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Ask Minnesota Twins’ new catcher Jason Castro on the down low if he is tired of being approached about pitch framing and he will roll his eyes, smirk, and sigh. Castro has had no shortage of questions from the media about that narrative. Search “Castro” and “framing” on Twitter and you will see all sorts of commentary on the subject. Even before his first regular season game in a Twins uniform, he has been billed as a potential staff savior -- finally giving the team a backstop capable of tipping the odds in the pitcher's’ favor. Everybody wants to know his secret and how he learned what he did in order to be at the top of his craft. You’d think he would be sick of talking about it by now. He might very well be. Nevertheless, despite already explaining his background in triplicate, he happily walks you through his journey again.His first point, however, is that he doesn’t consider it framing. To Castro, “framing” sounds intentionally misleading -- like an act on a little league field where a youth catcher tries to yank a ball that crosses over the empty batter’s box back over the plate, hoping the high school-aged umpire who gets paid hourly has a momentary lapse of judgement. No, Castro doesn’t think of what he does as framing. He says it is simply receiving the ball the right way, which is to say, a skill an exemplary catcher should possess. While Castro was with the Astros, the organization called their catchers together for an internal meeting and let them know that the nerds upstairs found something useful, something that they felt would give their team an edge. He says he wasn’t all too familiar with the concept at that time but the data and the added value it could provide made sense. “You’d always as a catcher try to be quiet and receive the ball, it was a new way how to look at how to catch a baseball,” Castro said walking through how his former organization presented their argument. At Stanford University, Castro said he developed and improved other core attributes for a catcher -- throwing out runners, blocking pitches, and general game calling abilities. The art of receiving was not one of those pillars. Now the Astros wanted him to add what they felt was a vital part of a catcher’s game. They had new technologies available and new ways to measure the contributions. Houston’s coaches showed the catchers tips and tricks that would, in theory, help obtain a few more strikes outside of the zone but, more importantly, keep pitches in the zone from being wrongly called balls. While stealing strikes was an added benefit for the upgraded receiving techniques, the Astros’ main focus was not losing any strikes. “Keeping strikes in the strike zone,” he explained. “Not doing anything to the pitch to take away from its quality. If it is on the corner and it is breaking one direction, you are trying to counteract the break so it doesn’t, by the time you catch the ball, pull your arm out of the zone.” Houston’s efforts worked. From 2009 through 2011 the Astros had an in-zone called strike percentage right at the league’s average. In terms of overall framing statistics, they were just outside of the top ten among all MLB teams. In short, they were actually pretty decent during a time before baseball put added emphasis on the practice. Good, not great. Over the last three seasons, meanwhile, Castro and the Astros have overtaken baseball as one of the game’s premiere receiving teams. Their in-zone called strike percentage was the second-highest in the game, just behind Buster Posey and the San Francisco Giants, and their overall framing runs rate was the fifth-highest. Download attachment: Catching Stats.JPG What is the secret? Castro says it is planning and thinking ahead of the pitcher. “When these guys throw 90-plus, 95-mile per hour sliders with really late, sharp break and if you are not preparing to catch the ball in a certain way, when you do catch it it is going to pull your glove out of the zone and it’s just how to think about how to counteract that force.” There are people who will say that “framing” is overrated, overvalued, influenced by the pitcher, influenced by the umpire, doesn’t exist, or is waiting to be corrected by robots. Some will argue that if the pitch crosses the agreed upon confines of the strike zone, it shouldn’t matter what the catcher is doing. A strike is a strike and a ball is a ball. Whatever the outside sentiments might be about the statistic, within the current state of affairs receiving the ball correctly is a very real skill. Castro says he can feel when he is doing it right and when he is off. “In the game you can tell if a pitcher makes a really good pitch and it's diving out of the zone and you catch it correctly to counteract the sink, you’re trying