The fact that Root - via the Mariners insistence - is trying to figure out ways to tell people how good its players are and incorporating more numbers into the everyday flow is great.
But what I really loved about it: Zunino received WAAAY more actual strikes for his pitchers, relative to other catchers, than he "lost" them with failed out-of-zone strikes.
I actually think that might be fair play at work. You put it like "the umps sourly refuse to give him close strikes" but what it really worked out to was:
1) something like 6% more (!) pitches in the zone were correctly called strikes relative to ML average (where something like 20% (!!!) were called balls in error by umps and Zunino had 14-something%) but...
2) Zunino lost half-a-percent or so relative to average in getting balls to be incorrectly called strikes (5.7ish-% for Mike relative to a 6.2% average - again, all figures are from memory).
At least, that's how I understood the chart. If somebody wants to re-watch the game and give us the actual chart percentages, that'd be great. But let's assume for a second that the chart I'm remembering was related to all non-swinging pitches. Since there are a) more pitches are in the strike zone than out of it over the course of a game and b) 6% is way higher than 0.5%, Zunino seems to be recovering far more pitches for his guys by "fair gloving" pitches and not trying to put one over on the umps.
Zunino pitch-frames beautifully but doesn't seem to try to snag balls back into the zone as much as other catchers. Maybe that's working in his favor with the umpires and he's getting fewer "grudge-balls" called by annoyed umps. I dunno.
But if helping the umps call a more accurate game winds up being a repeatable skill for Zunino, getting 5+% more called strikes for your side over the course of a season is a heckuva pick-me-up for the staff. I can't even imagine how much WAR that many more strikes would work out to. Would he be more valuable than Cano, even if Mike doesn't hit like Posada?
And if he DOES eventually hit like Posada... yeeeeeeshhhhhh.
~G
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This was amazing to me, because it's been precisely my idea for a long time:
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Man, I love that last line, don't you?
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... anyway. I hate, hate, HATE blown strike zone calls. Of all calls in sports, I think these bother me the most. And they can utterly set the tone of a game. Remember James Paxton's strike zone in spring training?
Even if all the calls are right, I hate individual umpire strike zones. By their very nature, they are going to give a big advantage to one pitcher over the other.
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Here's a fun read on Mike Zunino, from a rotisserie geek in New York.
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During the game last night, ROOT Sports put up charts that showed how effective Mike Zunino has been in "framing" pitches. It showed three things, one of which was a cognitive dissonance for Dr. D. The three things were:
- Every recent Mariner catcher had been ripped off, badly, by the umps - until Zunino
- Mike Zunino is treated better than average on pitches in the zone (+)
- Mike Zunino is still treated worse than average on pitches outside the zone (-)
In other words, the umps are now very, very careful not to take away a strike from Zunino. But! They are still sourly refusing to give him extra strikes that are close to the zone, like they do for other teams.
They're careful not to be unfair to him, but they're not eager to be generous with him. I'm not exactly sure what to make of that, from a relationship standpoint. That's the way you treat a foster child, right?
Just kidding,
Jeff
Comments
Can you imagine what Dustin Ackley could do without the "lefty strike?" He'd hit .400!
...that the other guy doesn't get is worth about 0.1 runs.
Catchers receive about ten about teen thousand pitches in a 130 game season. Something like half of those pitches are swung at. Of the pitches not swung at, about half are in the strike zone. So if you get 6% of those pitches in the zone called strikes that other guys do not...that's about 180-200 extra strikes...1.8 to 2 wins. And yes...there are catchers adding a couple of wins for their receiving skill in the game...some estimates have guys like Stewart (NYY, 2013) and Russell Martin and the guy in Milwaukee (drawing a blank on his name) worth 2 wins or even a bit more for just receiving.
And that answers my question.
In retrospect, I also remember him pulling them occasionally - there was a low one he pulled up for Erasmo - and getting those calls. I wonder if this puts him in a position to press the "pulled strike" button at 1 or 2 key moments in a game? :- ) I wonder if that's his idea? Wouldn't doubt it!
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My own vague memory was that the gained "fair" strikes had about 1.5, 2.0x the value of the lost "generous" strikes. But yeah.
And those 1.0 to 2.0 WAR, for the few catchers in that range, is just direct benefit. We're not talking about the Butterfly Effect of "settling a pitcher down" by getting a key at-bat to go the right way.
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Matt, was Russell Martin benefitting from being a Yankee?
Absolutely not. Martin's record as one of the best framers pre-dates his days as a Yankees and has extended beyond it. The "Yankee Strike Zone" is false and got perpetuated as a myth in part because they had a string of notably good framers in the post-Posada era.
Likewise, the "Mariner Strike Zone" is because of the horrible framers we've had.
What's absolutely fascinating about the newfound ability to empirically test how good catchers are at framing is that teams and individuals alike have noted the skillsets of the good framers vs. bad/ horrible ones and, among the SABR-geek population at least, generated vide-scouting criteria to look for.
The simplest way to describe said criteria is "quietness" -- the less movement out of the catcher, the better. Trying to snatch a ball into the strike zone, as is commonly taught in the amateur levels, is completely counter-productive.