iayork wrote about the Sox catchers today at the .com
He also wrote an article about all of MLB's catchers last weekChristian Vazquez was an elite framer in 2014, before missing 2015 to recover from Tommy John surgery. Partway through 2016, it seemed that he may have lost a bit of his framing magic, gaining only about 0.4 extra strikes per game, but with the full season’s sample size to look at, Vazquez is back as an elite framer with 1.53 extra strikes per game, ranking fourth-best (per game) in baseball. However, the vast majority of his gains were at the expense of right-handed batters; against lefties, Vazquez was only slightly better than average:
And released his own rankings for 2016 and 2015.The best framer in baseball in 2016 was Yasmani Grandal, who gained around 212 extra strikes over the season for his pitchers. Assuming that each switched call is worth about 0.13 runs on average, Grandal gained the Dodgers the equivalent of nearly 28 extra runs – or about 3 extra wins – from his framing alone, not even counting his above-average offense. Buster Posey, in second place, also contributes strong offense to go with his elite framing. Tyler Flowers and Jason Castro are about average batters, so in 2016, only Christian Vazquez didn’t do enough with his bat to make his elite framing earn him regular playing time.