Vazquez Placed On The 60 Day DL

[djhb20]

To be fair, that external validation is only about the ranking, not the size of the framing effect. So it tells us that what they are doing is identifying the best and worst in something approaching how the coaches do, but it doesn't provide any evidence on the size of the effect.

Put it this way - I could define a new metric to value runs saved from framing by taking what they did and multiplying by ten. That would say Vazquez is worth 200-300 runs on the season. It would have the same correlation with the coaches rating.

Which is not to say that it's bad - just that it only provides support that it is ordering catchers appropriately. Not that it is valuing them appropriately. (Of course, if it didn't order them right, it couldn't value them right.)

 

[joe dokes]

I guess what I am asking is do people actually buy into some of the massive effects ascribed to this skill? I'm not saying I don't, as such. but I have a really hard time getting my head around the size of the effect that people are claiming.

 I do. I've watched a lot of baseball over the years (like most of us here). I really never saw anything like Vazquez. *Every* close pitch was called a strike. He *never* made a pitch "worse," something that, by helpful contrast, it seemed AJP did at least once an inning. Obviously I'm influenced by the fact that I saw nearly every Sox game, and did not see close to that many games of the other great framers, but even the first time I saw him in  agame, he looked different.  Not just better, different.  Even if I am dubious of trying to pin down the exact value, I do buy into the effect's massiveness.
 
Maybe it's like JBJ's defense.  We all knew he was probably good.  But after a few weeks, he was in "not sure I've seen too many better" territory.  For a catcher, who can influence dozens of pitches that are taken and on the black (which further affects hittters), that is intuitively pretty massive.

 

[Reverend]

I guess what I am asking is do people actually buy into some of the massive effects ascribed to this skill? I'm not saying I don't, as such. but I have a really hard time getting my head around the size of the effect that people are claiming.

 
Well, let's check it out then.
 
The visuals in that piece really lay out how much better the best framers are as compared to average and, more so, the worst. And there's more coming on catchers--including specifically Red Sox catchers and issues of consistency over timer versus randomness.
 

 
Link.
 
When Dan Brooks et alia started churning the aggregate data on this, I was blown away by the apparent magnitude of the effect. Seeing it broken down by zones and how catchers do over time really gives a sense of what different catchers do differently, e.g. expand the whole zone versus raise or lower the zone, is really bringing it home now.

 

[Reverend]

I do. I've watched a lot of baseball over the years (like most of us here). I really never saw anything like Vazquez. *Every* close pitch was called a strike. He *never* made a pitch "worse," something that, by helpful contrast, it seemed AJP did at least once an inning. Obviously I'm influenced by the fact that I saw nearly every Sox game, and did not see close to that many games of the other great framers, but even the first time I saw him in  agame, he looked different.  Not just better, different.  Even if I am dubious of trying to pin down the exact value, I do buy into the effect's massiveness.
 
Maybe it's like JBJ's defense.  We all knew he was probably good.  But after a few weeks, he was in "not sure I've seen too many better" territory.  For a catcher, who can influence dozens of pitches that are taken and on the black (which further affects hittters), that is intuitively pretty massive.

 

 
Actually, there is a hole in his framing technique. Tune in next time!!*
 
*We'll be running a piece on Red Sox catchers shortly. And, of course, the hole just means he can actually get better, if you can believe it--I too have been amazed watching him, because it looks like he's not moving his glove but I know he frickin' is. It's hypnotic.

 

[iayork]

So .. You are basically saying the difference between Leon and Vazquez - if they were both full timers - is 3 Wins???

Now, I get that framing is important .. But are we really buying into such a massive effect?

Let me put it this way.  I'm absolutely confident that the best framing catchers are buying several extra strikes per game.  That's what I worked out, and my numbers are absolutely consistent with the numbers other people have got using different approaches.  I get Vazquez at just over 2 extra strikes per game, compared to the average catcher in baseball, and that's very consistent with what e.g. StatCorner came up with (http://www.statcorner.com/CatcherReport.php).  All the other values I calculated are equally consistent with theirs.   The best year I found, one of Jose Molina's, the guy was pulling out 3-4 extra strikes per game.  
 
I did not specifically calculate the conversion of extra strikes to run-equivalents, or of run-equivalents to wins; I used published values for those, so I'm open on what those extra strikes translate to in terms in wins.  But I think we have to start with two extra strikes per game for Vaz, and build from that.
 
(Hanigan is a little less than 1 extra strike per game, so Vaz over Hanigan isn't quite as bad.  Leon, with big error bars, is about average.)