The White Sox’ Hidden Catastrophe
I was reading through Jon Heyman’s latest Inside Baseball, and then I got to the White Sox section. Within, Heyman said something about Chris Sale, and though it wasn’t specifically about everything that’s going to follow in here, it at least works well enough for me to embed:
Chris Sale’s pitches come from such an unusual angle, it seems to fool umpires. It looked like he had an 0-and-5 count on Nick Castellanos in one at-bat (the actual count was 3-and-2)
Nothing important, really. Just a fleeting thought about one at-bat in particular. OK! Well, as you know, balls and strikes have to do with multiple factors. The pitcher plays a part. The hitter plays a part. The umpire plays a part. Dumb luck plays a part. And the catcher plays a part. In some previous posts, I’ve quickly touched on the White Sox’s catchers. It seems time for something in greater depth, because this has been an awfully big problem for a team that’s badly slipped.
Last year’s White Sox were backstopped by Tyler Flowers. Led mostly by him, White Sox catchers combined for a 79 wRC+. Come the offseason, they made the decision to exchange catcher defense for catcher offense, adding both Alex Avila and Dioner Navarro. Neither is Flowers behind the dish, but Rick Hahn wanted some bats. To this point, White Sox catchers have combined for a 74 wRC+. So.
It’s bad enough the offense hasn’t improved, but the defensive downgrade has been substantial. Not in every single area, perhaps, but my focus is on the strike zone. I’ve written previously that the White Sox have pitched to the least favorable strike zone in the majors to date. That’s something I approximate using numbers readily available on our leaderboards, and it falls mostly on the receivers. I wanted to get some greater context, so I calculated numbers going back to 2008, which was the start of the PITCHf/x era. Relative to the rest of the current landscape, the White Sox are almost in the nine-year basement.
A word on the method before the table: For every team-season since 2008, I calculated strikes minus expected strikes, normalizing the average to zero. Then for each league season I calculated the standard deviation among the 30 teams, and at that point I could calculate a z-score. Every team got a strike-zone z-score, and here are the bottom 10. Hopefully this is clear enough. Teams shouldn’t want to be in this table, basically.
| Team | Season | Zone z-score |
| Pirates | 2008 | -2.2 |
| Indians | 2011 | -2.2 |
| Twins | 2013 | -2.2 |
| White Sox | 2016 | -2.0 |
| Twins | 2014 | -2.0 |
| Tigers | 2015 | -1.9 |
| Marlins | 2013 | -1.9 |
| Pirates | 2009 | -1.8 |
| Tigers | 2009 | -1.8 |
| Mariners | 2010 | -1.8 |
This year’s White Sox are at two standard deviations worse than the league average. That’s not the worst mark in the table — they’re eclipsed by the 2008 Pirates, the 2011 Indians, and the 2013 Twins. But then, that’s also some lousy company, and it’s not like those teams are beating out the White Sox by much. Standard deviation is only one way of measuring this, and maybe you’d prefer something else, but no matter what you do, the takeaway remains the same: The strike zone hasn’t been friendly to White Sox pitchers, and pitchers want friendly strike zones.
Especially when they get used to friendly strike zones. Part of what makes this so stunning is that last year the strike zone was somewhat generous. So the Sox haven’t gone from average to bad — they’ve gone from good to bad. Flowers was a quality receiver. Geovany Soto was a quality receiver. They’re gone! You’ve seen, now, some single-season z-scores. Now let’s make it even more complicated and look at successive season z-scores. Here are the biggest year-to-year drops between 2008 – 2016 so far:
| Team | Seasons | Y1 z | Y2 z | Change |
| White Sox | 2015 – 2016 | 1.9 | -2.0 | -3.9 |
| Mariners | 2015 – 2016 | 0.6 | -1.5 | -2.1 |
| Diamondbacks | 2014 – 2015 | 1.7 | -0.2 | -1.8 |
| Yankees | 2009 – 2010 | 0.4 | -1.3 | -1.6 |
| Blue Jays | 2013 – 2014 | 0.5 | -1.0 | -1.5 |
Last year, the White Sox strike zone was almost two standard deviations friendlier than average. This year, as you know, has been the opposite, and so the difference is right near four standard deviations. Which you can tell is ridiculous when you see that second place is just about half that, in magnitude. I’m sure this year’s Mariners have felt it, too, but they have nothing on the White Sox, so at least they’re not in the cellar. This change has been abrupt and dramatic. It’s not a nice thing to have happen to your pitchers, as talented as they might be.
Where has the White Sox strike zone gotten worse? With the help of Baseball Savant, I prepared the following image. On the left, you see zone breakdowns and identifiers. On the right, you see the year-to-year changes in called-strike rate, with total called pitches as the denominator.
