.
Terry McDermott sez,
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This isn't exactly pertinent to yesterday and don't know if it's behind paywall, but an interesting ump's point of view on the framing debate. In a BP Q&A, retired longtime ump Jim McKean is very defensive about the idea of framing - doesn't want anyone to think the umps are gullible - but says that catchers who catch the ball properly get more calls. Not because they like those catchers, but because they make the ump's job easier.
In other words, they like guys who are physically quiet. Montero notably is not so is gonna have problems long term unless and until he calms down.
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=20623
That said, the Iwakuma call was as bad as it gets. Sims and Blowers were just about speechless. Diaz didn't get any better as the day went on , either. `Kuma impressively humped up and ignored it.
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In the words of Joe Pesci, "Would you say that everything the witness said is one hundred percent accurate." Ah'd have to say thayattt...
The older I get, the more annoyed I become at umpires' egos. Normally it would be my inclination to find an extenuating circumstance -- you have to have a strong personality to deal with that pressure, etc. But I don't personally think that applies in this context. I just think most MLB umpires are smirkers, as Lou Piniella once put it.
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Right. McKean is quick to protest that it's not a question of being dumb. Nobody can sucker us. Don't ever think that our competence is anything less than spectacular. Any issue that goes to the question of our competence is ruled out of court before court is in session.
That being said, I personally agree with McKean: it's not like catchers are capable of fooling umpires.
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So instead, McKean says, what they do is REWARD catchers for moving in ways that make the umpires' jobs easy. Let's think about that for a second. You do realize that the catcher is involved in a sports competition, right, and that he moves as he believes it will win his team the competition? Does the catcher, in the middle of action, not have the right to move as he chooses to move?
Suppose it were the NBA. You've got to cover LeBron James. You're best with your feet set shoulder width. But if you spread your feet a bit more, it makes it easier for the ref to call a charge vs. a block. Is it on the athlete to perform so as to make the referee's job as pleasant as possible?
Suppose it were the NFL. By pointing your toes a certain way on a sideline catch, the referee won't have to hustle into position to get a good look at the play. So Rob Gronkowski ignores the ref's preference, and angles his toes as is best for his body style, makes the catch -- and the ref "punishes" him by calling him out-of-bounds when he actually caught the ball.
Shoulda been less worried about the strong safety, Gronk, and more worried about my convenience, sez the ref.
Do other sports tolerate this? Do you, as the fan, tolerate it? You do, every time you chastise Jesus Montero for catching the ball in the way that he believes best for him as a young, developing catcher.
I don't doubt that Montero creates a situation in which the umpires have to be a bit less lazy. I REFUSE to put that on Jesus Montero. I put that on lazy, arrogant MLB umpires. I'm a fan. I'm not the M's catching coach.
I think our emphasis -- AS OBSERVERS -- should NOT be on adapting to injustice. I think our emphasis should be on ending it. When a female does not get a job because she's female, we don't ask her to adapt, "Okay, know your place next time and you'll do better." We talk about the unfairness.
Maybe the female herself, and her coach, want to learn how to speak and move and dress so as to show deference to males. That's her business. I refuse to spend my time talking about it.
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As a side point: other Mariner catchers do not get calls, either. Kelly Shoppach does not. Josh Bard did not. That the umpires hate Jesus Montero's guts, I don't doubt, and never did doubt. I think they hate all rookie* catchers' guts, and they've said similar when they've said anything on the issue. But if they didn't, they still would rip him off.
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I want an automated zone. I want a tone that goes off in the ump's ear, and if he overrules it I want a supervisor asking him why.
Right now, they don't do it because Bud Selig and Joe Torre like the role the umpires have. They are very old men, and they grew up with umpires as bullies, and being bullied is a familiar sensation to them. There are lots of terrible things that we want around because they are familiar, feel "homey," feel secure.
The day will come when antiques like Selig and Torre are no longer in charge. And then we'll have a better game. You know why they don't throw spitballs any more? Too many TV angles. That will be the way with Jesus Montero getting ripped off.
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PHXTerry sez,
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Arguably, umpire bias is the most important cause of the M's losing season. Do we have any evidence that the M's Brain Trust is doing anything about this? We know Wedgie is not - he's been tossed from only 1 game. He NEVER leaves the comfort of the dugout during games.
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Wedge has always believed, as a Mariners manager, that it is best for him to bend over and take his medicine quietly. He has some reason for believing this; it is likely that he and Zduriencik have conferred on the matter and decided, "We will start arguing after we're a good team."
WHY Eric Wedge believes this, is opaque to me. It would be much appreciated if anybody could explain it.
