Oz27

Damn, I was really hoping the next post would be something about RBIs.

Well in the same controlled environment he would, right? But there are far too many factors CERA doesn't account for (ballpark, quality of offense, quality of the pitching staff, umpires etc.) that it is impossible to compare one catcher to someone from another team and make reasonable judgements about them based off that metric. Even with two catchers on the same team, it isn't fair. I've read that Scioscia used it to compare two different catchers on his team (that was back in the Napoli/Mathis days), but only in their CERAs with specific pitchers. Even that is absurdly unfair though because it doesn't factor in so many things and also creates an unreasonably small sample. Did one guy catch that pitcher in Colorado and Houston and did the other guy do it in Oakland and San Diego? Did one guy catch him against two of the best hitting teams and did the other guy catch him against two of the worst? Did one guy happen to be catching with home plate umpires who have small strike zones? Over a large sample these things would even out, but in the scenario Scioscia was using it for the sample would not be big enough to eliminate the large chunks of noise and get it down to the signal. If we somehow recreated the same conditions for two catchers over a very large sample, then the better framer should have better CERA results (barring any other factors, such as if his game calling is vastly inferior). But that isn't possible for us to do. It would be possible to take CERA, control it for many of those things I just mentioned and make it a more useful number. But I'm guessing the reason that hasn't been done is we just have better metrics to judge catchers. I know we disagree to an extent but I consider framing data very reliable. Game calling statistics are close on a public sense and I'm sure are already used by teams. We can calculate blocking and throwing runs easily enough. Also, even if you did control for those things there would still be an awful lot of noise in CERA too. Someone like Posey can frame all he wants but if he happens to be getting more shitty pitchers throwing meatballs down the heart of the plate than whoever he is being compared to, then his CERA (or CERA+ or whatever it would be) would still be worse.

If you include the posting fee, the Rangers will outlay $107 million over six years for Darvish. By both bWAR and fWAR he has been worth more than 15 WAR (15.4 for BR, 15.5 for FG), even though he missed an entire season. Even if he never throws another pitch for the Rangers, that works out to $7.13 million per win. If he has a 2 WAR season, that would make it $6.15 million per win. Either way, that is below the current market rate and will either be a pretty good or excellent return on the Rangers' investment. If we really want to compare that to Pujols, so far he has been worth 14.7 WAR with the Angels and he has been paid $100 million. As it stands, he has been paid $6.8 million per win. Barring some super natural event, that number will soon go up by a lot however. The contract is strongly backloaded and his performance is declining. If he gets to 20 WAR with the Angels, he'll end up earning $12.5 million per win. Even if he gets to 25 WAR, which is an incredibly optimistic assessment, that would still make it $10 million per win.

I responded to this earlier, clearly you just lacked the ability to comprehend it. He also was a pretty bad hitter in 2016. His OBP was below .300 and OPS+ ranked him 11 per cent below average. He wasn't close to deserving of the silver slugger award. And yes, using gold glove and silver slugger winners to judge a player's ability isn't smart. But keep copying and pasting that same thing, because that is a sign of real intelligence.

BR's defensive metrics undersell Grandal by about two wins. His pitch framing was worth 26.7 runs (essentially two and a half wins) and overall defensively he was worth 27.5 runs, which is much better than his BR dWAR of 0.6. But BR's offensive statistics also sell him short. By true average, which BP uses for offensive value, Grandal was the 50th best hitter in baseball for anyone with more than 100 PA. By OPS+, which BR uses, he was down at 67th. So framing makes up a part of that difference but not all of it. As for the Mathis/Perez thing, Perez is an awful framer and it really eats into his value. Given he was a pretty bad hitter too, he just wasn't a good player at all in 2016.

Wins above replacement player, or Baseball Prospectus' version of WAR. It's the only catcher WAR which includes framing data so is therefore the only one which is close to accurate.

So he won a silver slugger award this year despite being a well below average hitter and not even close to the best hitting catcher in the American League. He has won a few gold gloves despite being a below average fielder every year of his career. He has made a few all-star teams despite having only one season in which he ranked as an above average player. Yeah, those awards don't mean much. Discount advanced metrics and pitch framing all you want (as naive as that is to do), any argument in favor of Perez over Grandal is so flawed. Perez has a career OPS+ of 98, while for Grandal it is 118. In the five seasons Grandal has been in the big leagues, he has been a better hitter than Perez in four of them and they were essentially equal in the other one. This year, Grandal was 21 per cent better than a league average hitter and Perez was 11 per cent below average. By any reasonable player evaluation method, Grandal is so much better that it's just not funny. Copy and paste the same thing all you want, it doesn't make your argument any less silly.

