Jonathan Lucroy and the New Decline
Here’s a graph posted at Baseball Prospectus a week ago:
You see, for each of the last six years, an estimate of Jonathan Lucroy’s pitch-framing value. Now, there are freely available pitch-framing numbers you can browse through at StatCorner. Those will give you a good sense, but the numbers at Baseball Prospectus are the gold standard, with countless variables and adjustments, and what we observe when we look at Lucroy on Baseball Prospectus is that, statistically, it seems like his pitch-receiving has dropped almost all the way to league average. It was only a few years ago he ranked as one of the best, if not the best, so this is fairly astonishing. And Lucroy is said to be on the market, so this is also relevant. What are we supposed to believe as far as Lucroy and pitch-receiving go?
This is kind of new to us. It’s new to us because quantifying pitch-framing is still pretty new to us. It was exciting when people did that, because it introduced new contributions, new stars. Lucroy was one of them, even if Jose Molina was the initial face of the field. It took a little getting used to, but eventually enough people recognized Lucroy as one of the great all-around backstops in the sport. It was clear that, not only could he hit, but he could preserve a lot of strikes. We all got used to that, but as we were getting used to that, Lucroy’s framing skill was going away. By these numbers, anyway.
First, you have a new statistic. Then you can start seeing players getting better and getting worse in the statistic. This is a case of Lucroy getting worse in a new statistic, which we haven’t seen very much. I’m not sure it’s all that intuitive — it feels like framing should be one of those things that ages well. It’s not like a player forgets how to do it, and Lucroy hasn’t even yet celebrated his 30th birthday. Jose Molina was 33 in 2008. But it could be like any other skill, right? A small difference could be a big difference, like how a pitcher could be a lot worse throwing 89 than 91. We should be prepared to think Lucroy isn’t a star anymore. A few years ago, Lucroy was outstanding. A few years ago, Joe Mauer hit .324.
To start with, here’s evidence Baseball Prospectus has been measuring something real, or at least sticky. This shouldn’t be new to many people. I took data for the last eight years and calculated framing runs above or below average per 7,000 chances. This is a plot of how those numbers have held up year over year:
Obviously a strong relationship. Obviously, players who look like good framers tend to continue to look like good framers. This isn’t proof the numbers are measuring something real and significant, but it’s awful suggestive. It’s against this backdrop the Lucroy decline is stunning. You’d expect him to get worse by maybe a run or two each year, but he’s been sinking a lot faster than that.
I found 253 cases of a catcher having at least 2,500 framing opportunities in consecutive seasons. Again, for every year, I calculated runs/7000. Lucroy has three of the 53 biggest year-to-year declines. Between 2011 and 2012, he dropped almost 11 runs per 7000. Between 2013 and 2014, he dropped 14. Between 2014 and 2015, he dropped 12. There was also a drop between 2012 and 2013, of about six runs. Lucroy has steadily rated worse and worse, and he’s declined much faster than many of his peers.
So, a critical question: how significant is a drop like this? I mean, with Lucroy alone, we see him continue to decline, but what’s happened with other catchers who’ve had similar drops? There are 167 cases of a catcher having at least 2,500 opportunities in three consecutive years. In 36 cases, there was a drop between the first two years of at least 10 runs per 7000. Where did those catchers come out in the third year? I calculated some averages:
- Year 1: +10.3 framing runs per 7000
- Year 2: -4.1
- Year 3: -3.2
Just in case you’re a bigger fan of medians:
- Year 1: +7.3 framing runs per 7000
- Year 2: -4.2
- Year 3: -4.7
There’s no meaningful observed bounceback. On average, when these catchers have rated worse as framers, they’ve continued to rate worse as framers. This is why there should be some Lucroy concern — he might not actually rebound. Many other catchers haven’t in the past, himself included. Obviously, there are some success stories, like Derek Norris. Norris got worse between 2013 and 2014, but then he got way better in 2015. But these declines seem important. I don’t know what would be causing Lucroy to decline, but he has had his injuries. Why wouldn’t injuries matter?