Cheers,
Dr D
Hawkeye has removed virtually all misjudged line calls from tennis and made it a much better, and fairer, game. A similar approach has to be technologically feasible for baseball. But it requires managment will to implement it, so no hurry. In the meantime, it just staggers me that the M's Brain Trust is just rolling over and letting incompetent umpires flush their season, when the Angels are floundering and the A's are just so-so.
Automate the zone for everyone's sake. Get rid of human bias and level the playing field.
Is anybody now saying, "Well, mistakes by line judges were a charming part of the sport -- we want them back."
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Why wouldn't it be technologically feasible? What's wrong with F/X sounding a tone in the ump's ear, and he's free to overrule it, but after the game he's got to report to a supervisor (who isn't his friend) why he changed the call?
If they were throwing to an accurate strike zone, as opposed to a 2-hour campaign of lobbying the umpire, in 700 different ways.
While 12-6 curveballers would be unstoppable (is there ANY pitch called less for strikes in both the upper and lower parts of the zone than the 12-6 curve?).
James Paxton eagerly awaits this change, and Tom Wilhelmsen would immediately be less-white-knuckle and more death-on-a-stick.
~G
Veteran pitchers will absolutely go nuts and rebel at the idea. Remember that Curt Schilling petulantly smashed a Questec camera because he didn't like an umpire's calls. Considering that the league is resistant to even infrequent replay reviews, I just can't imagine an auto-strike zone ever being implemented. It certainly won't happen in the next 20 years.
Doc - who woulda thunk that beneath that behind that brow beat the soul of a revolutionary. End injustice, indeed! I'm with you brother, but, ah, um not sure what that has to do with Wedge.
Not sure if I'd characterize his stance as bending over backwards, but no coach in any sport wants his players concentrating their wrath - and blaming their disappointments - on officials.And I don't think the umps are to blame for the M's failures, not most of them anyway. Even if they were, calling out the umps every night is going to make matters worse, not better. This is true in other sports, as well. You ever watch Joey Crawford call an NBA game. Talk about insufferable!
It's entirely possible that Wedge thinks, `You get some bad calls, you get some good calls. They even out over time.' He might think this because it is generally true. And the way to deal with this is to collect tape and send it to the league office. That's what they do.
This doesn't mean I don't scream at the screen at the top of my lungs. A lot. For what it's worth I thought Diaz was just incompetent, not vindictive yesterday.
Mechanizing pitch-calling, as excellent an idea as it is is not really germane to Wedge's behavior, is it?
On a side note: you ever watch a game with both Pitch f/x and the Root's own version of same operating at once? Since I watch the games on a computer I sometimes do have them both on display and am always a bit chagrined to find how different their depictions of the same pitch sometimes are. There are likely to be huge technical issues involved in implementation - tennis's Hawkeye is great, but it's dealing with a one-dimensional problem, not three.
I'm the contrarian here, I suppose.
Does the Pitch FX stuff account for batter height? How about individual variation in leg and torso length?
So you let a photo, shot from 140 yards away (well, the FX stuff is much closer), determine if a pitch is a fraction of an inch outside or low, remembering that there is no actual, existing vertical or horizontal line to compare it to. That funny box we see is an interpretation of the strike zone, in and of itself.
An actual line really exists on the tennis court, btw.
What is really critical is that the strike zone is consistent on a pitch by pitch basis for each umpire on a particular night.
Is a particular location of a FB against LHB's always a strike...or always not? How about a particular location of a curve ball? If the zone is consistent then batters and throwers each have the same adjustment to make on a particular evening.
Let's say that M's pitchers have thrown 7800 pitches this year, which probably isn't too bad of a guess. Opposing teams have thrown a relatively similar number. What percentage of "strikes" (inside the graphed rectangle) thrown by M's hurlers are called ball, and what about opposing teams? That might indicate if the M's are getting "jobbed" this year. Are the bad guys getting more favorable calls outside the zone? I don't know. If so, what are percentages? If 95% of the calls are correct and the M's are near the bottom of the league with 94.2%, that hardly indicates the M's are being picked on.
Personally, I doubt were the target of lousy umpiring, planned or not. Some pitches are missed, yes. I don't believe there is some anti-Mariner conspiracy involved or that more Wedge ejections would result in better pitch calls.
The Iwakuma pitches the other night were pretty dang good, agreed. Was that pitch in that location called a strike all day? Were they called strikes from other RHP's to batter swinging from the appropriate side all day? I don't know that. I haven't seen that info, either.
And if a well-respected and experienced umpire is suggesting there is a way to catch the ball (but not frame it) that will enhance the umpire's ability to see and call the pitch correctly then the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars but in ourselves. Or at least in the M's catchers who don't catch the ball that way (if they don't) and the M's coaches (throughout the system) who don't (if they don't) require that they do.
if is it really as simple as, "Catch it this way and you'll get more calls!" why wouldn't you catch it that way?
