The Most or Least Important Pitch-Framing Question
I’d say it isn’t often we run polls here on FanGraphs. It’s not really the sort of thing we specialize in, but then, what are the FAN projections but polls, in a sense? What is the Fan Scouting Report? We’re big supporters of crowdsourcing, if you’ll allow me to speak for the whole company, and in this instance I have a genuine interest in the tallied opinions of the many. What follows is not an analytical investigation. What follows is the lead-up to a question I ask of you.
At this point, some of you are probably approaching pitch-framing fatigue. It’s still new research and exciting research, but it’s also been heavily cited and we’re all familiar with the basic principles and various standouts. We don’t even know the extent to which it makes a difference. But, here, let me throw a couple things at you from the last few days.
On Friday, Jeff Samardzija threw a ball right down the middle. It’s his second such ball of the young season. If you watch the .gif — which you’re about to — it sure looks like Samardzija threw a ball low, near the dirt.
But, here’s a screenshot from that .gif:
The pitch was down the middle, visually. The pitch was down the middle, on Gameday. The pitch was called a ball, and here’s the part where I tell you that at this writing, Welington Castillo is rated among baseball’s worst receivers. You can see that he wasn’t prepared to handle the pitch Samardzija threw, where he threw it. The batter walked and later on the Cubs lost. Granted, the Cubs lose most of the time, but here the fact is included to substantiate the gravity of the umpiring error.
On Sunday, Tom Wilhelmsen walked Casey McGehee.
At that point, Wilhelmsen’s Mariners were on top of the Marlins 2-1 in the bottom of the eighth. When the inning ended, it was 3-2 Miami, and it was by that score that the Marlins won and completed a series sweep. Later, catcher John Buck complained that he felt Wilhelmsen was being squeezed. Buck, like Castillo, is rated among baseball’s worst receivers. Extra attention is called to his technique given that starter Mike Zunino is so far considered one of the best.
Thousands of called pitches are caught every day and these were not the only two instances lately in which pitch-framing could’ve made a significant difference. These are just two easy examples. We’re beyond the point at which you can question whether pitch-framing is a real thing. The numbers hold up year after year after year, and certain teams are acting on them, either by acquiring players or training players they already have. The market for framers isn’t anything like the market for, say, home-run hitters, but the knowledge is in the industry. They can see how this matters, and we can see how this matters, but for all the talk about the significance of good or bad pitch-framing technique, I think there’s an underlying question that’s easy to ignore or avoid: do we even want this to be a part of the game in the first place?
I mean, the discussion right now is purely hypothetical, because framing exists and it’s going to continue to exist for as long as there are human umpires. But in your personal ideal version of baseball, are teams rewarded for having good framers, or is the strike zone just the strike zone, regardless?
The argument in favor of framing is this: pitch-framing, and doing it well, is a skill. There’s a wide spread in talent, and the good framers are just better at catching than the bad framers. So if a team has an advantage over another team in this area, it’s an advantage in a baseball skill, and it’s not like it’s anything random. You’re penalizing or rewarding teams for doing something poorly or well. It’s an area in which a team can get ahead, and it’s an area in which a team can look for a different source of value.
The argument against framing is this: it’s basically about nothing but style points. It’s treating a line-drive single differently from a seeing-eye single. Shouldn’t the only thing that matters be the location of the pitch? It’s a learnable baseball skill, sure, but the only purpose of the skill is to convince the umpire of something. It isn’t so much player-vs-player as it is player-vs-umpire and umpires aren’t supposed to be a part of the competition. If you have two outfielders who trap two sinking liners, and if one of them makes it look more like a catch than the other, should the outfielder who completed the “better trap” get credit for an out? No, that sounds absurd, but it’s just an extension of the pitch-framing idea, turning individual pitches into whole outs. The rule book defines a strike zone. Shouldn’t every team get the same strike zone? Isn’t that fundamental to the sport? If the strike zone exists over the plate, and in front of the catcher, then by the time the ball reaches the catcher, in theory the pitch is dead and decided. Why should the catcher get to have any influence after the fact?
