Fascinating Article. Moneyball type stuff. Says Soto is better defensively than Hill

by Archie on Sep 28, 2011 8:59 AM CDT

Baseball prospectus recently published an article on the defensive impact of catchers that tried to quantify the differences in framing in receiving pitches. Framing is the art of holding a glove and positioning your body with the intent of convincing an umpire that the pitch you just caught is really a strike. It turns out that different catchers have a significant effect in turning balls into strike calls and that this effect is persistent across seasons and even if a catcher switches teams. Jose Molina was judged to be the best in baseball at turning close balls into called strikes. Our own Geo Soto is 10th best in baseball over the past 5 seasons with an estimated 7 runs per 120 games saved by his framing of pitches. Hill was near the bottom with 15 runs cost per 120 games. By contrast, Jose Molina saves his teams a staggering 35 runs every 120 games by the way he catches the ball. If this is even remotely accurate, Molina is one of the best bargains in all of baseball at $1mm per season. Albert Pujols doesn't quite produce that many extra runs over the course of a season relative to a replacement player.

This brings up a line of thinking for me in evaluating pitchers on the free agent market. You need to look at the skill of the catcher to whom they were throwing. If we have a pitcher from Pittsburgh that has been throwing to Ryan Doumit (the worst grade in baseball, costing his team 26 runs per 120 games) and you are going to bring him to Chicago to pitch to Geo most of the time, you would expect him to do significantly better since he would be getting more borderline pitches called as strikes. Tom Gorzelanny anyone? Whereas a pitcher that has been throwing to Molina or Jonathan Lucroy (another of the top receivers) could be expected to not put up the same quality of numbers for a new team with an inferior receiver.

Anyway, I hope that you will enjoy the article and its implications as much as I did. I thought it interesting enough to point out. The Economist magazine published a small piece on it earlier this week as well with a tie-in to the Moneyball movie.

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of SB Nation or Al Yellon, managing editor (unless it's a FanPost posted by Al). FanPost opinions are valued expressions of opinion by passionate and knowledgeable baseball fans.

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Interesting article,

good to see Geo in the top 10 too. Not surprising to see Hill in the bottom 10, just another reason he should not be back next season.

"You've got to get your damn shirts rolled up and go out and kick somebody's ass. That's what you've got to do. Period." -- Lou Piniella

by tripdenten on Sep 28, 2011 12:33 PM CDT reply actions

I've been saying

we never shoulda’ let that guy go.

The sun is up. They sky is blue. It's beautiful, and so are you. Dear Prudence, won't you come out to play? ~Lennon & McCartney

by SouthWabashSoul on Sep 28, 2011 3:53 PM CDT reply actions

I have been saying this all year.

There was zero reason for Hill to be in the game last night on the double switch.

by TJ11 on Sep 28, 2011 4:42 PM CDT reply actions

Then how does this explain Hill having a better catcher ERA than Soto consistently?

I agree there’s value in being able to frame pitches, but logic suggests that saving runs at the rate he’s claiming would make Soto more obviously better defensively from all metrics than Hill. Since it doesn’t, does that mean that Soto is that much worse at calling pitches than Hill?

[...]when Giants coach Steve Owen, a certified defensive genius, was asked how he planned to stop Nagurski, he said: "With a shotgun, as he’s leaving the dressing room."

by NobodySpecial on Sep 30, 2011 5:37 PM CDT reply actions