FG on Fox: The Padres’ Other Defensive Sacrifice
Let’s bring you up to speed, in case this has somehow eluded you: the Padres recently acquired Justin Upton, Matt Kemp, and Wil Myers. They also did more than that, too, but, as things stand, those guys project to be the Padres’ three starting outfielders, Kemp’s hip arthritis and all. (Matt Kemp reportedly has hip arthritis.) Because someone has to play center, it looks like Myers will play center. He’ll do so acceptably — Shin-Soo Choo played center for a team that won 90 games — but Myers looks like he’ll be a liability. The Padres are sacrificing outfield defense for outfield offense.
But that’s not the only defensive sacrifice they’re lined up to make. Now, before we proceed: who knows, right? Who knows what the Padres’ roster will look like in three months? Consider how the Padres’ roster looked just last month. A.J. Preller is a busy man. Answer the phone. It’s A.J. Preller. He’s calling you right now. You missed him. Preller still has moves to make, so we’ll just have to see how things look in the end, but given where things are now, the Padres are also going to be weaker behind the plate.
Coming into the offseason, the Padres had both Rene Rivera and Yasmani Grandal. At one point, they were briefly in possession of Ryan Hanigan. They were also a rumored landing spot for David Ross. All those guys have gone elsewhere. The Padres’ depth chart reads Derek Norris, supported by Tim Federowicz. Top prospect Austin Hedges remains in the system, but he’s not yet ready for the show, nor should he be for a while. The Padres right now would go into the season with Norris and Federowicz receiving.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
Do the padres believe that pitch framing is easily coachable? Is that the market inefficiency they’re trying to exploit?
Are there park factors for pitch framing?
No but I suspect there is a pitcher factor. That is, catchers who catch veteran pitchers with reputations for command probably get credit for more strikes than catchers who have to deal with young, wild staffs.
Just a heads up, there’s a broken HTML tag in there:
“The Norris/Federowicz zone isn’t small, but it’s smaller …”
Great piece as usual, Jeff. I’m assuming that they are readily willing to part with Hedges if they really don’t value plus pitch framing, especially if their are prioritizing 2015.
Also, I am curious if Preller is using pitch framing statistics as part of his negotiations with other teams. He must know that Rivera, Grandal, and Hannigan have value to other teams in that regard, but if he’s getting rid of them, he must also know (or assume) something about the statistics that make him think they don’t matter as much as other teams think. Are the Padres, dare I say, outsmarting other teams? I don’t think so, just an idea.
I loved the gifs for the article, really nice visual proof that pitch-framing matters a lot. I’d like to see more catcher comparisons represented this way.
To me, it appears the Padres’ strategy is more about generating excitement than actually winning. At least it represents a massive shift from their previous M.O, which was largely built around a pathological fear of losing future value; it was so unbalanced and painful to watch. I really pitied Padre fans supporting such a timid regime. I really can’t fault them for trying to change despite this number of head-scratcher moves.
So, what kind of ERA hit should Padres pitchers be looking at, if outfield defense is bad and pitch framing is bad?
The article doesn’t say the new pitch framing will be bad. It says it won’t be as good.
At that is regression for a team that already wasn’t very good.
No articles yesterday. You guys are really slacking.
Trade for a catcher using one of your relief pitchers, trade two of the outfielders you own for someone on the left side of the infield, and trade for Hamels with one of your all star prospects, and you are done for the year.
Your starting pitching would be very solid, Myers plays first base, Cameron Maybin CF and Kemp and Upton are your corner fielders.
What is the problem, you emptied part of your farm club, and you will have people in MLB attendance, and your RSN will be well watched.
Doubt they can even afford Hamels if they got him. They’ve already spent $35 some odd million this off-season in 2015 salary. I tend to doubt they’ll go up to $55m or whatever it would take.
Might those changes in out of zone strike percentage be due to catchers receiving a higher proportion of balls further from the zone than catchers with a higher percentage? I would guess this normalizes with increased n, but how many pitches are enough?
Bet Myers will be catching some innings in Spring training…
Naw.
Could the Pads be targeting multiposition players?
This is 100% using last year’s data – the very thing that Fangraphs says you cannot do for hitting and pitching and fielding and running. You always project using regression to the mean and larger sample sizes.
So, three questions: are we not doing this for pitch framing simply because the data doesn’t exist? If so, isn’t regression to the mean a universal principle for all baseball skills, even if we don’t have the data to back it up? And finally, is it possible the data DOES exist for major league teams like San Diego, which is why they don’t have a problem at all doing this?
We have data going back to 2008. But with the usual pitch-framing samples, you get a lot more repetitions than you do with other things like plate appearances or fielding opportunities at shortstop. It’s generally sensible to use multiple years, but I decided to go with just 2014 in this case for simplicity. All the players involved performed similarly in the past. Rivera and Grandal have forever been good receivers. Norris is unexceptional.
That makes a lot of sense. Thanks!
I have a stupid question on converting strikes to runs prevented. How many strikes are needed to prevent an additional run? I wonder if there is a threshold effect. Meaning, if it takes, say, 15 additional strikes to make a run saved, what if the average “added” strikes from riviera/grandal were, say, 5 per game. Do they ever really save a run, then? Sure, that value will fluctuate up and down for each game (5 being the average), so some runs are certainly saved
…I guess my question is, in contrast to saving hits, which changes RE values, getting a strike either way has a smaller, and maybe harder to quantify, effect on run expectancy. Can someone link to a study that describes how to go from strikes to runs? Thanks
On the other hand, this seems to be an important effect in favor of additional value of marginal strikes:
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/matt-garza-understands-his-catchers/#more-172334
These questions are just a sample of what makes pitch framing so complicated to fully quantify.
I agree, Pitch Data, because at the micro level, the difference between 2-1 and 1-2 is enormous (.327 avg vs .164), so if it’s the 1-1 pitch that you get called a strike due to pitch framing, it’s huge. If you get a call on a 3-0 pitch, it’s less important in the outcome. Putting that all together on the macro level and coming up with a # of framed strikes to win ratio is not an easy task.