Joseph, Wieters & Pitch Framing: A Q&A with Harry Pavlidis, Baseball Prospectus

For most of this year, the convention wisdom locally has been that the Baltimore Orioles would make a qualifying offer to Matt Wieters (that may or may not be accepted). Now in the last week of this 2015 season, it is more of a question of if the O’s will make that offer.

Clearly Wieters would only accept a qualifier if he believed he could increase his value during ’16 (primarily from catching more often), and if he and his Agent Scott Boras did not believe a larger deal was currently available to him on the Free Agent market.  If Wieters accepted that qualifier, roughly $16M of an estimated $120M +/- 2016 team salary would be tied to Wieters.

Due to that cost, it can be argued that the ideal scenario for the O’s is that they offer, Wieters declines, and that Caleb Joseph gets the full-time catching job next year. Besides being cheaper, one of the other perceived strengths for Joseph over Wieters is the advantage Joseph appears to have as a defensive catcher (particularly with pitch framing).

Harry Pavlidis is the Director of Technology for Baseball Prospectus, and is widely considered one of the premier analysts Nationally on pitch framing.

Baltimore Sports and Life has reached out to Pavlidis to discuss Joseph, Wieters, and framing.

Our thanks to Harry for providing his thoughts.

(You can discuss this on the BSL Board here.)

Baltimore Sports and Life:  You had a feature article on framing for ESPN. One graphic showed the rise of strikeouts over a 20 year period (1994-2014). During that same period, two-strike hitter contact was devalued (in-favor of power), as was the stigma on hitters striking out. The article argued that the rise of called strikes in baseball was attributable to good pitch framers. Those who are not proponents of pitch framing would argue that with hitters taking more pitches, being less worried about striking out, and swinging more for power vs. contact; it’s not a surprise that k rates escalated during that time frame. Can you expand on why catchers should get more credit for the rise of called strikes?

Pavlidis: An increase in called strikes is attributable to the size of the strike zone and the tendencies of hitters. Catchers get more framing chances in those conditions. There’s a larger region of borderline pitches. I think the metrics we publish at BP do a good job of attributing the catcher’s share of that. But we are in the golden age of overall value due to this increased zone size. 

Baltimore Sports and Life: Your former Baseball Prospectus colleague Ben Lindbergh had an extensive article on the topic for Grantland. One of the points Lindbergh spoke to was sample size. We know that other defensive statistics for non-catchers such as UZR/150, and Defensive Runs Saved can have some year-to-year volatility. Do we see the same with catchers and pitch framing stats? According to StatCorner, through 9/24 Joseph has seen 6,607 pitches this year, and Wieters has seen 3,805. Any issue with evaluating their metrics at that level of sample?

Pavlidis: Framing data is great because we get a decent sense of a guy in about 200-300 pitches. So when we’re in the thousands we’re not worrying about sample size issues.

Baltimore Sports and Life: As of the 24th, Joseph and Wieters have matching zBall%’s of 13.7%.  (zBall defined as the % of pitches, caught within the strikezone, which are called a ball.) Joseph’s oStr% is 8.6 to Wieters 5.8%.  (oStr% defined as % of pitches caught outside the strikezone, which are called a strike.) Joseph has got 51 calls for his pitchers, while Wieters has lost 56. Josephs’s Runs Above Average is 6.7, while Wieters is -7.5.  By these metrics Joseph profiles as the better defensive catcher. In real world terms, can you better speak on the differences between the two?

On a per game basis, how do Joseph’s numbers compare with the best rated catchers in the game? If Joseph’s playing time was to further expand in ’16, is there reason to think there would be growth (or reduction) in his per game production?

Pavlidis: More catching might mean more leg fatigue, which we suspect has a relationship with framing success. Beyond the “is that too much work for the body” issue, no, I would project his performance at a very similar level.

Baltimore Sports and Life: Is there any consistency in different pitch types (fastballs, off-speed, breaking) resulting in differing called strike, called ball ratios? Similarly, we know that an extra strike created by the catcher is worth a lot in situations where it also creates an out. If so, is it fair to say that catchers defensive metrics could be greatly impacted by the profile of their pitching staff?

Pavlidis: Our framing metrics account for the pitch type, location, umpire, the pitcher himself, the batter’s zone, and the ball/strike count. So our metrics are designed to account for this and only credit the catcher where the model determines it is his credit and not some other contextual factor.

Baltimore Sports and Life: If you believe Joseph will be a better defensive catcher than Wieters in ’16, what level of offense do you think Wieters would need to create over Joseph to be the more valuable overall player (in this case, not factoring in their respective salaries)?

Pavlidis: Hitting counts. Game calling and staff management counts. I don’t think teams pay for the latter but I think it’s fair to say Joseph’s fine receiving skills close the gap in value more than one might imagine at first blush.

Baltimore Sports and Life: What questions with framing do you think still need to be addressed? Are there arguments against framing that you find tiring at this point? A final point you would make to skeptics?

Pavlidis: We use sophisticated techniques to account for what happens on a given pitch. Over hundreds and thousands of pitches we get a very clear sense of what catcher is doing what. It’s not perfect, but no model/measure can be. And it correlates strongly with scouting, which we have noted in our original publication on the topic.