Grandal's WARP was 6.8, while Perez was at 0.6. The difference between those two numbers is, well, you know...

I'm sure there is some level of trolling here that I'm missing, but not only is Grandal 40 runs better than Perez on framing alone, he is also a better hitter (by a lot) and was worth 6.2 wins more than Perex last year. This is like asking if I would prefer Noah Syndergaard or Hector Santiago.

Here are Posey's framing runs by year, in order, since 2012: 23.1, 19.5, 23.6, 12.7, 27.6. And for Grandal: 14.6, 5.5, 14.5, 25.6, 26.7. They're the two players with the reputation as the best framers. This information has been widely available and acknowledged for awhile now and there hasn't been an impact of the sort you describe. While it is possible that it could happen, it seems extremely unlikely.

I think you're misinterpreting me. I'm not saying that the gap will disappear, nor am I saying that the gap will narrow to insignificance. But if the gap between the best and worst framers is 50-odd runs now, it wouldn't surprise me if we see that fall to the 40s over the next few years. That is still a big gap, obviously. I know this isn't new and even the least intelligent teams have been focusing on this for awhile now, but the impacts of that heightened attention won't end immediately. Aspiring catchers are going to realize this is something they need to work on, it will be taught more in the lower minors and college and high school and the low end of the spectrum should improve.

On CERA, have a read of this - http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=1489 In more basic terms, pitch framing data is controlled for many factors - most notably umpire and pitcher. Their impacts are factored into the metric you see at the end. There are no controls like that with CERA. There is a relatively strong year-to-year correlation in individual pitch framing results, while there is no meaningful correlation in year-to-year CERA totals (that is important because a strong year-to-year correlation indicates a statistic represents an actual skill, rather than random chance). There have been many good articles posted in this to explain how and why pitch framing can be so valuable and why the statistics are so reliable. This is another good one - http://grantland.com/features/studying-art-pitch-framing-catchers-such-francisco-cervelli-chris-stewart-jose-molina-others/

The trend is very much in favor of narrowing and there are good reasons to believe that. It is being taught and valued more so players will both work harder at it once in the majors and focus on it more in the minors. Nevertheless, I expect there will still be a significant difference between the best and worst framing catchers in the foreseeable future.

An average ball, which is framed for a strike, is worth 0.14 runs. Buster Posey was worth 27.6 framing runs above average in 2016, which equates to something like 197 framed strikes above average. That may seem like a lot, but when you consider that came from 7630 framing chances it really is not. That equates to an extra framed strike, compared to the average catcher, every 38.7 pitches caught. It is not unreasonable to see how someone could be that good, or how someone could be similarly bad.

Is the current bench Perez, Marte, Pennington and Revere? If so, I don't really see how that is better than what we had last year.

We'd all heard of Cliff Pennington, Daniel Nava and Craig Gentry and that was f'n useless.

While I agree with everything else you said, I disagree with the bolded section. Guys whose pro careers start in the same promising way Jones' has flame out at AA all the time. He is 18 and most of his career has been in rookie ball, so the gap between the floor and the ceiling is always going to be huge for a guy like that. Given the age and limited track record, that is an awfully optimistic floor to set.

I've been avoiding reading this because I've got a hard copy of the THT annual and I want to read it in that. But I've heard a bit about the premise of the piece and, yeah, that certainly seems to be what is happening. It would seem very likely we are past the point of the Ryan Doumits of the world playing behind the plate, so that gap will narrow. But it's not like the gap is nothing now either. The best MLB framer was 52 runs - or more than five wins on framing alone - better than the worst framer in 2016. But I'm totally on board with a robot calling balls and strikes. It is such an obvious way to make this sport fairer.

I'm still surprised by how many publications are ranking Thaiss ahead of Jones. I guess it is the old "ceiling vs certainty" debate and I know Jones' floor is much much lower than it is for Thaiss. But if things work out for Jones he has the tools to be a well above average major leaguer. I don't see how Thaiss has anywhere near that ceiling unless he can play a position other than 1B.

lol. I was just thinking about that thread the other day. Good times. But seriously, our 2015, 2016, 2017 bench is going to be awesome.

Haha, not holding my breath for that last bit. I don't get too worked up about the lineup order because it doesn't make that big a difference but it is a bit frustrating when it is as obvious as it is in this case.

So you can use RBI totals to give Pujols credit for Trout's success?

The studies are pretty clear that the best hitting opportunities come to your second and fourth hitters. But he should hit second to maximize his plate appearances.

Not likely. And I want to be clear, I don't dislike the signing. I just think the level of excitement some have shown over the signing is rather strange.

'The Book' answered this question pretty clearly. Your best hitter should be hitting second.