be hard to figure out using linear weights. The difference between an 0-1 and 1-0 count is about .200 OPS. The difference between "strike three" and "ball four" is huge, about 2/3rds of a run, on average, IIRC. (A walk is worth .35 runs. An out -.30 runs. Or something close to that.) Do the math for all the counts in between 0-0 and 3-2 for every on-base state and you're close to knowing the value of a "stolen" strike or "lost" ball.
Seriously? If OBP is as advertised why didn't the market reflect it for over 100 years? The entire point of sabermetrics and baseball data analysis is to find "hidden value" unrecognized by the market. Framing has been valued by teams, coaches and pitchers for a very long time. What's new is that technology, PITCHf/x, makes it possible to more accurately measure the value of framing and determine its value, which appears to be a lot higher than previously thought.
Seriously? OBP was NOT generally recognized as a huge component of offensive value (Branch Rickey notwithstanding) until the early 2000s - or at least until Bill James started to have some influence on traditional baseball thinking.
Umpires are blocked by catchers. Depending on where they set up, they can be blocked on the inside or outside edge of the strike zone.
Umpires almost always set up between the catcher and batter. (See this fangraphs article. It's about CF camera views, but you can see the umps in relation to catchers. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/ranking-baseballs-center-field-camera-shots-2015-update/ ) So you'd think they'd see inside pitches clearly and possibly have trouble with outside pitches, especially low and outside pitches.
The other thing that strikes me as complicated about pitch framing as a statistic is that like other defensive statistics it's really only a relative value - we aren't even really tracking the objective measurement of a catcher from year to year, we're only tracking how good the catcher is compared to the rest of the league. And since the secret is out that this is really important the rest of the league is almost certainly getting a lot better at this very quickly, not only because teams are now going to be heavily training their guys in how to do this better but also because teams are giving real playing time to guys like Rene Rivera and his 33 RC+.I hadn't seen that article, thanks for pointing it out. The other example I know of where a catcher abruptly and dramatically improved his framing is Saltalamacchia, who went from a moderately bad framer pre-2011, to quite a good one in 2011, gaining around 1.5 strikes per game from his previous level. He's not the most encouraging example, though, since he promptly went into a framing tailspin, dropping year after year until he was legendarily terrible in 2014 and 2015.
I agree that Swihart has a reasonable chance to improve, given that he's young, still learning, athletic, and working for a team that clearly values framing a lot. And it's important to point out that he's already not bad -- he's basically league-average, or close to it, already.
One other point: I don't know if this is a real trend, but I have the impression that the most effective framers are having slightly less impact year after year. Maybe it's just because Molina was such an outlier early on, but I suspect that umpires are gradually figuring out framers. Umpire ball and strike calls have improved quite dramatically since they started to be graded via PITCHf/x (see the chart below showing the percent of out-of-zone calls since PITCHf/x was introduced). If that's a trend that continues, which of course it may not, the value of an elite pitch framer may drop along with it.
It's a perfectly reasonable argument, and you know it. Other teams aren't going to improve by having their players improve, but by playing different players, which means that if Swihart wants to improve relative to the league, he's got to improve a whole heck of a lot.So... your argument is that this skill isn't so difficult to learn that the other 30 teams would have much trouble catching up, but that somehow means Swihart isn't likely to close the gap with Vazquez going forward?
How would you measure framing except against other catchers in the league?
One can measure "raw" framing, i.e. how many balls a catcher turns into strikes and how many strikes he turns into balls. In fact, that is measured:
No, it's not reasonable since playing great framers who have terrible bats means that the value gap between them and Swihart is already minimized, if not outpaced by what Blake can do with the stick. He also mentioned that other teams will be teaching their catchers to "do this better" which suggests exactly what I found puzzling. If other teams will be teaching their guys to better frame pitches, it's apparently not that hard and Swihart, who has proven to be very capable of adapting and learning new skills, should be able to improve going forward at at least the same pace his contemporaries are improving. If it is really hard and can't be taught that easily, then the rest of the league won't be catching up since those great framers who can't hit still won't be able to hit, and the good bats who can't frame won't be closing the gap with Swihart with the glove.
I definitely see people on internet forums using framing runs as a proxy for defensive aptitude, simply because its something they can measure and latch onto. I won't name names
Seems like a straw man. No one is talking about playing great framers with terrible bats over lousy framers with terrific bats.
Well .. In this case we are talking about playing great framers with terrible bats over average framers with terrific bats.
I don't think this is true, since improvement of framing skills is very teachable. Check out the Derek Norris story I posted in my original post. It is likely that there will always be a bell curve of framers, since some will have more skill than others, but the marginal difference will continue to dissipate as framing skills become more and more emphasized and particularly as umpires enter the equation.
Only if you think Swihart's .312 wOBA is terrific and Vazquez's .277 wOBA is terrible. (Average is .304.)
I wouldn't say "a waste," but good point. But why is Swihart's offensive value inextricably linked to being a catcher any more than, say, Betts's offensive value was chained to second base?
I was only commenting on the specifics of Swihart improving v other teams. I probably shouldn't have waded in without reading more of the thread, but frankly I find the whole argument rather silly. We have them both. We're going to play them both, and with any luck, we're going to keep them both until they get too expensive.
A more recent, and nicely detailed, explanation of the value of a strike in terms of runs is Framing and Blocking Pitches: A Regressed, Probabilistic Model, by Harry Pavlidis and Dan Brooks. They offer a much more complex model, but their simplistic value is ~0.14 runs per pitch. The fact that it's so close to the 2008 value that was calculated quite differently is pretty encouraging.
Most catchers seem to frame best either at the top or the bottom of the zone, though rarely both (Jose Molina and Vaquez being among the rare exceptions who get strikes all around the zone). Here's Brian McCann, for example, getting lots of extra low strikes while losing some at the top:
Except this guy.
The Rivera's of the world getting more playing time does not make Swihart less valuable as a catcher because the Rivera's of the world can't hold a candle to Swihart at the plate. Pitch framing is one component of the overall package and overall value is what matters. So, again, either this skill isn't too hard to pick up and Swihart should, like the rest of the league, improve going forward, or it is hard, and players like Rivera are going to have to make up a huge gap offensively with their framing skills.
Is the 1.25 to 2.75 range your estimate for Vazquez's "true" talent level or where you think he's likely to be in 2016 (assuming health)? If the former, wouldn't normal regression patterns tell us he's more likely to be at the bottom of that range (since presumably 1.5-strikes-per-game guys are much more common than 2.5-strikes-per-game guys)?
Yeah, maybe. Looking over catchers over the past few years, there's probably some regression going on, but there are also long-term trends (probably aging) that are hard to separate out.
You see .. This is the essence of the problem. My brain tells me you are probably correct. That the magnitude is more or less real. The difficulty is reconciling that with decades and decades of watching baseball -often with an analytical approach. How could a couple of strikes a game be the difference between a 3.00 and a 3.25 era ..
Right. Which is as good a reason to call bullshit on the statistic as it is to go sign Francisco Cervelli for $20 million per season.
Go ahead and call bullshit on framing and RAA, but if you want to be taken seriously, you should probably back it up with something other than your feelings.