The zone hasn’t gotten worse everywhere. Far from it, in fact. The Sox have been getting more called strikes up high, relative to last season. It’s suggested that Flowers and Soto were setting lower targets, while Avila and Navarro are working higher. But the differences at the bottom are big, as that’s where more pitches go. The White Sox have lost the bottom edge of the zone, and they’ve lost strikes just off the boundary. If you just compare all this year’s rates to last year’s rates, you have a difference of more than 130 strikes. Which would be something on the order of 20 runs, here before the midway point of the regular season.
The White Sox zone has probably felt squeezed, and it’s definitely been squeezed down low. I’m not going to say that’s fair or unfair, but it’s what’s happened, due mostly to intentional decision-making. They knew they were giving up defense; they just expected more offense. When the hitting isn’t there, it’s all just a mess. I want now to include one more table. This one comes courtesy of StatCorner. There, for each pitcher, you can see the rate of taken pitches in the zone called balls, and you can see the rate of taken pitches out of the zone called strikes. I created a quick little strike-zone statistic, which adds the latter rate to 1 minus the former rate. The higher the number, the better the zone for the pitcher in question. I looked at every pitcher who’s thrown at least 1,000 pitches in each of the last two seasons. Then I sorted by the biggest drops in this strike-zone statistic. I know it’s kind of weird, but, here you go:
| Pitcher | Team | 2015 Z+O% | 2016 Z+O% | Change |
| Martin Perez | Rangers | 101% | 88% | -13% |
| Chris Sale | White Sox | 100% | 87% | -13% |
| Nate Karns | Mariners | 98% | 87% | -11% |
| Carlos Rodon | White Sox | 90% | 80% | -10% |
| Jose Quintana | White Sox | 100% | 91% | -9% |
| Mat Latos | White Sox | 99% | 90% | -9% |
| Hisashi Iwakuma | Mariners | 97% | 88% | -8% |
| Kendall Graveman | Athletics | 97% | 88% | -8% |
| Jeff Locke | Pirates | 99% | 91% | -8% |
| Mike Pelfrey | Tigers | 95% | 88% | -7% |
There are four qualifying White Sox pitchers. They’re all in the bottom six, along with Perez and Karns. I know that Latos is gone, but he was in Chicago long enough. So this isn’t just a matter of the White Sox having pitchers who might be more difficult to receive. Latos this year pitched to a worse zone. Same with Quintana. Same with Rodon. Same with Sale. They’ve probably all noticed, or they’ve probably all at least felt like something’s been up. The numbers all point in this direction, and it’s not doing the White Sox any favors.
On Thursday, Avila was good for four hits. As long as the catchers are good for four hits, the White Sox’ll love them. If the bats actually show up and produce as much as the White Sox thought they would, this might be tolerable. As is, this has been a big problem, and it doesn’t help matters that the organization might not have what it would take to pry Jonathan Lucroy from the Brewers. He’d be the ideal fit, but there’s simply not a lot left, not to get an affordable star-level catcher. So maybe it’s about another option, or maybe it’s about hoping for an offensive surge. To this point, the catching position has been a wreck. The improved offense hasn’t resulted in improved offense, and the strike zone has been terribly stingy. Worse zones make all pitchers worse pitchers.
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.
Can’t be a coincidence that 2 of the teams in the “worsening strike zone” charts included Navarro getting a significant # of PA. Jays in 2013-2014 went from Arencibia (a terrible player, but decent framer, apparently) to Navarro. White Sox in 2016 gave the bulk of the catching duties to Navarro as well.
Granted, Navarro at least hit well for the Jays in 2014 so that offset the horrible framing a bit, but he’s not hitting, and not fielding at all for the White Sox.
And Avila was a part of the 2015 Tigers squad that also show up on the list.
More evidence that we need robot umps now!
How about Robot catchers with a baseball shooting Bazooka for an arm.
“Now, Wireless Joe Jackson – there was a blern hitting machine!”
> “Exactly! He was a machine designed to hit blerns. I mean, come on, Wireless Joe was nothing but a programmable bat on wheels.”
“Oh, and I suppose Pitch-O-Mat 5000 was just a modified Howitzer?!”
> “Yep.”
I have not looked at film, but I bet they are catching the low pitches palm down and basically pushing it out of the strike zone. They probably do not have soft hands to receive the ball instead of catching it which causes more glove movement and giving the umpire the perception that a ball is just off the plate.
I was taught how to receive the low pitches palm up to effectively show the umpire the ball when you catch it to get those low strikes. I see almost no catchers doing that.
I just looked in BP and as expected Navarro is the worst MLB catcher, Avila is 10th worst based on their framed runs stat.