to stop the movement as soon as possible without taking you with it, you can feel when you do it right and when you are able to keep that ball in the zone and not let it pull you out.” As the Giants and Astros have topped the leaderboard in that area, the Minnesota Twins have floundered at the bottom of the rankings, costing their pitching staff numerous strikes each season. Castro’s mindset is vastly different than the previously signed free agent catcher. When Kurt Suzuki was signed, he was asked about his thoughts on the increasing emphasis on pitch framing. “I don’t put too much stock in that,” Suzuki said in 2014. “Don’t get me wrong, I think that has a lot to do with it but at the same time what a pitcher does has a lot to do with it. If he’s all over the place he’s obviously not going to get those borderline calls, not matter how good you make it look. If you are around the plate consistently, you are going to get those calls.” Castro, on the other hand, was a lot less inclined to place the blame on his battery mate. “There’s a general execution of a pitch helps the way a catcher receives it a lot,” Castro says. “If he’s generally around where you are trying to set up, it makes our job a lot easier. If they are spraying the zone a little bit more and you have to be reactive instead of being able to anticipate that makes it a lot more difficult.” http://i.imgur.com/d8nifEl.gif ESPN/TruMedia’s heat map comparison of Castro, Cervelli, Posey and Suzuki. Red is good, blue is bad. This year’s pitching staff has been giving Castro’s work strong reviews so far. Trevor May, who recently suffered an unfortunate UCL tear that will take him out the remainder of the year, said he enjoyed working with Castro this spring. "He adjusts where he sets up, based on the count and what he's looking for, and based on your stuff and how it moves,” May said. “Honestly, as a pitcher that gives you a lot of confidence, knowing that if he wants the ball a little off the plate or he wants the ball to come back over the plate or if he wants the outer-third for a strike you can tell based on how he's setting up and what he's calling. It's very clear. And he's a big target, he looks like Joe [Mauer] back there. So that's always nice." Castro’s stature is somewhat of a hindrance for a catcher in the modern framing-centric era. Like May said, Castro is a big target. Mauer, at six-foot-five, struggled to get strikes called in the lower portion of the strike zone (something of a real problem for a staff that boasted sinker ball pitchers). At six-foot-three, catchers of Castro’s size are typically thought of as an issue, especially given the southward expanding strike zone. That said, Castro’s numbers suggest that he has been above average in that department, even with his size. That’s because, he says, he is mindful of his physique and he works particularly hard to ensure he is giving the umpire the best view of the strike zone. “I’m a bigger catcher, so I figured it is something even more important for me to position myself to give the umpire a better lane to see the pitch,” he says. “That definitely helps. You can definitely tell when you are set up on one side of the plate and your pitcher misses, you can tell when you probably blocked the umpire from see where the pitch really crossed. For bigger guys, it’s something to take into account.” It was not that long ago when finding a catcher with strong “framing” skills was a hidden value, something that data-savvy teams could exploit by acquiring backstop artists on the cheap. That’s no longer the case. When the Pittsburgh Pirates identified Russell Martin as a potentially strong receiver, they landed him on a two-year, $17 million contract - a fairly modest price for a decent two-way catcher. After he was credited as a key instrument in rejuvenating the Pirates’ pitching staff, Martin was wooed away from the Steel City to Toronto, where he was given a five-year, $82 million deal. The Pirates pivoted and traded left-handed reliever Justin Wilson to the Yankees for Francisco Cervelli. Cervelli proved to be another gem with the glove and contributed moderately with the bat as well. For that, he received a three-year, $31 million extension. By that comparison, at around $8 million a year, Castro has been a veritable bargain. The Twins stress that Castro’s addition goes beyond how many strikes he can keep or steal. His defensive contributions are not one dimensional. “I think everything was made exclusively around his pitch-framing, but we signed Jason with the idea that he had a number of other attributes outside of that,” Twins’ Chief Baseball Officer Derek Falvey told Twins Daily. “He does that well, no question, but leadership in the clubhouse, game planning, how he prepares a pitching staff, how he thinks about advance information, all those things he does exceptionally well and he’s impacting our guys here.” Falvey also acknowledged that the organization is working diligently at improving the measurables of all catchers in the system. There is a chance that Castro will also be able to help bring along other catchers like Mitch Garver, who made significant improvements in the minor leagues last year. “It’s a process,” says Castro. “It’s like anything else when you make a change it’s not going to be night and day, it’s going to be incremental and you just have to work at it until it becomes second nature.” Click here to view the article