Didn't I read the other day in a framing article that the better way to catch the ball is with the mitt pointed (generally) at the pitcher with the thumb pointed quasi-down the 1B line? That article suggested it was "wrong" (in terms of getting strike calls) to catch the ball with the thumb down. What does Montero do?
Why shouldn't that be a skill set that has value in the game? Well, evidently it does......what is wrong with that?
There is always a bit of arbitrariness to the strike zone. There was when Tom Seaver or Bob Feller or Walter Johnson was throwing, too. I think it makes for a better game, rather than some version of a Jetson's type robotic umpiring crew.
I am always amazed at how often umps get it right at that level, not at the fact that they miss one, now and again.
In the end, the M's players botched that game. Wilhelmsen and Smoak kicked balls that changed the outcome of the game. Would a different 2B have been a bit deeper and then able to catch the bloopers that Andino couldn't get to?
The tone thing probably could be made to work. Of course then you would have every coach all a-twitter that somehow the box was bing manipulated to favor the other guys.
It's a beautiful game.
Let's get rid of the DH before we automate strikes and balls.
Play ball!
moe
Sorry, not agreeing with this one. You have a catcher like Jonathan Lucroy, and you ain't calling foul on this one. This is whining about a system that's unfair to you because you can't take advantage of it.
The real reason M's are getting squeezed? Shoppach and Montero are terrible framers, bottom 10 in the league, who have currently cost the team close to 20 runs. No too ways about it, framing is a skill, that's why you see Lucroy and Molina at the top of the board every year, and guys like Doumit at the bottom. Mike Fast says the data is more consistent than pretty much any offensive stat in the game. That's why a rookie like Lucroy will get all the calls in the world, year after year, while a rookie like Montero can't get a fastball in the middle of the zone to go strike sometimes, and will likely never get that call to go strike, year after year.
It's not about making the umpire's jobs easier. There isn't ego in this one. Just look at the framing videos, you can easily see the difference. All framing is, is the ability to make strikes looks more like strikes. Umpires are human with limited sight, in a mask, trying to figure out the trajectory of a 95 mph fastball or a 80 mph breaking ball that breaks so hard and late it's hard to predict, let alone predict it's location by inches. They might be professionals, but they aren't capable of calling everything perfectly. If you jerk the glove out of the zone because that's where the slider is going, it's going to look ball. If you keep it steady, you can get those strike calls that might not be strike calls. That's fine. That means smart teams will take advantage of it.
The Yankees, for example. $200M payroll Yankees are rolling with Francisco Cervelli and Chris Stewart at the C position. No name AAAA guys, because as Cashman calls it, "They're both exceptional defenders, tremendous pitch framers. We're big into that."" The Rays, the only team crazy enough to play 37 year old Jose Molina a full season despite his awful bat because he saved them 35 runs over 120 games in just framing alone. A top SS like Ryan will save 15 runs over 160 games. And that's without the CS%, the CERA, and all that. Framing is HUGE value, that goes unnoticed because no one talks about it, not even the sabermetric websites.
Teams like the Mariners, they need this. They need to develop this skill in every single catcher in the organization, try to find and develop the next Jonathan Lucroy. Houston Astros, the new face of sabermetrics, is 100% into doing exactly that. Every market inefficiency, they should be pouring every resource into it. They should have done it years ago. Yet, the Mariners sit here with the 2 worst pitch framers in the game...
Half the reason I think Montero can't frame is because the Mariners didn't define his position properly. You say he's the 120 game Catcher going into the season, maybe he spends the off-season framing and blocking 200 balls a day. What are the chances he did that? Close to zero. Instead you get... his practicing running form. Think they might save a run with that, if that, all season. In his mind, he's a batter, not a catcher, always has been since BA said his catching skills will require him to DH. Sometimes players buy into their own hype. Or maybe he just doesn't have the physical tools. I disagree, anyone without enough work ethic can, while maybe not to Molina level, get to average.
By the way, your conclusion umpires like framing, reward it even. Russel Martin just said in his Q&A he tries not to frame too often because umpires don't like it, since it gets the fans and benches talking, and umpires hate that.
Speaking of Martin, I liked what he said about automating balls/strikes. It takes away from the Art of Catching. And it really does. Something like electronic monitoring HR/foul doesn't really have skill involved, but something like framing, something that happens 250 times a game, well it's an art. I'd like to keep it that way in the game, as long as possible.
Here's the new(ish) BP article with data on Jesus Montero on pace for -35 runs with his framing, has the link to the Q&A with Martin (shows a nice graphic of the difference between a veteran like Doumit and Martin being night and day).http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=20618
The good thing about human egos is that they tend to respond quite well to the proper incentive. Here's a middle of the road solution. Give every ump a pitch fx grade every week. Publish it. Let them feel a little heat from the fans for bad grades. Then have an end of season score on which umps receive bonuses and say that only the top 10% scores can qualify for post season work regardless of seniority.
