How the Astros Wound Up With a Bigger Zone
In a way, it felt like the Yankees were lifeless. Few fans expressed surprise when the team was ultimately shut out, given the way the offense had gone of late. The season is over, but it’s over by a narrower margin than it might seem. The Astros scored their first two runs with two swings, and the third scored on what could be best described as an accident. Neither team on Tuesday was dominant, and you can only wonder how it might’ve gone had the Yankees gotten another break or two. That’s the sort of thinking that gets people talking about the strike zone.
It was a story during the game, and it remained a story after the fact. Here’s a post by Dave on the matter. Perception was that Astros pitchers worked with a more favorable zone than Yankees pitchers did, and while a few pitches here and there didn’t make all of the difference, they certainly could’ve made some difference. Based on the evidence, it does indeed look like the Astros benefited more. A quick glance at the Brooks Baseball zone charts shows me the Astros benefiting by six or seven strikes, comparatively speaking. That’s a big enough margin to notice, and it deserves an explanation. Those of you in favor of an automated strike zone might well want to just skip the rest of this.
There’s no single enduring image, but if I had to pick one, it would be either Brian McCann in the umpire’s face, or the following screenshot of a replay of a called strike from Tony Sipp:
That’s a fastball crossing the inside of the line of the opposite batter’s box. Very clearly off the plate, by a big enough margin to matter, but still this went the pitcher’s way. The ESPN broadcast called attention to it, although they stopped short of any criticism. If I recall, the pitch was described as “unhittable.” That’s one way to put it.
Maybe the best way to lay this out is by just watching various pitches. Below, there are nine replays — five thrown by the Astros, and four thrown by the Yankees. These don’t capture all of the close calls, but I figure it’s sufficiently representative, and I didn’t want to risk .gif overload. It’s not like the Astros got every single close call. And it’s not like every single close call went against the Yankees. But here are five Astros called strikes, and four Yankees called balls. All were somewhere around the borders.
Here’s Dallas Keuchel:
Keuchel again:
Keuchel again:
Keuchel *again*:
And that pitch from Tony Sipp:
Now, Masahiro Tanaka:
Another Tanaka:
Another Betances:
I guess we can start with command. Look at the five Astros pitches. All of them wound up more or less where they were supposed to go. Jason Castro barely had to move, because the pitchers did a good job here of painting the edges. Command is a huge part of earning a favorable zone — command means a pitch location is predictable, based on the catcher’s position, and a pitch thrown to the wrong edge of the zone will come as more of a surprise. It’ll cause the catcher to have to react with his body, and that distracts the umpire. Now, the two Tanaka pitches were also commanded well enough. They were supposed to be near the low-away corner. But that first Betances breaking ball missed, and the fastball was more up and in than low and away. Though the Betances pitches were technically close, they weren’t close to where they were supposed to go. That makes a strike call less likely.
There’s another factor. Look at the counts, in order:
- 1-and-0
- 2-and-1
- 2-and-0
- 2-and-0
- 1-and-0
- 1-and-1
- 1-and-1
- 0-and-0
- 0-and-1
The five Astros pitches were thrown with the batter ahead. Three of the Yankees pitches were thrown with the count even, and one was thrown with the pitcher ahead. Dave briefly touched on this, but one of the more interesting discoveries of the PITCHf/x era is that the strike zone changes within at-bats. This is nothing new to any of the teams. As the count gets more hitter-friendly, the zone gets more pitcher-friendly. As the count gets more pitcher-friendly, the zone gets more hitter-friendly. Presumably it’s nothing intentional on the part of the umpires, but it’s a trend that’s been proven, and it’s held up over time. So at least a small part of this is that the Astros were throwing their borderline pitches with the hitters ahead. That slightly expanded the zone’s boundaries.