In an interesting development this week, the Minnesota Twins’ source of SABR-friendly quotes, Glen Perkins, has elaborated his position on the importance of pitch framing. What makes this particularly intriguing is because a little over a year ago Perkins had explained that he felt that catcher Josmil Pinto needed to improve his framing game in order to contribute at the major league level. In his explanation, the closer suggested that framing ranked ahead of pitch calling when it came to the contributions of catching. Now Perkins says that pitch framing numbers are basically junk. Is Perkins right? Is the idea of pitch framing just snake oil sold by data-pushers?Last year, the Pioneer Press’ Mike Berardino documented a conversation that Perkins had with a local radio show in which he deemed the ability to frame pitches as one of the most significant keys to a catcher’s ability. The discussion centered on Pinto and his subpar framing numbers. “Pitch-framing ability, I think that makes the biggest difference in the world,” Perkins said on Phil Mackey and Judd Zulgad’s 1500 ESPN’s radio program in 2014. “Eric Fryer is really good at pitch framing, so I’m excited about that. He does a great job.” Why does it make the biggest difference in the world? “When you can get your pitcher borderline pitches and get them to go his way, that allows you not only to get ahead in counts but expand the strike zone and go further away,” Perkins said. “That goes a long way to having success. … I think that’s the most important thing. The game calling is secondary. You’ve got to be able to catch pitches around the zone. You need to get pitches. You can’t give pitches. The more pitches you can get, the better off our pitching staff is going to be.” Pitch framing, to paraphrase former MLB umpire Jim McKean, isn't holding a ball or doing any special tricks, it is simply receiving the ball using the proper techniques. And when it comes to seeing results, some catchers are considerably better than others. The notion of pitch framing’s worth extended to data-savvy teams like the Pittsburgh Pirates who, according to Big Data Baseball, zeroed in on free agent catcher Russell Martin almost exclusively on his ability to steal strikes on the outer edges of the strike zone. This, wrote Travis Sawchik, made signing free agent pitchers like Francisco Liriano that much more attractive. Blessed with an assortment of unhittable stuff, Liriano had faulty control but a rare swing-and-miss arsenal -- particularly when he was able to deploy his slider. Martin, the Pirates front office correctly surmised, could turn some of those borderline fastballs into strikes and allow Liriano to spin more sliders. So as the front office of the Pirates rebuilt their rotation based on the belief that Martin had the ability to steal strikes -- whether because of skill, voodoo or otherwise -- only to become an annual playoff team, one of the Twins’ most outspoken proponents for using and understanding data has thrown shade at the data used in measuring pitch framing. “That’s what frustrates me about the framing statistics,” Perkins told Berardino at some point this season. “I know when I say I don’t believe in them, that’s what a lot of guys do: They’ll believe in numbers that support what they think, what their opinion is, and they’ll not support stuff that doesn’t back up what they believe. That’s part of it for me, too.” Wait. What? How does pitch framing go from “the most important thing” a little over a year ago to “I don’t believe in them”? “There’s just too many variables,” he said. “I still think there’s bias in who’s pitching and bias in who’s hitting, regardless of the fact (umpires) get graded or not. I think some guys have tighter strike zones as pitchers and guys that are more established have a bigger strike zone. And hitters, too.” To be fair, Perkins isn't completely off-base. While he may have overstated his position in 2014, pitch framing was far from a perfect science and measurement. In examining Josmil Pinto's shortcomings this past offseason, evidence of Pinto being unfairly docked on pitches that were in the strike zone but ultimately called a