Probably, you’ve thought about this before. If you haven’t, think about it now. Framing is a thing, and it will remain a thing for the foreseeable future. How do you feel about that?
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.
Robot Umpires!
Yup! I hate the human element.
If we feel that players should not benefit from their ability to influence umpires’ calls, should we also feel that way about the quirks that lead to home field advantage? Should grass always be cut to the same height, should park dimensions be the same everywhere, etc.? I don’t have a strong opinion, but I’m curious if others see the benefits of pitch framing in the same light as the benefits of mastering other environmental factors, or if they’re seen differently because of the human element inherent in the umpire.
I don’t think this is a good comparison. Park factors/dimensions/quirks and the like are still within the rules. Pitch framing in essence “breaks” a rule in that a ball is called a strike.
I do like that park factors vary to a certain extent.* I don’t know of any other team sport where the construction of the stadium can vary in such a way that it impacts the execution of the game. I think it gives baseball some character, kind of like the appeal of watching golf. To me, golf would be unwatchable if all courses were the same. I wouldn’t find baseball unwatchable if parks were all the same, but I would enjoy it a little less.
This attitude doesn’t also cause be to like pitch framing though. I don’t know how I feel really. I don’t know why I made this comment.
*I don’t like parks that are too ridiculous. I don’t like Coors field for example, it feels like a different sport there.
different parks encourage the teams to build differently, which is good. Big park teams need to emphasize flyball pitchers, small parks emphasize long ball hitters, etc.
May be cheap, but like it or not; pitch framing will be an important skill until the umpires/MLB are able to catch up to it.
You can’t really be upset at Coors unless you are saying that baseball shouldn’t be played at a high altitude. Coors was built the way it has to be, give or take.
Let’s turn your logic around: what would you think of baseball if there was no definition of the strike zone in the rulebook, just like there’s no definition of the outfield dimensions or grass cutting? A baseball where some parks have especially “quirky” strike zones (in Boston it’s 6 feet tall on one side of the plate and 6 inches on the other) or where certain umpires are known to always give the pitcher the outside strike even if it’s in the other batter’s box, or always give borderline calls to certain “veterans,” or to always squeeze certain pitchers for whatever reason they feel like — like maybe because of their race. Is that a game you want to watch? Or is the one you want to watch one where balls and strikes are called consistently, and according to the dimensions specified in the rules?
Who says there’s a definition of the strike zone now? The egomaniacs in blue call whatever they want, and throw players out of the game if they disagree. I’m all for letting Pitch F/x call the game.
I don’t think it should be a skill to “steal” strikes through skillful framing. I think the comparison to an outfielder executing a more convincing trap is apt in this regard (although, obviously, stealing a strike and stealing an out are two different things). By a pure interpretation of the rules, throwing balls and strikes is exclusively in the control of the pitcher.
I think that this article points out that catchers aren’t really “stealing” strikes. I don’t think an umpire is fooled when a catcher moves his glove back towards the zone. In fact I think an umpire would probably think the catcher was trying to fool him and be less likely to call a strike. The trick is a catcher preserves the position of the ball, by holding it wear he catches it. Thus the umpire gets a longer look at where it is. Bad catchers let the momentum of the ball carry their glove away from the zone and umpires who need a second look are more likely to call it a ball. I think a good analogy is Wide Recievers in football (before video review). Good ones could stop their momentum on a dime and get the double toe tap on the sideline. Bad ones didn’t and even if both feet fleetingly touched the ground it was less likely that a ref would call the catch in bounds.
No, some catchers absolutely “steal” strikes. If you watch them, they definitely will subtly bring their gloves back towards the zone if the catch the ball outside the zone. Most of the time it doesn’t work, but the best framers are more likely to get borderline pitches will even cause a few balls to be called as strikes.