And then there’s the last bit. It actually came up on the broadcast, discussed by both Chris Archer and Buster Olney. It has to do with the pitch-framing by Jason Castro and Brian McCann. Archer and Olney both used the word “presentation,” instead of framing, but regardless, it’s the same idea. Castro just looked like the better receiver. If you watch the images above, you can see how quietly Castro was receiving the pitches. Some of that, absolutely, was command. But it wasn’t all command. Consider the following two examples of vaguely similar pitches, called in different ways:
Castro got the strike. McCann didn’t. Both pitches were close to where they were supposed to be. McCann’s, definitely, was a tiny bit more outside. Maybe that’s the whole story. But you can see some differences in technique. Castro caught the ball near his center. McCann caught it toward his right side. Castro kept his body tight, and caught the ball with his elbow bent; McCann’s arm was straighter, with his other arm off to the side. One way to imagine this: Castro let the ball come to him, while McCann went more out to get it. The strike-zone box is helpful here. Most of Castro’s head and upper body are inside the box. Half of McCann’s head is outside the box. McCann’s body language suggested a pitch out of the zone. Castro’s suggested a pitch more right on. Castro did this better.
Which isn’t anything new. McCann is by no means a bad receiver. He has a track record of having been a real good receiver. But this year, by the numbers at StatCorner, Castro was the superior catcher by a good margin. By the numbers at Baseball Prospectus, Castro, again, was the superior catcher by a good margin. Some of that is the catcher and some of that is the pitchers, but Castro demonstrated superior technique Tuesday night, so it’s not a surprise Castro earned the better zone.
The Yankees should’ve gone in expecting a difference in zones. And maybe they did. This year, Keuchel finished third in lowest rate of pitches in the zone called balls. Tanaka finished 64th. Meanwhile, Keuchel finished fourth in highest rate of pitches out of the zone called strikes. Tanaka finished 45th. With good command and a good catcher, Keuchel’s been able to manipulate the edges, and sure enough that’s what just happened. Tanaka’s command isn’t bad, and Brian McCann as a catcher isn’t bad, but the Astros came in with a certain advantage, and they possessed said certain advantage. This isn’t to say that it’s necessarily fair. That’s a whole different conversation. But the Astros did what they had to do to pitch to a slightly bigger zone in a one-game playoff. That didn’t, on its own, decide the result, but then nothing did, on its own. The Astros, I’m sure, were happy to take the help.
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.
Great article! I expect that more teams will start to pay attetion and take advantage of a good pitch framer.
I agree. It seems like such a “low hanging fruit” area to focus on for MLB catchers – some consistent practice with it on different pitch types, with the potential for big benefits.
But maybe its not quite as easy as we think. I’m sure teams are not stupid and probably some of them were on to this before the general public. Most likely, its a skill that some guys will master better than others.
Thanks for this Jeff…
Does anyone else prefer Jeff’s explanation to Dave’s?
I think they’re picking up on the fact that the “new readers” only like to be told what they want to hear and Dave doesn’t pander… so they’re doing a good cop/bad cop thing. This article is for those who can’t handle the truth.
It is not that at all. Its Dave being a (self-admitted) jerk.
There’s truth in what both of us are saying. You’re right, Dave can be testy and that rubs people the wrong way. But I’m right as well, especially with the influx of new readers who are used to more opinion based baseball articles… Dave doesn’t worry about making people feel better.
theres a nice middle ground between being a jerk and “making people feel better”, theres no reason why dave cant aim for it
That’s fair 🙂
there was a man on base on that pitch mccann caught. you have to be ready to pop and throw, hence the different positioning
Very well. Then you might prefer:
http://cdn.fangraphs.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/castro1.png
Castro with a runner on, McCann with the bases empty. Look at where the heads are, relative to the zone box.
fair enough. presumably tanakas slider has more armside movement than any of keuchels pitches have gloveside, and keuchels pitch was likely actually breaking towards plate. ball is coming back towards him, rather than moving away. but this is nitpicking and we will never get the perfect pictures from only 1 game
should not have presumed. keuchels fb sinker and change all move more. tanakas slider is pretty straight, which is apparent from gif.
which says that tanaka was missing his spot off the plate. and keuchels ball was starting on corner moving off. i can make either argument work for me!
also, every pitch featured here for the yankees was thrown with a man on base.
obviously that could still affect the call on the pitch. but there is a reason that mccann is set up like that, no just jason castro being better at framing
in fact all of those pitches for the yankees came with a man on base
Where is my mvp trophy?
