Like most baseball geeks, I’ve been itching to get my sweaty hands on enough ABS challenge data to draw some really firm conclusions. Unfortunately, it’s early in the season and challenges happen so infrequently that we don’t have much to do yet. But you know what they say about idle hands. I’m impatient, and I’ve been devising diabolical ways to escape the terrible data shortage. I would like to show you one of them. Today we combine.
Here is what I did. I went to Statcast’s framing leaderboard and ranked the catchers on their strengths and weaknesses in framing specific areas. Fortunately, fishermen are easy to stack, because they already tend to rub themselves into small balls. Finding outliers with similar trends allowed me to work on integration, looking for patterns in a more robust dataset. I won’t bore you with my way of working, but it’s not much more advanced than scrolling the leaderboard looking for catchers who frame their red number in one place but blue in another. I ended up with four groups:
- Freelancers are better at the top of the zone than at the bottom of the zone.
- Freelancers are better below the surface than above the surface.
- Catchers are better framed on their glove side than their arm side.
- Catchers are better framed on their arm side than their glove side.
Each group had about 10 members, and there was some overlap. For example, Patrick Bailey is in Top Framers and Glove Side Framers. A few catchers were too good to be on any team, like Brandon Valenzuela. Many anglers were too bad or mediocre to be in any of them, like Tyler Stephenson. Feel free to skip this part, but in case anyone is curious, here are the four groups:
Once my handlers were good and stacked, I calculated their success rate on challenges both in the area where they were good at shaping and the area where they were bad. I then compared those rates to the rates of polar opposite fishermen. I also calculated the average of the field they challenged, to get a sense of how diverse the field they challenged really was.
Before we get into the data, let’s think about the possible outcomes and how we might end up there. First of all the difference may not be that big. Just because you’re better at framing in one area doesn’t mean you’ll be better or worse at challenging it. These challenging things are so new that we are not sure what they are.
The second possibility is that fishermen will be able to challenge the places where they can make a frame. It is certainly not impossible. Maybe you handle those areas better because you see them better, or you’re better prepared, or you know that zone better, so you have a better sense of where the edge is.
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The last possibility is the opposite, that catchers will be better at challenging in areas where they are worse at lining up. I can think of several explanations for that. The first is that they will have sweet fields to challenge. If you’re not good at framing, say, pitches up the field, you’re probably stuck with a lot of bad calls there, leaving you with better opportunities for challenges. We can also come from the other side. Maybe once you’ve mastered framing in one area, you feel like all the spaces in that area look really good, so you challenge yourself every now and then. I found the same thing when I looked at which parks have the best eyes to hit. If hitters can see the ball well, their plate behavior isn’t as good as you’d expect; they become more aggressive because many platforms look good to them.
So those are the possibilities. Let’s see what the data says. We’ll start with the better catchers on one side of the plate. (Since all catchers throw right-handed, I will refer to the third base side of home plate, the inside corner for right-handed hitters, as their glove side, and the first base side as their arm side.) The lower columns show the success rate, and show the average horizontal area challenged, measured in inches from the center of home plate.
Challenges Around the Corner
| The group | Success on the Glove Side | Glove Side Plate X | Arm Side Success % | Arm Side Plate X |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Glove Side Framers | 59% | -9.6 | 63% | 9.5 |
| Arm Side Framers | 69% | -9.3 | 53% | 9.9 |
However, the third possibility seems to be the right one. Catchers run success rates that are 10 percent points higher on the side where they are not good at framing. They are challenging pitches about 0.3 or 0.4 inches near the center of the plate.
Now let’s go up and down the area. The columns show the success rate in the challenges and the average height of the spots on the feet.
Challenges Above and Below
| The group | High success % | High Average Height | Low Success % | Bottom Avg Height |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| High frames | 51% | 3.28 | 62% | 1.58 |
| The frames are below | 63% | 3.22 | 53% | 1.57 |
Yes, it’s the same here. Anglers who are better at freelancing in one area are about 10 percent worse in that area’s challenges. You may notice that the spacing is larger here, 12 points and 0.7 inches at the top, but only nine percent and 0.2 inches at the bottom. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s because the surface of the zone is so variable. As I wrote a few years ago, the knees of short and tall players are much closer in length than their shoulders.
As you can see, the overall success rates are about the same, and again, that’s true across the league. League-wide success rates on challenges up and down the field are nearly identical, just a hair under 59%.
I know this is basic stuff and some of it is accurate, but I think it already gives us some practical information. For example, you may also have noticed from the first table that success rates are generally higher on the glove side than on the forearm side. That basically caught the entire league. So far this season, catchers are running 63% success rates on the glove side and 59% on the arm side. Unless you are a member of our exclusive team of Glove Side Framers, you should be very aggressive in your glove side challenge response. That’s all I have right now, but I’ll keep thinking of ways to cut the data.