I’m sure it happens. But I think that catchers lose more strikes by not holding their position than catchers steal strikes by subtly moving the glove back towards the zone.
This is not true. Ask any umpire. When the catcher moves his glove coincidental to the entry of the ball, umpires almost invariably go out of their way not to give the benefit of the doubt to the pitcher. And umpires tell catchers all the time something like “you didn’t give me a chance to call it a strike because you moved it”.
This. I caught and pitched in college (so not MLB umpires, but still…) and there is a definite skill in receiving. You glove moves when the ball hits it 100% of the time since there’s a lot of force on even an 80 mph pitch. The trick is to cushion that movement so your glove ends up ~1 inch closer to the center of the zone after everything settles. If you do this with every pitch the umpires sees the consistency and doesn’t believe you are even framing anything at all. You’re just holding it there to give them a better look if they need it. Body movement disrupt the umpire’s viewing angle and closes off/opens up too much of their field of view for them to be as confident on the edges, hence they’re more likely to call a ball.
When the rule is changed to the strikezone being where the catcher catches the ball as opposed to where the ball crosses the plate I’ll want it to exist. Until then it seems kind of extremely silly
That’s exactly the problem I have with framing… in the most basic terms, a pitch is a “ball” or “strike” before the catcher ever touches it
In theory. In practice though we see something different. Umpires are human, and pitch framing attempts to exploit that. Many umpires are judging at where the catcher’s gloves end up to help them. Just like not every hitter can exactly know where the ball was, how can the umpire also know?
I think the existence of the whole discussion is because the theory/practice are different so not sure where you’re going with that. Perhaps the strikezone should be changed, or umps get some much needed help. No one is implying that seeing the ball through the strikezone is easy, I’m just saying we have a rule and framing happens well after the “strikezone”
Kinda, except that you need to consider what information umpires use to determine where the ball crossed the plate. This ball is crossing a variably-sized, invisible plane on a curved path at up to 100 mph while a catcher tells you where you can expect the ball to go (inside vs outside targeting). It’s so fast that you can’t see the instant where the ball crosses the plate – it’s a blur so you just use your best impression based on the trajectory and the end point. If the catcher messes that up the ump’s decision process by giving a misleading target or presenting an informationally-useless end-point, then by all means the catcher’s opponent’s should gain the benefit of the doubt.
Baseball already acknowledges that what happens after the ball crosses the plate is important in determining the batter’s fate (dropped strike 3 rule), so it seems an organic extension that graceful receiving should be a real and valued skill.
I understand the point you are making, but I think it is absurd to say that pitch-framing should not be allowed. I would like to think that a good umpire can tell where the ball was in the strike zone regardless of how the catcher caught it.
I think the problem is in the umpires in ALLOWING catchers to subtly change their minds, knowingly or unknowingly. How in the world can you enforce catchers not to frame when they can just say “Uh… this is how I normally catch the ball…”
In the GIF above it is most definitely the catcher’s fault for seeming like his pitcher missed his spot – after all – it was at the batter’s knees and I’ve seen plenty of balls called at that level even when the catcher frames it right.
I don’t think anyone is asking that catchers be penalized for “framing” better than their counterparts, but rather that umpires judge where the pitch crossed the plate and not how it is caught later on. Since umpires appear unable to do this perfectly, the obvious solution is better technology than the human eye.
I voted in favor of it. Why not?
After all, foul-call framing is a key part of the NBA.
Lol, yes and everyone loves that.
It’s a big part of international soccer, too. And we’re great at it!
I agree. I wholeheartedly support pitch framing in the MLB
I too support this notion.
I hate that framing is a thing. It puts the batter in an awful position of not being able to discern if a pitch is a strike until it has past him. It means that a batter with a good eye can let a close pitch out of the strike zone go by only to be called out because the catcher framed it. Yes, this happens all the time, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to do better. The situation I described is one of the very frustrating parts of the game for fans and players.