Chris Archer did a great job of pointing out Castro’s superior framing (he called it “presentation”) during the ESPN broadcast — he had to redirect the discussion to do it, because Shulman was asking him some dumb question, which made it especially noticeable. Archer said “hang on, I just want to point something out” as Keuchel had just thrown a borderline low/inside pitch to a RHH and Castro snapped his wrist up, perfectly framing it for a called strike.
It was exactly the same wrist move that Travis d’Arnaud has talked about practicing over the last couple of offseasons, keeping the arm and body still and just snapping the glove slightly upwards as the pitch is received, squeaking the ball upward across the knees by an inch or two. You see almost all the good framing catchers do it now.
I wish Chris Archer had kicked everyone else out of the booth and been like “Hey America, I brought my friends Jon Miller and Dirk Hayhurst and we’re taking over this broadcast.”
He was certainly better than all three regular ESPN broadcasters combined, not that that’s a high bar to clear. Nothing particular against the thoroughly anodyne, replacement-level cliche-reciting skills of Mendoza, but Shulman and Kruk are inexcusable.
At one point my friend wandered off into the kitchen so her husband and I took it upon ourselves to call the game, radio-style, him doing PBP and I doing commentary. We didn’t mute the actual TV, though, and it was just incredible that, even in PBP, there was absolutely no overlap between our calls and theirs.
I always love when current players get to do a broadcast. They know more about the players on the field than anyone else in the booth
I think it’s great a woman was in the booth, and she deserved to be there, but her performance was awful. There were innings were she didn’t say a thing, and the things she did say were repeated over and over. I understand that she may be nervous, but she needs to get into the flow.
You and I differ on this. The best commentators -for me- are the people who let the game do the talking. Yeah they offer important tidbits. But unless it is Vin Scully doing the play-by-play, I do not need that person saying much.
The problem was that when Mendoza was not talking, it meant that one of Kruk or Shulman was. Which was 140596797 times worse.
Those two pitches aren’t close to be in the same location. Not too mention that slider from Tanaka never showed in the zone and was breaking away from the plate. Keuchel’s pitches were naturally breaking towards the plate.
None of this explains away the inability of the Yankees to make Keuchel pay for his few mistakes, while the Astros feasted on Tanaka’s.
Finally, you may think Altuve’s RBI single was an accident, but seeing as he’s one of the best at doing exactly what he did, I’d hardly classify it as you did.
It was contact for contact’s sake. He’s a great contact hitter and everything, but that was not a good swing. It was a miracle!
Also Keuchel’s outside pitches break away from the plate. So did Sipp’s. Lefties and fastballs and everything.
If that was a FB and breaking away from the batter, it still showed in the zone and would have been a strike if it was an inch higher. The pitch from Tanaka is not only low it was wide, and was never close to being the strike zone. I’m sure there were a lot better examples to choose from, but this one very poor.
Altuve must be a true miracle worker because he gets 20+ hits a year doing exactly what he did to Betances.
Fangraphs is not the place to be a homer fan.
The idea isn’t that the pitches were identical. They’re not and that’s acknowledged in the post. The idea is that the pitches were similar enough to show the difference in receiving technique. I think that was accomplished.
although sipps fastball may have moved off a straight line, he is throwing from the far first base side of the rubber and from 3/4s, so his ball is natural coming from off plate to outside corner
Why do you think that? I don’t buy prima facie that it was a miracle — it looked to me like a guy with miraculous bat control doing a thing that only he can do, but not a thing that it takes a miracle **for him** to do. Altuve is a fantastic freak outlier, like say Ichiro or Vlad were before him, but that doesn’t make the decision to swing wrong **for him**.
Miracle was an exaggeration, but Altuve is a .200 hitter down and away. Pretty much no one ever pulls that pitch down the line in the air. Altuve is more capable than most, but I still don’t think that was so much good process as good outcome.
Doesn’t mean it wasn’t amazing!
Altuve is a great hitter indeed, but a vlad doubling/homering off pitches bouncing or literally at his feet/shoulders, or Ichiro staying balanced and looking like Roger Federer slicing a low and away pitch 8 inches off the plate, over the 3b/ss head thirty times a year he is not. altuve was so fooled his butt was in the dugout. Sure he did a great job slapping the barrel on a pitch breaking away from him.