Just for the sake of showing the opposite end, there are 18 cases of an increase between the first two years of at least 10 runs per 7000. The same idea as above:
- Year 1: -13.8 framing runs per 7000
- Year 2: +0.6
- Year 3: -1.9
The bulk of the improvement sticks. So declines in framing seem pretty real, and improvements in framing seem pretty real. This is good news for Chris Iannetta and the Mariners — Iannetta just had the biggest season-to-season improvement for anyone since 2008. He got better by 27 runs per 7000, and he’s in line to do most of the receiving in Seattle until or unless Mike Zunino proves himself successfully overhauled. Norris, incidentally, is tied for the third-biggest improvement. So it hasn’t all gone rotten in San Diego.
None of this is to say Jonathan Lucroy can’t rebound. He’s not yet old, and he could have a much healthier season. He still knows all the techniques, and there’s some chance the numbers are actually missing something. Maybe, for example, they’re not giving Lucroy enough credit for catching a pretty lousy staff. But the numbers do try to control for that, so it’s worth entertaining the possibility that perhaps Lucroy is just finished as an elite receiver. He might even be finished as a good one. Catchers who have declined before haven’t often bounced back, and Lucroy himself is among them. You could also think about Brian McCann and Ryan Hanigan, who once looked like framing wizards, but who now appear mostly average. We’re still learning about this as a skill. Maybe some peaks just happen to be awful short.
It all makes the Lucroy trade talks so complicated. The Brewers want to sell him as a catcher who can do just about everything. Teams have reason to question how well he can do anything. Every trade negotiation is fascinating. This one is a little more so.
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.
I am not in a position where I can easily look through BP’s data, but is it possible that some of Lucroy’s decline relative to the league is increasing awareness of pitch framing and an overall increase in the average framing ability since 2011?
I have a similar question – could it be umpires? Is it that far fetched to see a scenario where the umpires know which catchers are “making them look bad,” i.e., stealing more balls for strikes. If you know that Lucroy is at the top and there is a borderline pitch, wouldnt the umpire assume Lucroy was “stealing” it and then call a ball?
I have no idea if this is possible. I’d imagine umpires have to make relatively quick intuitive/reflexive decisions on balls/strikes and the time put into might not be enough to think oh but Lucroy is catching i’m calling that a ball.
Wouldnt surprise me tho…Just curious what others might think or figure out anyway to prove? Maybe compare Lucroy catching to other catchers in a game or similar umpires?
I actually think the reflexive decision idea goes both ways. If you have a preconceived notion before the game that the catcher is a “framer,” then you might be subconsciously more inclined to call balls. So I definitely see merit to this and OP’s comment.
Isn’t one thing working against this that framing is way more about preventing strikes from being called balls? Almost all real balls are actually called balls these days.
This always crosses my mind. You figure umpires aren’t completely unaware, but then if anyone was the face of this, it was Jose Molina, and he remained an excellent framer, statistically, through to retirement.
Can’t rule it out. I assume it’s somewhat of a factor. Not the *biggest* factor, but it counts for something.
Hmm, I also wonder if fatigue might play a role here. Lucroy’s games caught have gone up every year as his framing runs have declined (except the injury shortened 2012 and 2015). That just leaves us with a few years’ sample, but I wonder if there is any correlation between games started at catcher and framing runs.
I wonder how this looks throughout the course of a season. Is the rate stable or highly variable? Does it generally drop in Aug/Sept?
When framing becomes a part of the defensive WAR for catchers (and possibly takes something away for pitchers), will they go back and use old data to retroactively attribute guys like Lucroy? It might make a pretty big difference and create some saber darlings for hall of fame consideration (like Lucroy or Brian McCann).
I wonder how this skill ages with time. Not that Lucroy, who will be thirty in June, is likely the victim of age, it still begs the question about what an aging curve for this looks like, and whether that year-to-year chart you posted, Jeff, might look a little different for 24 year old catchers than one for 34 year old catchers.
