Add new comment

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