However Vlad/Ichiro type wizardry he does not possess IMO
I like slashes.
I guess I’m convinced, so thanks for the responses, everyone. And yeah, no, obviously Altuve isn’t quite as extreme or impressive a bad-ball/bat-control hitter as Vlad or Ichiro but my point was more that that’s the *kind* of hitter I class him as — a guy who makes his living on a relatively unusual kind of hitting skill.
The Sipp one was pretty egregious. But the first and fourth Keuchel GIFs are moving back towards the plate, and the middle two cross the plate. Only one of those pitches is off the plate both vertically and horizontally, and it’s the one that catches the edge of the zone.
Contrast that with Tanaka; both of the pitches included in this piece are low and outside, and neither really moves back towards the plate.
That swing is something Altuve has perfected. He has even hit extra bases with that swing where the bat seems to stop when it contacts the baseball. It may look funny but the physics behind it is sound!
Even if it was a pitch that he was trying to foul off that fell in, you gotta give a hitter credit for making some kind of contact rather than striking out.
It’s kind of painful to watch McCann receive in those four .gifs after watching Castro receive.
Agreed. Just watch the glove: Castro receives the ball, moves it back into the zone, and holds perfectly still within 2-3 frames of the GIF. McCann is slower, and then drifts around until the call is made.
Maybe these few catches aren’t a representative sample of their true skills, but if they are, there’s a stark difference between the two.
This.
I typed my comments below before reading yours.
Castro makes McCann look like a position player that was transplanted to catcher.
Seriously, the “straight glove arm raise” is unacceptable in 10-12U travel baseball. I’m no joking. Always pull the ball slightly closer to your body as you are catching it. Never raise it. You don;t want to move the ball into the strikezone, you want to make it look like you caught it in the strikezone.
Subtle.
Unrelated to another fine article, but has anyone else noted that with the Yankees loss, there is no longer any teams from either coast in the playoffs? Kind of a completely heartland year, plus Texas (twice).
wut?
The Dodgers say hello.
East Coast bias.
Also, the Mets.
West Coast bias.
Except for the Dodgers and Mets being in the playoffs, you make an excellent point.
Then again, if it weren’t for all the differences I’d be exactly like Dwayne Johnson.
I’ve never seen you act…that said I imagine your acting skills are very much on par with Dwayne Johnson’s.
Man, I’m way off.
Cocaine’s a hell of a drug.
I posted this same comment in a Facebook discussion about the strikes called in last night’s game, so apologies to anyone that might’ve been in on that discussion if I sound like a broken record. I think one thing that gets lost in the discussion of called balls and strikes is that it completely ignores every pitch that’s swung in any given game. I looked at the Brooks Baseball pitchf/x graphs from last night’s game and the Astros swung and missed, fouled off, or put in play a lot of balls outside the zone (not all that remarkable considering they were 4th in the AL in swing% — they like to hack). Of course, we’ll never know if any of those would’ve been called strikes had they not swung, but it does mean there were fewer opportunities for the umpire to call pitches outside the zone as strikes whenever a Yankees pitcher was on the mound. When an Astros pitcher was on the mound, the Yankees did just the opposite — they didn’t offer at many pitches outside the zone during last night’s game, essentially giving the umpire more opportunity to call those pitches strikes (one wonders why they made no in-game adjustments if they thought the strike zone was bigger for Astros pitchers during the course of the game). Also, in terms of close calls, it appears that only three of Keuchel’s pitches outside the strike zone were truly bad calls. The rest of the balls outside the zone were extremely close (most towards the lower part of the zone). Conversely, Tanaka didn’t throw many close pitches at all. Most of his non-strike pitches were nowhere near the zone. For the most part, when he missed, he missed badly (even though Astros hitters swung at more than a few of those pitches).
I was thinking this exact same thing.
tl dr
tl;dr: If there were more bad calls against the Yankees, it may be a function of having a larger sample of close pitches called by the ump. On a percentage basis, perhaps the ump was being more consistent.