I don’t remember specifically where I saw it, but they had an aging curve at BP that showed a very gradual decline that increases in effect around the mid-30s. So, fairly typical, as skills go.
I have a question in regards to catcher value: so in 2011 Lucroy was 50 runs above average at framing, does that mean we should mentally add 5 WAR to his year?
That would probably be too extreme, but yeah, you should mentally make Lucroy look a lot better. At the same time, you have to take some value away from the pitchers, because you’d really just be shifting it around, not adding it, on the team level.
I’ve been wondering for awhile how the current pitch-framing metrics could be incorporated into WAR. There have been a few articles here and there that made the same mistake of merely converting BP’s framing runs into wins and then tacking that number onto a catcher’s WAR. One problem with that, aside from how it would/should affect the run value currently credited to pitchers, is that BP’s framing metric isn’t context neutral. Correct me if I’m misremembering, but I seem to recall that they calculate the value of each individual ball and strike as a measure of the change in run expectancy with respect to game state. A strike with two outs and a man on third is worth significantly more than one with bases empty and no outs because the run expectancy decrease is larger in that situation. In that way, it seems to me like sort of a marriage between WAR and WPA. But that isn’t how run value is calculated for any other component of WAR. A single is a single. A strikeout is a strikeout. Game state doesn’t matter. That difference would, I’d presume, create a very different scale for wins. If pitchers were credited similarly–on a pitch-by-pitch basis rather than by the outcome of every plate appearance, and with respect to game state–I would imagine they’d rack up seemingly ludicrous WAR totals, too.
That’s one option. Another option is to question whether the calculation is accurate, and his framing was really worth 50 runs above average.
As a reference, only 4 hitters added over 50 runs above average with their bat last year (and same for 2011). In 2015, Goldschmidt/Donaldson were right in that range. So would you rather have Goldschmidt/Donaldson’s bat, or Lucroy’s pitch framing?
It’s possible that framing is actually that valuable, but I’d err on the side of caution when mentally adding to his value.
Brewers XFIP by year
2013: 3.94
2014: 3.65
2015: 4.00
The Brewers BB Rate also increased to 3.24 last year, 4th highest in the league. When you are catching people that are wild I would imagine it’s harder to frame pitchers i.e. there is somewhat of a symbiotic relationship between a pitchers control and a catchers framing ability. if you are expecting a low outside fastball and it ends up high outside it’s going to be tough to frame.
Great post. We don’t have enough historical data to test this, but it’s possible Lucroy’s framing is declining with age. We know defense peaks early along with pure athleticism , and though framing may rely largely on craft, it has to benefit from physical traits like eyesight and hand-eye coordination. Something to consider!
Not sure your test of improvers and decliners is valid. You basically selecting the very best/worst for a single season, and observing two subsequent seasons much closer to league average. That looks like regression, not a huge change in true skill. I’d like to see players who went from average to well above/below average and see how much that change persisted.
Yan Gomes has had a similar decline the past two seasons
I wonder how much simply playing for a non-competitive team with a bad pitching staff weighs into it? As someone else pointed out above, it certainly seems like it would be harder to frame well for pitchers who are consistently missing their spots. But more than that there’s such an element of concentration involved in framing (on the part of the catcher and umpire btw) which I could see getting lost more easily than with other measurable skills in the grind of a long season. Not to say that Lucroy has been “mailing it in” exactly. But just on a human level it seems to me it would be a much more difficult thing to maintain that edge pitch after pitch after pitch than to gear up for your 4-5 PAs + your handful of fielding opportunities per game if you’re somewhere else on the diamond (especially when you know your career depends much more directly on those outcomes than to a “hidden” skill like framing which most fans don’t even realize is a skill to begin with and which even the baseball stats community doesn’t quite know how to properly weigh yet).
I know it’s totally unscientific speculation on my part but I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see Lucroy’s framing stats rebound considerably if he is traded to a contender.