I’m not sure how much of this is bad pitches getting framed into strikes as much as good pitches being framed into balls. I mean, Castillo’s handling of that Samaradziajazidijia pitch was atrocious.
Perhaps if the value of not “mis-framing” becomes gospel to MLB organizations, we won’t see any more Ryan Doumits catching in the majors. This might cut out a lot of the variance between actual and perceived strikes going on right now.
You forgot four z’s, three a’s, and an ampersand.
And that was WITH spellcheck on lol….
The game should be called according to the rule book. If the human eye cannot do this accurately, we should find a way to call ball and strikes without them.
I hate in soccer when the players fall down like they have been shot from everything little shove. This feels a little bit like that. (Tricking the game official into making an incorrect call)
And some leagues have made “diving” a red card foul in soccer. It hasn’t really helped.
Well it’s helped some, and “divers” are less likely to get calls in the box once they get that rep
Have they? I’ve never heard of it being more than a yellow and it’s enforced so infrequently it’s almost irrelevant.
If diving were a red card in the EPL, Suarez would be extremely well rested for the World Cup this summer.
Not the EPL, but Francesco Totti was sent off in the World Cup against South Korea and some guy named Julien Lecomte was sent off in a lower Belgian league for diving after being knocked out by a flying elbow.
We really shouldn’t be far away at all from the umpires at least getting training help from Pitchf/x on the left and right hand boundaries of the strike zone. There’s no reason this can’t be made uniform within the next few years (buzzer in umps ear, buzzes when pitch was between the uprights). Top and bottom calls are less clearly defined (and the bottom is really hard to get right, I know from experience). So we may be stuck with framers at the bottom of the strike zone for a long time, and they just need to learn that skill so all catchers are on relatively even terms.
I hear umpires are actually getting better, and that their accuracy has been trending upwards.
Why must baseball be different than other sports? Football, basketball, and hockey all use technique to avoid/draw calls.
Most of the calls in those other sports aren’t purely objectively determinable. There is no subjectivity to whether a pitch is a ball or strike in baseball. It’s different. Or at least seems different to me.
The strike zone is fairly subjective:
“The Strike Zone is that area over home plate the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the top of the knees. The Strike Zone shall be determined from the batter’s stance as the batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball.”
So it’s officially based both on the batter’s height and to some extent on their stance. It doesn’t specifically describe what stance means, so I’d think that it doesn’t necessarily mean that Rickey Henderson’s strike zone has to be 2″ high but there’s nothing in the rule book that says that it has to be larger than that.
That’s still an objective definition. I think you may be confused about the difference between objective and subjective.
A subjective definition would be:
“The Strike Zone is that area over home plate where the umpire thinks strikes should be called.”
Right now, baseball has an objective definition, but it is enforced in a subjective way. Either modify the definition to assert umpire discretion, or replace umpires with robots.
I think the width is totally objective but the height is awfully subjective.
“The Strike Zone shall be determined from the batter’s stance as the batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball.”
What does “prepared” mean here? Should Craig Counsell have a larger strike zone due to his stance than someone the same height?
There’s some logical fallacy in here, I just don’t know the exact name for it. Appeal to Tradition or Appeal to Everyone Else is Doing It or something
Pitch framing will always be part of the game until we get laser-generated strike zones. It’s not any worse than knowing an umpire’s strike zone (which supposedly is mandated by rule)… or a hitter obliterating the back line of the batter’s box… or a phantom play at second base. Framing is something that catchers should be practicing since it’s THEIR JOB TO CATCH THE BALL WELL. After all, they’re “catchers”.
I have a bigger problem with catchers who MOVE the ball towards the strike zone every pitch (typically younger catchers who think the umpire can’t see it). They’ll move it and hold it for a second or two, trying to get the crowd and the ump to think it was a strike. It’s completely different than catching a pitch with the elbow out to show the ump that the ball was within your “frame”. I would guess the anti-framers never played catcher before…
And this answers the question being posed how?