ball due to a pitcher grossly missing his location were highlighted. Available framing stats found at StatCorner.com do not account for a pitcher's intent. Is it the catcher's fault that he called for a slider away only to have to lunge back across the plate when a pitcher misses his spot? That is why Baseball Info Solutions developed a Strike Zone Plus/Minus metric that accounts for factors other than just the catcher (all the gory details found here). Their study showed that even when considering the pitchers, hitters and umpires, Kurt Suzuki was still one of the worst pitch framers in the game at -15 runs in 2014. This season, despite showing improvements by StatCorner.com’s measurements, according to BIS’s Strike Zone Plus/Minus Suzuki is actually at -11 runs saved, again the worst framer in baseball. Roughly translated, 11 runs equals about one win in the standings. Is that important? "One pitch can mean the whole game,'' Russell Martin, who signed a five-year, $82 million contract with Toronto partially based on his framing abilities, told USA Today. "Going from a 2-1 count to a 1-2 changes that at-bat completely. As you go through the year, there are times when getting a call here and a call there can change the outcome of a whole year, really, when you're talking about being in the playoffs or missing the playoffs by one game.'' Perkins’ stance on pitch framing isn’t without its merit but at the same time, starting catchers have thousands of data points each season. While some measurement systems are grabbing a bunch of noise, patterns begin to emerge with various catchers who far exceed others at coaxing more out-of-zone pitches to be called strikes and fewer in-zone pitches to be called balls. There are reasons why some catchers like Jonathan Lucroy are perennially at the top of the framing list while others like Suzuki and Jarrod Saltalamacchia are pulling up the rear. What's more, there is now a framing metric that accounts for all the influencing factors (pitchers, umpires and hitters) which had previously concerned players like Perkins. For the Twins who are doing their best to remain relevant in the wild card race, one game in the standings could end up being the difference between a one-game playoff berth or another October at home. Click here to view the article

Hoping to secure the role of backup catcher, Josmil Pinto realizes that he has areas of his game behind the plate he needed to work on. Earlier this week, we discussed his inability to control the run game. Another element of his defensive game -- the framing portion -- has also come under considerable criticism. According to the catcher framing stat found at StatCorner.com, Pinto finished the 2015 season as a bottom-10 receiver. He was deficient at both getting out-of-zone pitches to be called strikes as well as from keeping in-zone pitches from being called balls. This fact did not go unnoticed by his pitching staff. Is Pinto really that bad at framing as well?To begin, we really have to understand what we are talking about when it comes to “framing” and how Pinto would be good or bad at it. In a 2013 interview with Baseball Prospectus, former MLB umpire Jim McKean made an excellent observation about the practice. “Everybody says, ‘Oh, he’s a good framer, he’s a bad framer,’ and that’s just an entertainment word. It’s just, he caught the ball correctly,” McKean said. “As long as the ball is received steadily with a strong hand, then it’s a lot easier to see the pitches. And every time they do that and they go ‘Oh, he’s a good framer,’ well, no, he’s just catching the pitch correctly. That’s just my interpretation. And I was in the big league for about 30 years, so I’ve seen all sorts of catching, and good catching will make it easier for umpires to call more strikes.” From an umpire’s perspective that makes total sense. Little noise, little movement. When Glen Perkins told 1500ESPN listeners that Pinto struggled with pitches below or at the bottom of the zone, his observations were correct. The rookie catcher finished 78 out of 79 catchers in getting low pitches called strikes and the two examples below show why some of it is on him and some is on his pitcher. In this example, Pinto calls for a 3-2 fastball on the outer-half from reliever Casey Fien. Fien obliges and throws heat that clips a hair of the corner: Download attachment: Pinto_PitcherEx2.png Though by definition a strike, the umpire says it is a ball. Part of it might be on where Pinto caught it (see below) as well as the positioning of the umpire. In the interview with Baseball Prospectus, McKean said that the umpire’s positioning can put some areas of the strike zone in a blind spot. Like in the instance below, if he’s lined up on the inside of a hitter, the outer portion of the zone might be harder