I have a feeling you'd see the strike zones standardize real quick.
Umpires do grade each other, and that measurement is part of determination process of who gets to do play-off games.
And unfortunately the egos will never let us see these results...
I could well live with this suggestion.
This has always been my suggestion with a couple of additions. First, award the lucrative post season gigs exclusively to the umps with the best results in the season. The $$ and prestige that comes with the post season gigs would be another incentive. Second, and more controversial, would be to go all Jack Welch and fire the worst performers every year. He actually did that at GE and it resulted in a very high performing workforce.
I would also add a pitchfx camera suspended right above home plate to better establish the edges of the strike zone.
I'm in agreement with the school of thought that the way to improve the situation with umpire calls is to find/develop better catchers. I'm not sure I buy into the argument that Jesus Montero is still developing at catcher. He's currently 23 years old and he's played the position his entire professional career, and presumably before that as well. Now, it may be possible that he wasn't taught the right way. One has to acknowledge that possibility. But it seems far more likely to me that he simply possesses limited aptitude for the position.
Now that the cat's out of the bag on the value of pitch framing, I wonder how long it will remain a market inefficiency?
Couldn't this be done externally to put pressure on MLB? Pitch FX data is available to everyone isn't it? What would happen if an entity like ESPN or Baseball America started an umpire scoring system and then started rattling Buddy boys cage come playoff time with questions about how come the most accurate umps aren't in the playoffs.
Seems to me that could gain traction with the public and become an embarrassing issue MLB would get tired of answering every year.
Could you imagine the precision a young umpire would display if he truly believed that he could call his way into the world series in only his first or second year in the bigs?
Montero completely confuses me... especially considering he trained by the Yankees.
The Yankees are one of the leaders in teaching catchers the importance of framing pitches, and the Yankees start teaching framing of pitches at the lowest levels of the minors. Further, the Yankees always have catchers that know how to frame pitchers.
In fact, the Yankees have been in the top 5 teams in stealing strikes over the last 5+ years... with Molina, Russell Martin, and Posada.
How Montero is so bad at this is unbelievable.
is clearly to stop publishing Pitch F/X data ;)
"There is always a bit of arbitrariness to the strike zone. There was when Tom Seaver or Bob Feller or Walter Johnson was throwing, too. I think it makes for a better game, rather than some version of a Jetson's type robotic umpiring crew."
Suppose Bud Selig decided to launch a clandestine experiment where the Umpires would be secretly fed Pitch F/X results in such a way that no one outside of the baseball inner circle knew. Not even the players would be aware that Bud pulled the old switcheroo.
Would you really find yourself saying "Man, these strike zones are so consistent and predictable. I find this experience unpleasant and my enjoyment of the game has been harmed."
Suppose all teams catch on to this. Every team in the league starts scrounging up any catcher that is a +30 run pitch framer. .100 hitting catchers litter the major leagues because they effectively take the rule book strike zone and make it 6 inches larger in each dimension. Strike out rates shoot to the moon and offense across MLB craters.
Is this really a better game? Is it fun to watch hitters flail at pitches a foot off the plate because catchers are fooling umpires into calling the pitch 6 inches off the black a strike?
I don't know if anyone read the Grantland article here: http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9275754/studying-art-pitch-framing-c...
I wonder if pitch framing was behind the Steve Baron pick a few years ago. Jose Molina has been more or less offensively inept his entire career. In his minor league career, Baron has pretty much never hit and probably never will. Supposedly, he's all defense. That's why they made the pick. Maybe if he sticks around the minors for a few more years, they can make him enough of a hitter that he can have a Jose Molina-type career.
Not sure if his catching skills are as advertised, but one thing rarely noticed about Steve is that he hits lefties really well: .877 OPS last season in Clinton and over 1.00 this season in High Desert. He may be closer to the majors as a platooning catcher than we realize.
Interesting. Zunino is going to need a backup that can catch 1-2 times per week.
In case people have not noticed, strike outs are way up from 10 years ago... well over 10%.
As it happens to be, called strikes are also up over 10% over the last 10 years.
Lastly, it has been shown that especially the strike zone to lefties has grown to almost 3 inches wider on the outside of the zone over the last 5 years by FX Pitch system for ALL umpires, so... MLB must be happy with this style of baseball.
So, the M's catching guru since 2003 has been Roger Hansen (current bench coach). Is it coincidence that every catcher he's been involved with instructing has been terrible at framing?
To be light on their feet, hockey-goalie style, like Dan Wilson.
If so, that collides with Terry's point about umps preferring very still catchers' bodies. And does not speak well of umpires, who prioritize their own issues above catchers' needs to compete.