My visual for awful catching was watching Saltalamacchia with the Red Sox and as expected he is the 6th worst this year. He is the poster child for pushing low strikes right out of the zone.
Honest question: does catching a low pitch with the palm up actually make a strike call more likely? I’d expect the exact opposite… which is why you see almost no catchers doing that.
I think he is referring to catching the ball with the palm facing the pitcher, facing out. Not facing up. Smothering a small fire is a good image of what to avoid.
When palm up your hand becomes more steady and you can frame the pitch. When palm down you reach down for the pitch and by the time you stop the momentum you don’t actually frame the pitch and it appears to the umpire you caught it lower than you actually did. Sometimes they may do the worst thing and pull the glove back up to steal the pitch. Umpires are not stupid, they see that easier than then they see the pitch cross the plate.
I think you are right. This is how Flowers sets up for low pitches (puts a knee down so that he can catch the pitch with his glove in a normal postion)/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3676672/sale-castellanos.0.gif)
. Credit: Jim Margalus, SouthSideSox.com . Flowers is particularly adept at framing low pitches. Granted, this technique likely limits his mobility on wild pitches.
“likely limits his mobility on wild pitches” – c’mon, man. No catcher will set up like that with a runner on base. That’s a bases-empty crouch, so I don’t think we’re too worried about wild pitches.
Alex Avila sets up that way as well with the bases empty, not to catch the pitch better, but lowering one knee to the ground was an adjustment he made a year or two ago to make himself lower so he’ll stop taking so many foul tips off the mask. I imagine it’s also somewhat easier on the legs. If there’s a runner on base, every catcher will be up in a high crouch.
This is exactly the case. I remember watching Navarro catch for the Jays and he was a mess when it came to catching low strikes. So often he would push them out of the strike zone, catching them as if he was smothering a small fire. It was super frustrating then and it looks like he’s still up to his old tricks.
The framing has been awful, but it’s even affecting pitches where they don’t screw up the framing. Yesterday there were third pitch (non)strikes to both Ortiz and X in not-inconsequential situations, as well as missed strikes to Shaw in high leverage situations. The framing was crummy all day*, but in those particular instances it was definitely on the umpire.
I know that this site has run articles showing that aces really don’t get borderline calls at a greater rate, but I’m wondering if the converse may be true; i.e., that poor receivers are less likely to get calls even where the framing isn’t poor.
*Though it’s hard to complain about pitch framing when the team (Lawrie, Frazier, Melky) is doing stupid stuff on defense and you can’t score with the bases loaded and nobody out.
Great article Jeff. It makes me wonder who’s 2016 Z+O% is the lowest in the league? I wouldn’t be surprised if it were Rodon. As a White Sox fan, the effect of switching catchers is something that’s been noticed. Rodon was pitching at the lower edges of the zone last year, and he’s lost that. He’s got by far the lowest 2016 Z+O% of the guys you listed, and his rate of 2016 taken pitches in the zone called balls (26%) is almost twice the average of (14.7%).
Thta’s a good article; creative work combined with solid analytics.
There was much hand-wringing over the Flowers non-tender over the offseason on the White Sox SBNation site. It seemed like a change for change’s sake.
I and many others told everyone so: getting rid of Flowers was a serious mistake.
And Navarro is always a problem and never a solution.
Hey Jeff, what was your definition of the strike zone for this research?
He’s using the Statcast definition, since that data is coming from Baseball Savant. I don’t know if that zone is the empirically-derived “generally called” zone (ie, pitches in that location are called as strikes at least 50% of the time) or some other definition, and I can’t find any explanation on their site.
It’s actually an interesting question, since MLB now controls Baseball Savant so it would be possible for them to muck around with results like this simply by redefining the zone so that searches at BS return different results over time.
Statcast doesn’t give a definition. They do give values for the height of the rule book strike zone (belt to hollow below the knee), but this is set manually by the pitchfx operator, and can’t be trusted in small sample sizes. So Jeff must be using his own definition, at least partially.
Makes me wonder why Quintana isn’t on there, does he work up in the zone more?
Edit: I just looked at his cStrike% and compared it to last year and it’s pretty crazy, he was getting around 80% at the bottom last year and this year it’s around 50%.
Once again, pour one out for Ian Snell, who had to pitch for the 2008 PIrates, the 2009 Pirates, and the 2010 Mariners.
Poor guy
I know a couple of catchers that won’t be getting any Isotoner gloves from their pitching staff this upcoming holiday season.
Batting Tim Anderson (zero walks in 65 PA) leadoff is another catastrophe.
Excellent write-up. I hope Rick Hahn reads this. Interesting to note, though, Salvador Perez has been in the bottom 10 pitch-framers the last 3 years according to StatCorner, but his offense and ability to throw out runners do help make up for it.
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