All things considered, I’d vote for getting the calls correct ahead of valuing the skill of pitch-framing. That said, I think the pro-robot umpire crowd (of which I’m one) is likely underestimating how different the game will feel with a robot calling balls and strikes. Already, with replay, the flow of the game is completely different. Even when they work out the kinks, the dynamics will have changed a lot. There are so few true “judgment” calls in baseball (most rulings on the field are objectively either right or wrong) that every close play will be subject to review. It’s going to be very different. I hope we don’t regret getting what we wish for.
I hate the fact that it has to be a baseball skill, but appreciate those who exhibit it. If we arent going to get the calls right, then the Catchers who are doing a great job of trying to get every strike called or balls out of the zone called are an important commodty
Yeah, this pretty much sums it up. I’m ready to bring on the robot umps so that we have a standard zone, but until we get there, I’ll appreciate the art of a good catcher and blame the umps for missing strikes just because the catcher isn’t helping to make it look pretty.
Also, I also just want to mention that hate things like the “lefty strike”. The zone should be the zone, period.
I hate the lefty strike much more than pitch-framing. The lefty strike is an abomination.
You summed it up precisely. If I could have voted for both answers in the poll, I would have. I know it’s a contradiction, but I’d like balls and strikes called correctly and I love framing. Tampa Bay’s catchers, Molina and Hanigan, stole the first two games in their series against the Reds.
Computerized balls and strikes, safe/out calls on force plays would be cool.
Just get some, like, sensors and things.
Framing is a zero sum skill that comes directly out of the performance of pitchers who throw strikes but who are unlucky in having catchers who make it difficult for the umpire to recognize great pitches as such. The fact that sit requires player skill to allow the rules to be properly enforced is a shame, not a cause for celebration.
It also removes skill from the batter, to some extent. If a batter notes that a pitch is low, and the catcher makes it look like a strike, then the batter is penalized even though he got a good look. Similarly, in cases like Samardzija above, the batter is given a free pass even though he missed something. So the batter is not penalized for his lack of skill, in failing to note the location of the pitch.
Balls and strikes are a zero-sum game, and pitch framing is a skill, but the skill of the catcher negates skill of the batter. That doesn’t strike me as a beneficial trade.
I like that it’s a skill that we can somewhat reliably measure and incorporate into our understanding of the game as it currently exists, but in an ideal world the strike zone would be the strike zone.
I find it amusing that a lot of the comments say they would prefer it isn’t a skill…but the poll says the exact opposite. The silent majority, eh?
Personally, I like catcher framing as a skill, and I’d love to see a way to simultanously integrate it with robotic umps.
“I like catcher framing as a skill, and I’d love to see a way to simultanously integrate it with robotic umps.”
Do you have any hypothetical idea as to how this would work? Because it seems crazy to me. Are you actually advocating that we call a pitch a strike, even though we know conclusively that it’s a ball, or vice versa?
I have no idea! But I’m not really someone who hugely cares about getting balls/strikes exactly right. Someone earlier suggested where it is in the strike zone be based on where the catch caught it: Not too big of a fan on it, but it is a theoritical idea. (In addition, robotic umps aren’t good enough right now.)
The problem with the where the catcher catches the ball rule is that batters would then all move to the back of the box to force the pitcher to throw farther. I like the line of thinking though
All the people who are stating a preference for robot umps are assuming that current technology would produce error free calling of balls and strikes. Pitch Fx does not measure the location of the ball as it crosses the front of home plate, it estimates that location from measurements that stop when the ball is about ten feet from home plate. The Pitch Fx estimated location has a precision standard deviation of about .4 to .5 inches even when the cameras have 0 calibration problems! The reality is that the actual accuracy would be somewhat worse than that. How much worse nobody knows. Pitch Fx also does a very poor job of setting a batter’s top and bottom of the strike zones, varying as much as 6 inches over the course of the year. Technology may eventually be able to call a near perfect strike zone, but current technology would not be much of an improvement with the potential of introducing many new problems.
