February 19, 2015

80’s Pitch Framing

Via BBTN, Rob Neyer re-discovers text from the 1980s on how Milwaukee Brewers catchers should frame pitches.

Every pitch in or near the strike zone should be caught with a minimum of body movement. We tell our catchers to shrink the strike zone with their hands. We liken it to picking fruit off a tree. The ball should be caught with very smooth hand action. We do not want to jerk or pull any pitches into the strike zone. Remember, we want only those strikes we are entitled to. Good framing technique will usually get you more marginal pitches. We are not trying to put one over on the umpire, only to give our strikes the best showcase possible. If you are not smooth, the umpire will feel that you are trying to take advantage of him by pulling pitches into the strike zone, and he could take pitches away from you.

What bothers me is that pitch framing should become less effective now that we know that it exists. PITCHf/x (or whatever pitch tracking mechanism comes next) should work against framing, since officials can see the mistakes umpires make calling strikes balls and work with them to lessen the bias. Don’t let the glove fool you, call the pitch in the zone.

3 thoughts on “80’s Pitch Framing

  1. rbj

    There was a time when Derek Jeter claimed to have gotten hit by a pitch and was awarded first base even though he wasn’t He caught grief over it, even though other batter have done it. Why was what he did considered cheating and pitch framing isn’t?

    It’s gamesmanship.

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  2. Larry Faria

    Since the effect is to pick up a few extra strikes on borderline pitches, it may be overblown, like a new fruit or veggie with extra anti-oxidants being touted as a miracle food. Calls on borderline pitches probably won’t change much at all, with or without framing. It may well be that the better pitching results are due to pitchers being more comfortable with steady targets, since framing requires the catcher to pay more attention to holding the glove up.

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  3. pft

    Somehow I think what we think is new because we can quantify it has been old news in baseball for a century

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