to track. In that situation, a catcher’s ability to receive the pitch correctly can mean the difference between a ball and a strike. Download attachment: Pinto_Ball_9.5-2ex-Caught.png There are various reasons why a pitch’s outcome is considered a ball when it was actually in the zone. Believe it or not, some of it actually has to do with the pitcher as well. For example, while catching a Ricky Nolasco start against the Angels in early September, Pinto sets up on the outer-half calling for a slider. Nolasco misses his spot but manages to throw a decent slider that nicks the inside edge of the plate. Download attachment: Pinto_PitcherEx.png Data shows that the pitch crossed a portion of the plate -- albeit not by much. Still, Pinto is forced to shift back towards the inside and his reception of the ball does not do Nolasco any favors. “[T]he problem you run into is, when a catcher moves out there, you move out there a little bit with him,” said McKean. “Then they throw the ball inside, and it’s in the strike zone, and it looks like he’s diving to catch it. And that’s very difficult to call a strike on. You can do it, and most of the time the hitter’s going to look at you and say, ‘Jimmy, how can that be a strike? He’s diving back to catch it.’” While the umpire in this situation did not shift to the outside with Pinto, everything else mirrored what McKean described. Given the scenario it is hard to assign total blame on the catcher, yet the framing statistic would demerit Pinto in this instance. Download attachment: Pinto_Ball_9.5-Caught.png One takeaway about this pitch is that Pinto does not receive it that poorly. Yes, he tries to pull his glove up after catching the pitch but as McKean told Baseball Prospectus, catchers who fail to catch low pitches palm up (as seen in the image above) often will have that particular pitch called against them. In that regard, Pinto is probably not as technically bad as the Marlins’ Jarrod Saltalamacchia. The 29-year-old backstop earned the dubious honors of being the worst receiving catcher in 2014 based on the StatCorner.com’s pitch framing statistic (24.4 runs below average). Here is an example as to why he brings up the rear of the list. On a 3-2 count, his pitcher brings a knee-high strike which should end the at-bat in the Marlins’ favor. It is called a ball. Download attachment: Salty_Pitch.png Admittedly, the 95-mile per hour fastball has some sink to it, running the pitch back towards the Dodgers’ Yasiel Puig but rather than grabbing it palm up, Saltalamacchia catches it, well, like this: Download attachment: Salty_Ball_Caught.png In this case, it is hard not to wonder whether if a different catcher had caught this middle-zone/knee-high pitch with minimal movement i it would have been called a strike. Let’s review another scenario. The New York Mets’ Travis d’Arnaud was considered one of game’s better receivers and well liked by his staff. "When the balls are down, he does something that makes them look like they're strikes," said the Mets’ Zack Wheeler in 2013. "It's ridiculous. I had a couple that I threw and I knew they were balls, but they looked like strikes after he framed them up." How ridiculous can he be? Take a look at the location of this pitch. Download attachment: dArnaud_Pitch.png There are several reasons that could explain why the umpire chose to expand his zone regardless of d’Anuard’s efforts. For starters, the Mets had just walked two batters in a row with the bases loaded. While umpires try to stay in the confines of the strike zone, they too are human and want to have the game end in under 17 hours. D'Anuard also caught the ball with minimal movement but his pitcher also hit his target making the reception less of a challenge than what Pinto and Saltalamacchia faced. Download attachment: dArnaud_Strike_Caught.png According to StatCorner.com, the Twins’ Kurt Suzuki remains one of the game’s worst framers as well. For whatever reason, Suzuki is unable to convince umpires that borderline pitches are strikes. That is, until two-strike situations. Whereas the average catcher was able to get a called strike on 3.7% of all out-of-zone takes with two-strikes, Suzuki coaxed strike three looking at a 5% clip -- only behind Boston’s David Ross and the Dodgers’ A.J. Ellis in that situation. Seems like that should count for a little bit more than a first-pitch strike. That said, Suzuki’s magic may simply be the skill of pitcher Phil Hughes. Hughes had a whopping 12% called strike rate on pitches out of the strike zone when there were two strikes. His cutter became an outstanding weapon that he deployed on left-handed hitters as such: http://i.imgur.com/hUtvBWn.gif Despite going around the plate, Hughes hit his target. Suzuki will receive positive points for framing even though the