And for those people who think pitch framing is some form of cheating like saying you caught a sinking liner when you didn’t, have of what a pitcher accomplishes with proper pitch framing is not convincing an umpire to call a ball out of the strike zone a strike, it is helping to prevent an umpire from calling a ball in the strike zone a ball.
“The Pitch Fx estimated location has a precision standard deviation of about .4 to .5 inches even when the cameras have 0 calibration problems!”
Can you provide the source for that statement, please?
DR. Alan Nathan from raw Pitch Fx data using a process described here: http://tangotiger.com/index.php/site/comments/changing-strike-zone-by-ball-strike-count
in post #56 and clarified in a personal communication.
thanks very much.
I’m not convinced that .4/.5 inches is the upper limit possible by the technology, however. My guess is that PitchF/X could be (or already is) much more accurate than an umpire. At a minimum, PitchF/X could eliminate the middle of the zone ball (see Samardzija’s pitch above) and the waaaay outside strike.
Really, that’s all that needs to be corrected. Pitches at the border are always going to be tough to call correctly; robot umps just need to do a little bit better than humans, which is not that high of a bar.
Samardzija’s pitch above may be an example of Pitch Fx getting it wrong and the umpire getting it right. Pitch Fx has the pitch crossing the front of the plate at a little over 2 feet which is well above the batter’s lower strike zone of 17″ as determined by Pitch Fx, but hardly in the middle of the strike zone. And the rule book lower strike limit may be higher than the Pitch Fx mark for that pitch. They set the same batter’s lower limit at 19″ for other pitches in that game. Did the pitch really cross the front of the plate at 24″? The model that Pitch Fx uses had a initial velocity in the Z direction of -5 feet per second and a Z acceleration of -23 feet per second per second. This would result in a drop from the front of the plate to where the catcher caught it of only about 8 inches. It certainly appears to me that the ball was much closer to the ground than 16 inches when the catcher caught it which, if true, would mean that it was likely also much closer to the ground when it passed the front of home plate. We just don’t know and we won’t know unless Pitch Fx goes through some rigorous testing for accuracy.
I was about to write this. I’m glad I read all the way to the bottom of the comments before I did!
To paraphrase a quote from “The Sandlot” –
Benny Rodriguez: What are you laughing at Yeah Yeah? You run like a duck!
Yeah Yeah: kay kay, but I’m… I’m…
Benny Rodriguez: Part of the game right?
Yeah Yeah: mmm… Yeah?
Benny Rodriguez: Now how come pitch framing don’t get to be?
I think a somewhat related question is this: How do we feel about the fact that the strike zone gets much smaller for each strike in the count and a bit bigger for each ball? Because I don’t actually mind it that much. I really hate to see a batter walked on a 3-0 count because the pitcher made a nice pitch that the umpire deemed to be just off the edge of the plate. Strikeouts on borderline 0-2 pitches can also feel a bit cheap, though less so because pitching to the edges is definitely an essential skill for pitchers.
Also, how do we feel about the fact that although the strike zone is defined as a rectangle, it gets called as kind of a fuzzy oval? So, if a pitch is in the center of the zone vertically and on the outside edge, it may get called a strike, but if it is on the outside edge and also the top edge, it is more likely to be a ball, though it is still in the zone? This I’m totally fine with, because the actual shape of the area a hitter can cover is probably more of an oval anyway.
Wow, really well thought out points. I voted in favor of framing, but the argument could be made that the automated zone could feature these.
Fine. Change the strike zone to whatever you want and call it that way. Make it a trapezoid of you want. Rhombus.
I think people are underestimating the changes that would happen if MLB suddenly went to “robot” ball and strike calls.
