FiveThirtyEight: Catcher Is Baseball’s Most Endangered Position (Write-Up about Rutschman with Quotes from Sig)

[DrungoHazewood]

17 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

If that was true it would show up in free agent contacts.

I think the magnitude was so big that nobody really could quite believe it, even the players themselves.  And they all think it's going to go away.  We did see things like random Molinas signing MLB contracts and playing quite a bit when they were hitting .193 with no power and the speed of Matt Wieters wearing cinder blocks, presumably because framing.

[scOtt]

19 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I think the magnitude was so big that nobody really could quite believe it, even the players themselves.  And they all think it's going to go away.  We did see things like random Molinas signing MLB contracts and playing quite a bit when they were hitting .193 with no power and the speed of Matt Wieters wearing cinder blocks, presumably because framing.

BAND NAME!

[bobmc]

20 hours ago, scOtt said:

BAND NAME!

But I digress - back to framing, Adley and Mauer with Power!

[HowAboutThat]

Put me down as a guy who doesn’t want electronic strike zones.

Neither does the umpires union, ha ha. What would Angel Hernandez do?

[Can_of_corn]

5 minutes ago, Philip said:

Put me down as a guy who doesn’t want electronic strike zones.

Neither does the umpires union, ha ha. What would Angel Hernandez do?

Sue.

[now]

On 5/28/2020 at 7:52 AM, DrungoHazewood said:

That's why you do the math, so you can figure out the relative importance of each of those.  It at least appears that in edge cases framing is hugely important, much more so than most of the rest of your list, which I find ridiculous and in desperate need of fixing.

Folks like Tom Tango, who I very much trust, stick by the current framing metrics.  Which means at the extremes like Molina and Doumit framing has more of an impact per inning or game than a top hitter.  It's comical, baseball should be embarrassed by it, but it's apparently true.

Wow, I didn't know it was that bad. And I wonder how umpire ratings (if there are such measures) compare, too.

[LA2]

On 5/28/2020 at 12:30 PM, DrungoHazewood said:

I think the magnitude was so big that nobody really could quite believe it, even the players themselves.  And they all think it's going to go away.  We did see things like random Molinas signing MLB contracts and playing quite a bit when they were hitting .193 with no power and the speed of Matt Wieters wearing cinder blocks, presumably because framing.

Not really so if one is talking about Yadier Molina, who's even had a few seasons where he stole a decent amount of bases (9 twice, 12 once, and 6 for 6 last season at the age of 36).

[DrungoHazewood]

12 hours ago, LA2 said:

Not really so if one is talking about Yadier Molina, who's even had a few seasons where he stole a decent amount of bases (9 twice, 12 once, and 6 for 6 last season at the age of 36).

I was referring to Jose more than anyone else.  In '14 he had a .417 OPS yet was still the Rays' primary catcher presumably because he could trick the ump into calling a ball a strike.

[Can_of_corn]

1 minute ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I was referring to Jose more than anyone else.  In '14 he had a .417 OPS yet was still the Rays' primary catcher presumably because he could trick the ump into calling a ball a strike.

He started 70 games.

I still say if the impact is that large not only would they be paid for it, but it would be commonplace to bring in your framing catcher for save situations.

[DrungoHazewood]

20 hours ago, now said:

Wow, I didn't know it was that bad. And I wonder how umpire ratings (if there are such measures) compare, too.

By Fangraphs' reckoning, in 2014 Jose Molina was +17 runs in framing in 628 innings.  In 2008 Ryan Doumit was -63 runs in 909 innings.

That means that, per 1350 innings (9 x 150 games) the delta between those performances is +36 - (-94) = 130 runs or 13 wins.  In Barry Bonds' best, most steroid-influenced season he was 12.7 wins above replacement for his batting + fielding + baserunning.  So I guess if you compare him to Chris Davis' worst than the extremes of framing aren't quite as wide as everything else put together.

[DrungoHazewood]

3 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

He started 70 games.

I still say if the impact is that large not only would they be paid for it, but it would be commonplace to bring in your framing catcher for save situations.

Like I said before, I'm not sure anyone fully believed it was that big.  They believe it's a thing, but just not that huge.

And truthfully, we're not usually comparing Molina to the worst ever.  We're comparing him to his backups.  And his primary backup that year was Ryan Hanigan who was +6 in 603 innings.  So that's a small fraction of a run a game, and even less in a few innings of a save situation.