I wish I could find the tweet now….but 5 of 18 called strikes vs the Yankees were called balls. And the fact is, it definitely made a huge difference in the game. In the first two innings the Yankee hitters were patient. Forcing Dallas into deep counts. But, the McCann at bat especially, caused the hitters the second time around to expand the zone. Dallas was just about at 40 pitches after two innings. After that? The Yanks all expanded the zone. No more waiting. If they took a first strike call (which Keuchel is really really good at), they basically were at a massive disadvantage.
It also doesn’t help when A-Rod completely mucks up the one mistake pitch thrown by Keuchel all night with two people on base.
Yeah….you have to adjust once you recognize that the ump is calling a certain kind of zone. You have to start trying to foul those off, if you’re worried about called strikes.
* every pitch that’s swung AT in any given game
The framing job on that Tony Sipp outside pitch was incredible. That minimal snap and the way he kind of funnels it into the mitt. Gotta give credit where credit’s due.
More Christian Vasquez gifs just for our amusement please? 😀
1) Automate balls and strikes already. Pitch framing and strike zones that change from count to count are ridiculous. This is 2015. There was a time when baseball didn’t have fences either – it didn’t ruin the game.
2) To get us to #1 faster, every telecast should have something like ESPN’s K-zone.
3) The Yankees could get crappy calls for the next ten years and still not break even on all the calls Mariano Rivera got for his last ten years.
4) Last year’s world series game 7 was much worse than this. Except for the Sipp and Betances calls, non of those gifs were controversial.
lighten up francis
Uncle Hulka ?
Hey, that was me who asked Dave the question that got the answer about the K-zone switching mid-atbat! Gotta say, I actually didnt know that, and I’ve reconsidered my feelings about the umpire in last night’s game.
The book “Scorecasting” goes into great detail about this. Ump’s do not have much of an effect on the game. But…data does show that they shrink the zone on 2-0 and 3-0 counts and 0-2 counts. The biggest time they make the zone bigger is in regards to blow outs. Where the zone expands a great deal.
tl;dr
Yanks got screwed, which is not surprising. Several certain umps have been taking A-Rod’s steroid use out on the Yankees all year.
Herp derp?
I know it was kind of danced around in here, but it sure seems a heck of a lot more natural and easy for opposite handed catcher/pitchers to frame smoothly. Just softly taking the ball in with its natural direction often does much of the work. You are puling in more often, opposed to stabbing away. There is a benefit to both sides of the plate for these duo’s. when reaching glove across the body to receive, the ball is coming back in, so it is an easy pull in and pause. On the catcher glove side, there will be less arm extension, so a bent elbow and higher frame is easier to get to without seeming like you are “reaching” for it.
Same-sided catchers have to reach and stab, and then naturally pull the ball back in, after being pulled away with a lot of extension and body turn on opposite glove side.
If one had money, he could get two catchers you could platoon with the opposite-handed pitchers. So, do lefties get more close calls, assuming most catchers are right handed?
Come on Jeff… a walk, a stolen base and the league hit leader puts the bat on the ball is an accident?
It you look at the umpire’s positioning in the GIFs he nose is exactly on the point of the plate, just like they teach you.
I wonder if Yankee fans would be so infuriated if the camera was looking over the pitcher’s left shoulder instead of his right. It sure looked like Keuchel was missing the zone and getting the calls, but it’s really hard to tell when a lefty is throwing.
As per Brooks FX, it looks like he really wasn’t getting too many breaks in reality.
The frame job on the Sipp pitch is beautiful. Seriously, watch it a few times.
You know the pitch is outside, but the damn catcher makes you question what you already know.
That’s a helluva steal.
Compare that to the horrible over-framing that McCann (?) is trying on Tanakas first 2 gifs.
Good god, even if those pitches were a strike, no umpire is going to call them a strike given the over-sell the NYY catcher is trying. That’s low rent, weak sauce, horsepoop style of framing.
I think its time baseball goes to a computer for the the calls on balls/strikes. A guy watching the game on his couch can tell if a pitch is a ball or strike more accurate than the home-plate umpire. A strike zone should not move or be subject to the catcher moving his glove, if a computer can get it right, then do it.
Meh. The strike zone is just a part of the game. Having a good framer makes a big deal and is a desirable skill in a catcher. An automated strike zone negates that skill.