The end of the lefty strike would cause a pretty big increase in lefties’ offensive output. It would be nice to level the playing field and not have strikes called in the righty batter’s box, but if it happened overnight it would cause a huge shift in game.
We’d see a lot more four-pitch walks and three-pitch strikeouts. It’s pretty well documented (although I haven’t seen the numbers in the last few years, so maybe this is improving) that the strike zone gets a lot bigger in 3-0 counts and smaller in 0-2 counts.
There’s a lot of anecdotal, but believable, evidence that MLB occasionally tweaks the strike zone as called without rewriting the rulebook definition. Too much offense? Start calling strikes just below the kneecaps. Regardless of whether you think this is good or bad, MLB would be loathe to lose the option.
I’m not saying these are reasons not to give the umpires a technological assist. Here’s an idea for a compromise: The home plate umpire gets a Google Glass-type thing that displays the edges of the rulebook strike zone. He can see exactly where the zone is supposed to be, but he still has to make the call himself in real time with no slow-mo replay and no laser-triggered buzzer in his ear. He’d likely still be influenced by the catcher’s framing ability on pitches on the edge of the strike zone, but we wouldn’t see nearly as many really bad calls. I just thought of this idea, and maybe someone has come up with it already, or maybe it’s terrible for reasons I can’t see right now, but I think it’s interesting.
This isn’t relevant to the poll question, but the Braves announcers were talking about something interesting this weekend. They mentioned that the Mets’ catcher (d’Arnaud) had a good reputation as a pitch framer, but he tries too hard at it and it leads to him missing some pitches that he should have caught. Later on in the game, he let a catchable pitch go to the backstop with a man on third, and the Braves scored a big insurance run.
I have no clue if d’Arnaud actually misses a lot of pitches like the broadcasters were saying, but I wonder if some less-skilled catchers will try to hard to frame the ball better, even though they’re not naturally good at it, and that will negatively impact their ability.
I’m torn, it means pitchers like Buehrle and catchers like Molina, Rivera, and Ross will essentially have their careers ended with robo umps. It also gives smart teams an advantage (Rays), but I really want the call right. Many pitchers get hurt because of bad framing, and even some guys get hurt by the way they throw (Dickey and splitter pitchers).
If framing isn’t a skill (meaning we must have robot umpires), then is getting an HBP not a skill? Will the robot umps declare you didn’t move? Is selling a catch in the OF or a tag on the basepaths not a skill? Jutting out a hip (Reggie!) at a thrown ball? A hundred other things that are semi-legal? Hard to tell where to draw the line….
The question isn’t “Is it a skill?”. The question is whether it SHOULD be. Selling a tag, framing a pitch, selling a catch… all these things are legal, but in a perfect world (so to speak), the game wouldn’t be won or lost on these types of rule-bending plays
I don’t think the question is the poll was posed properly.
I do like it as a legitimate baseball skill, in the sense that it’s obviously useful and it’s a cool and – until recently – hidden part of the game as it currently exists, but I’d also prefer that it wouldn’t matter. These articles about framing are always interesting and as a result kind of put a positive spin on pitch framing – the portion of the Human Element for which the players are responsible is always gonna test better than that for which the umpires are responsible.
It would be better to simply ask whether the strike zone should be called correctly, or whether, all other things being equal, whether cameras should be used rather than umpires to call balls and strikes. I’m sure the results would be totally different.
For what it’s worth, I’m worried there’s a bias in the results of the poll.
I am among those with big time pitch framing fatigue. I have stopped reading about pitch framing except maybe the first paragraph; this one caught my attention because it acknowledged the existence of fatigue on this subject. Part of the reason that I have stopped reading most pitch framing articles is because I wish it didn’t exist and reading bad news is not fun.
On the other hand, some people like pitch framing. Those people, I would guess, are more likely to read articles about pitch framing. For these people, pitch framing is good news.
Result: more of the people who like it read to the poll at the end and so the poll is not a representative sample, even of FG readers.