bulk of the work is done by Hughes’ pitching. “What a pitcher does has a lot to do with it,” Suzuki told me last spring training. “If he’s all over the place, he’s obviously not going to get those borderline calls, no matter how good you make it look. If you are around the plate consistently, you are going to get those calls. There’s definitely an art to it, you look at the Molinas, they are pretty good at what they do.” As McKean noted, the art of framing is actually the art of catching properly. In this context, Pinto has some work to do to become a better all-around defensive catcher. Umpires cannot be robots. The current catcher framing measurement system has plenty of flaws that give credit and punish receivers for mistakes of their pitchers. Umpires are influenced by reactions around them, positioning and because of biases. In a 3-0 count, a pitch out of the strike zone is likely to be called a strike 17% while a 0-2 pitch is likely to be called a ball 39% of the time. Until statisticians can factor in targeting and weigh the counts properly, catcher framing stats will remain imperfect. Click here to view the article

September complaints about Twins lineups centered on two players--Danny Santana and Josmil Pinto. The fans remaining at Twins Daily wanted Santana to get reps at shortstop (and opportunities for Aaron Hicks) and they wanted to see the state of Josmil Pinto's catching ability. The fans were mostly disappointed. Santana mostly stayed in center field and Pinto only started eight games at catcher and left one of them before he either hit or caught. We will wait for answers (or at least more definitive evidence) in the spring. For his entire length of stay with the Twins in 2014, Pinto was a bit of a lightning rod. Many wanted him in the lineup every day either as the DH or catcher. Some are convinced that he can never be a regular catcher because he doesn't have the necessary defensive tools and skills. If anything, this season was evidence that as far as Pinto is concerned, it can't be a half-in half-out proposition. Due to injuries, Pinto got a lot of at-bats in April and his hitting was decent. He didn't catch much and he was noticeably less than adequate behind the plate. This meant fewer games catching, and when everyone got healthy Pinto didn't get at-bats at DH and was sub-standard behind the plate. He was optioned in June reportedly to work on his defense. I expected Pinto to be back before September 1st, but he didn't force his way back from his performance in Rochester and Kurt Suzuki had a career year. The controversy over Pinto concerns his offense and his defense. How good a hitter can he be with regular at bats? I think he could be very good. He is strong and demonstrated extra-base power for the Twins in his stints with the club. He also has a good idea of the strike zone and will take a walk. Pinto uses the whole field and has plenty of power to put balls over the fence. I think if he were given regular at-bats, he would be in the upper third of catchers offensively. Defensively, the slings and arrows come from all directions. He was 0-20 throwing out base runners in 2014. He has consistently graded out poorly when it comes to framing pitches. Pinto, after nearly a decade in the organization, has been called lacking in pitch calling and blocking pitches. That is a whole lot of things to improve upon! In watching Pinto throw, there is no question that his arm is strong enough to stay behind the plate. However, there is no question that his mechanics in throwing were screwed up before he was optioned to Rochester. It is certainly not all his fault that he failed to throw out a single base stealer, but on the other hand, he should be in line for more of the blame than any other individual. As for pitch framing, Josmil was the personal catcher for the thoroughly inconsistent Samuel Deduno, if there was one pitcher on the Twins that probably didn't deserve having borderline pitches called strikes due to total unpredictability it was Deduno. It stands to reason that Pinto's pitch framing numbers would be bad. I think game calling a being a coach on the field is in the eye of the beholder. For what it is worth, an ump said it was "night and day" as far as viewing pitches after Pinto returned in September and Kyle Gibson credited Pinto with calling a good game in both of his last two starts (both good starts for Gibson). I see good potential in Josmil Pinto's bat. I don't see anything that precludes him from being at least adequate as a receiver at some point. I do have a point and counterpoint. Pinto has been known as a hard worker and no one has questioned his work ethic. However, he has been in the organization since 2006 and he, by all accounts, has quite a ways to go to be a competent major league receiver.