If I were to ask you what were the most important qualities of a prisoner to have, the most likely answers you would receive would be: good leadership, a cannon arm, a willingness to sacrifice the body and a solid bat that can play in Nr. 4 through No. 7 in the lineup every day.
Unfortunately, according to most baseball hipsters, you are wrong because the most important qualities of a catcher are the ability to draw turns and the ability to fool the referee. The two qualities there are the only qualities that matter to a catcher because baseball hipsters want to refer the catcher to the status of today’s NBA centers, a defensive central position that can just as well sit on the bench when the offense does its thing.
Now the reason American League baseball is better than National League baseball is the inclusion of the designated hitter, which eliminates the comedy routine for throws that strike from the game. Why you want your catcher to just switch pitchers in the series is a mystery to me.
Assuming you have not lived under a rock throughout the baseball season, it should come as no surprise that Salvador Perez has a great season again and proves once again that he is one of the top five catchers in baseball. In fact, if he continues at this speed, he can add another silver slug and perhaps another gold glove to his personal trophy cabinet.
Except that baseball hipsters don’t seem to see it that way, as you can see below.
Well, if it’s a war they want, then it’s a war they should have - and it’s a war they lose with their own statistics. So, without further ado, let’s start the process of ruining the hipster tale that Salvy is nothing more than a smiling cry-wobble behind the plate that should be cut in the low season.
A sabermetric value to speak of
Pitch framing has become the latest and hottest statistic for people to catch on because each broadcast now has a floating box in the middle of the plate that represents the strike zone. Keep in mind that this zone is about as official as the yellow first downline for NFL games, but we must ignore it so we can create a twisted state.
If you were to look at Baseball Savant, you would see that they have rated Perez as the worst frame catcher in baseball when it comes to Runs Extra Strikes (RES), a statistic that is so vague that it literally bases its entire existence on something called “Shadow zone”.
Catcher framing The art of capturing receives a pitch in a way that makes it more likely for a judge to call it a strike. This page breaks the catcher into eight zones around the strike zone and shows the specified strike percentage for all non-turns in that zone.
Strike Rate shows the total sum of all zones. Running from extra strike converts strike to run stored at a .125 run / strike and includes park and throw adjustment To qualify, a catcher must receive 6 called courses per team game.
How to say it: “In 2018, Jeff Mathis converted 55 percent of non-swinging lanes to the so-called strike in the Shadow Zone, the best rate for any catch in baseball.”
To qualify: 6 called courses (ie take or no turns) in the “shadow zone” per team game. (The shadow zone is mainly the edges of the strike zone, approximately one ball width inside and one ball width outside the zone.
-Baseball Savant
For the full list of RES leaders, you’re welcome.
However, there is something wrong with basing a prisoner’s value solely on these statistics, and it’s pretty obvious to anyone who has a lick of common sense. This may come as a bit of a shock to the litany of baseball hipsters, but catchers play on both offense and defense.
Now I could go through all 58 catchers ranked ahead of Perez and explain why he is better than each of them. But honestly, I just do not have time, and if I did this article would be so long that it would crash your browser. We need a faster way to compare Perez to the top ten catchers in baseball.
So, in the spirit of saber metrics, I’ve made my own statistics to evaluate a prisoner’s overall value for his team: RES + RBI or RR for short. Now the reason I chose to use RBIs as part of this statistic is that it eliminates guys like Jonah Heim, Austin Hedges and Tomas Nido guys who can be good defensively, but simply lack the ability of bats to be an everyday player.
This list will consist of really the best catchers in baseball and decide which of them really gives the team the most number of runs when you combine both their works offensively and defensively.
So here are the leaders of the RR, except Salvador Perez, so the baseline can be determined.
* Indicates negative RES, ** Indicates 0 RES, # Indicates All-Star
(1) Sean Murphy 64
(2) Will Smith * 63
(3) JT Realmuto # 62
(4) Mike Zunino # 56
(5) Omar Narvaez # 50, Yadier Molina # * 49
(6) Jacob Stallings, Yasmani Grandal ** 48
(7) Tucker Barnhardt, Buster Posey 46
(8) Willson Contreras 41
(9) Christian Vazquez 40
(10) Gary Sanchez * 39
So, as we can see, there are many RES loved ones like Sean Murphy, Mike Zunino, Omar Narvaez and Jacob Stallings on this list. When we ignore the fact that Yadier Molina is somehow ranked as a bad defender, the rest of the list makes sense because people like Gary Sanchez, Will Smith and Yasmani Grandal can all mash on the plate enough to interrupt their poor to mediocre defenses .
According to RR, these ten catchers are the ten most valuable catches in baseball and will be the players we will compare with Salvador Perez throughout the article.
Now here are the RR leaders with Salvador Perez.
* Indicates negative RES, ** Indicates 0 RES, # Indicates All-Star
(1) Salvador Perez * # 79
(2) Sean Murphy 64
(3) Will Smith * 63
(4) JT Realmuto # 62
(5) Mike Zunino # 56
(6) Omar Narvaez # 50, Yadier Molina # * 49
(7) Jacob Stallings, Yasmani Grandal ** 48
(8) Tucker Barnhardt, Buster Posey 46
(9) Willson Contreras 41
(10) Christian Vazquez 40
(11) Gary Sanchez * 39
Salvador Perez is 16 races better than the next nearest qualifier, meaning he could have beaten the Mariners instead of crushing the two grand slams, and he would still have been the RR leader. In short, his bat is so good that his inability to hit a track is completely interrupted, and it reveals how awful most catchers are at running races.
But it is strange how the perception of Salvador Perez defensively has changed - he managed to soar up four gold gloves in a row from 2013-2016, but has only won one since. So, what seismic event happened in 2017 to change people’s perception of Salvador Perez?
The permanent K-Zone graphics became a standard broadcast function for each team after the 2016 season, that’s what happened.
Now it should go without saying that technological advances are most of the time an advantage for the game, as it allows fans to fully appreciate the game at its most nuanced levels. However, adding the K-zone to today’s baseball broadcast has made many clueless baseball hipsters capture experts.
Enter “Salvador Perez pitch framing” on YouTube and see what comes up, then try to find an overview of why he is terrible at pitch framing. If you find one, please send it my way. You’ll probably have more luck finding a written article about his court, but again, there’s no thorough breakdown - just a bunch of standard baseball gibberish.
It ends episode I, but keep your eyes open for episode II, which will air later this week.