There’s also bias in the fact that FG readers are a like-minded baseball fan and are thus a non-representative sample of baseball fans. It’s interesting nonetheless.
Part of the reason I love baseball is that it is so skill-driven. You don’t have to be an elite athlete to be an elite player. Pitch-framing is a skill that is available to everyone; you just have to work to become better. Studying pitchers to see if they’re tipping pitches is a skill that some excel at, but we don’t chastise them for gaining an unfair advantage over their counterparts. Runners at second base tip pitch location and nobody’s clamoring for that practice to stop. Players do anything they can to gain an edge within the rules because that’s become part of the game. Maybe it’s wrong to take that away from the game?
Baseball, like golf, is a sounds game. I like the sounds. The sound of an ump is one of the sounds that I like. No robot umps for me please.
Oh come on! Robots can make all kinds of fun sounds.
Indeed, it would be not very difficult to take all of the ump sounds ever made and have the robot play one at random for the appropriate ball/strike call. And every once in a while it could just laugh, for instance whenever Ubaldo Jimenez is pitching.
Alternative: lightsaber noise = deciding whether ball or strike
pew-pew = strike
sad trombone = ball
A good part of catcher framing actually has to do with the pitchers on the mound. I’m not sure we would have had the joy of watching Mariano Rivera or Greg Maddux if we had robot umps.
I remember watching Tom Glavine stretch the outside corner over the course of every game he pitched. While it annoyed me that the umpires would let it happen, Glavine’s skill subtly influenced them. I look at pitch framing the same way. We should do our best to train the umpires well, but if a catcher is good enough to “fool” them a little, he should get credit for that.
So if Ryan Braun is good enough to “fool” the drug testers a little, he should get credit for that?
The problem is that our TVs show us whether the pitch is a ball or strike, and Gameday tells us whether it’s a ball or a strike. So we know the umpires are getting it wrong quite often, and our perception is that bad calls lead to longer games when it takes the pitcher more pitches to get his job done because strike two was called ball two, or it takes the batter longer to draw a walk if ball two is called strike two.
If we had no information other than the the umpire’s call and the batter / crowd reaction, we’d accept bad calls as something that should even out for all teams over the course of a long season, as we used to do. Of course if we didn’t have the ball strike data we wouldn’t be talking about pitch framing as a measurable skill either.
Since we do have the information in front of us in real time, I’m for automating the strike zone, and letting catchers be rated on the multitude of other skills they possess.
Umpires actually get the call RIGHT more often than not. Even a bad umpire will get 90% of his ball-strike calls right. A good umpire might miss only 4-8 pitches in a game.
Relying on television to tell you if a pitch is a ball or a strike isn’t a sure thing, especially for pitches on the edges of the plate.
Thanks to the hitter’s eye in every pro ballpark and most college parks, the centerfield camera is offset from the direct line between plate and mound. I’ve charted pitches from behind home plate for a couple years now, and gone back to watch the TV broadcast afterwards when I wasn’t sure what a certain pitch was.
The angle of the camera DOES make a difference. I’ve seen television replays from the centerfield camera that makes a strike look like a ball, and vice versa, compared to the video I took from an angle right in line with the plate, just above head height for the umpire.
I’ve never had the chance to chart a MLB game from the scout seats, but my experience with college games makes me wonder just how accurate that Gameday service is, as well.
Sexy umpires who call ball or strike based on a hand held computer device.
What a bunch of geek boy bs. What is Castillo supposed to do, put his glove over home plate to catch the ball?
The catcher can do a lot to facilitate or impede an umpire’s view of the ball – setting up on the wrong side, rising up, blocking views – and any doubt created by a failure to facilitate a clear view or to actively impede a view should be interpreted against the catcher. Furthermore, It’s legitimate to punish a catcher for failing to catch a strike – baseball already accepts this principle with the dropped third strike rule.
There’s no legitimacy to turn a ball into a strike, but there’s plenty to turn a strike into a ball.