Framing the Hitters

All anyone can talk about these days, some of the time, is the matter of pitch-framing. It’s a concept we’ve been vaguely aware of since childhood, or since whenever we started paying attention to baseball, but for a while it was one of those things we ignored because we didn’t know how to measure it. Then some people started to measure it, and it seemed to make a big difference sometimes, and that’s exciting, and people got excited. People remain excited, since framing is a new field and it’s fascinating to learn how some catchers can do it while other catchers struggle. It’s a very small part of the game overall, but it still has that new-stat scent, and evidence suggests at the extremes it’s pretty significant. I’m thankful for the advances in pitch-framing research.

When people talk about framing, or receiving, though, they talk mainly about the catchers. That’s fine, the catchers are most responsible. They’ll talk a little about the pitchers, and that’s fine too, because catchers need the pitchers’ help. It’s hard to frame a pitch thrown to the opposite side of the plate. But good framing has victims, and worse framing has beneficiaries. The pitchers are affected but the batters are affected too, and it stands to reason framing isn’t completely independent of the guy in the box. Batters probably have some effect, so those batters are worth investigating. Which batters end up with the most extra strikes? Which batters end up with the fewest?

I’ll tell you right now: when I’ve looked at this before, I’ve discovered the obvious. There’s variation among the batters, but there’s more variation among the pitchers and the catchers. Batters have only a little to do with the way pitches are called. But as long as we’re investigating a small part of the game, we might as well investigate a small part of a small part of the game, because where do we stop? Why should we stop? It’s perfectly fine to learn for learning’s sake.

This explanation again. I don’t know how many times I’ve gone over Diff/1000 on FanGraphs, but I might as well do it once more. Diff/1000 is a stat I made up. It uses stats available here at FanGraphs — strikes, pitches, Zone%, O-Swing%, and Swing%. Using the plate-discipline data, we can calculate a number of expected strikes (Zone + O-Swing). We can then subtract that from the number of actual strikes, and put that on a per-1000-called-pitches basis. Then we can adjust it to set the league average to zero. For hitters, a positive Diff/1000 means they’ve had more strikes called against them than you’d expect. A negative Diff/1000 suggests a smaller zone. One of these days, you’ll all be familiar with this and I won’t have to keep going over this same summary.

I calculated Diff/1000 for all batters in 2011 and 2012. I looked only at the batters who faced at least 1,000 pitches in each season. The resulting correlation is 0.48, which suggests that we’re measuring something real. A total of 215 batters were investigated. Here’s a table of quintiles, which should also be informative:

The top 20% in Diff/1000 in 2011 saw an average of 25 extra strikes per 1,000 called pitches. The next season, they came in at +9. The bottom 20% came in at -26 and -14, respectively. It’s apparent that there’s regression, but it’s also apparent the regression isn’t 100%. Something is going on, here, that has at least something to do with the guy with the bat.

That’s all background. What’s most interesting right now is data for the current regular season. Which hitters have seen the most extra strikes, and which have seen the fewest? I’ve prepared a couple top-10 tables, and we’ll start with the unfortunate hitters. These hitters have seen a higher rate of strikes than you’d expect based on the rest of their numbers.

Obviously, it’s far from a death sentence. Goldschmidt’s been amazing. Segura’s been amazing. Bourn’s been good. This has only a little to do with overall productivity. But it isn’t irrelevant. Here’s the other side of the leaderboard:

Ethier’s been pretty bad. Davis has been pretty bad. Montero has been pretty bad. Getting extra strikes doesn’t make you bad, and getting extra balls doesn’t make you good. But still, it’s of interest to explore the extremes, those being Ethier and Gonzalez.

Thanks to Texas Leaguers, we can check out their respective 2013 called strike zones:

That’s Ethier on top and Gonzalez on bottom. You might have to stare for a while to see the differences, but the numbers above say they’re there. According to StatCorner, pitches taken in the zone by Ethier have gone for balls 23% of the time, and pitches taken out of the zone have gone for strikes 6% of the time. Pitches taken in the zone by Gonzalez have gone for balls 11% of the time, and pitches taken out of the zone have gone for strikes 10% of the time. Differences exist, although I’m not entirely certain why. A couple batting screenshots:

I don’t yet understand why some hitters get bigger zones and some hitters get smaller zones. It might entirely have to do with a combination of batter height and unbalanced scheduling against various catchers. One notices that there are four Dodgers in the lower table above. One notices that the season is only a third of the way over, and these numbers could look very different at the end. There will be regression and shuffling and the final tables will say different things. But no matter the effect a hitter actually has, some hitters do end up with too many strikes, and some end up with too few. It matters only some, and not a lot, but that’s never stopped us from discussing something before. How many articles have there been about optimized lineup construction?

See, it’s not that Andre Ethier’s been unlucky. It’s that he hasn’t been lucky enough.