Omar Narvaez to Brewers for minor league right-hander Adam Hill and a Competitive Balance draft pick.

[Eye Black]

Guess which catcher the Mariners jettisoned when they traded for Narvaez last year ...

 

Hint: He's a PURE hitter!

 

Martín Maldonado

 

Vogt?

David Frietas

[Lathund]

Framing is the most overrated non-issue in sports.

 

I've never seen anyone making that claim back that up with anything. I'm hoping you'll be the first.

 

Back up that it has an impact. I've watched umps blow calls that were framed perfectly. I've watched them make calls properly when the pitcher was 3/4s of a plate off his spot and the catcher swiped at it. I do not buy that these umps are that easily swayed, or at the very least swayed to a point that has a statistical impact.

 

It's not about individual calls being blown or not blown. As you say, that will happen. There will be pitches down the middle of the plate called balls, there will be head-high pitches called strikes at times. Regardless of what the catcher does. The whole reason it has an impact is that there are so many pitches called each season for each catcher, several thousands of them. Even very small edges end up mattering a lot. Catching metrics don't concern themselves with individual pitches, and does not make a judgement on whether the umpire was "swayed" or not.

 

Anyway, there are two components to framing. One is if changing a strike to a ball (or vice versa), regardless of how or why that happens or who's to be blamed or credited for it, has an impact on the game. Which I think is undeniable. It's very obvious in the case of a 3-2 pitch (For instance 1 on nobody out, vs nobody on one out), but also easy to see how a 1-1 pitch changes an at bat depending on whether it becomes 1-2 or 2-1. Can look at something basic like AVG/OBP/SLG after different counts, or more advanced methods. Either way, I don't think there is much disagreement, whether one is sabermetrically inclined or "old school", that different counts affect at bats. Putting a run value on the average value of a the difference between a called strike and called ball (again, still without assigning blame or credit to anyone) is fairly basic at this point as well. For a 3-2 pitch it's the difference in run expectancy between a walk and a strikeout (Or in other words, huge), for a 0-0 pitch it's a lot smaller.

 

The second part of it is how do we determine a catchers impact on it? Before statcast/pitchFX, it was a very inexact science. It'd be some combination of catchers who got more calls than others, trying to use the eye test or some WOWY model to see how much of that was due to the different pitchers they caught, and judging the catching mechanics with the eye test. Which could probably separate really good from really bad framers, but not really say how big the effect was. But with pitch-tracking data, we can do more. I'll mostly talk about how Baseball Prospectus does it, since that's the one I've read up on in the past.

 

The short and basic version of how it works is that you divide the strike zone and the surrounding area into many different and much smaller zones. You break down the overall PitchFX data and separate the different pitch types, and look at how often a specific pitch type is called a strike or a ball in a specific zone. Then to evaluate a catcher, the metrics compare the rate of how often they get strikes and balles called in the various zones to the average of all the hundreds of thousands (Or millions) of pitches tracked before them, again comparing curveballs to curveballs and fastballs to fastballs. Then you have the run values from before of changing balls into strikes and vice versa; either the average of all counts, or using the different value for each count; BPro uses the latter I believe. If a pitch is called a strike 100% of the time (Or more like 99.9%) in a part of the zone, and the result of an individual pitch in that zone is a called strike, the catcher gets no credit or blame. If it's called a strike 80% of the time and it's called a strike now, the catcher gets 20% of the run value for that count credited to him. If it had been called a ball, he's get deducted 80% of it. And so on, for thousands of pitches throughout a season. It's not making a jdugement on whether an umpire was tricked, or even on whether an individual pitch was a strike or a ball. There are methods for adjusting for the impact of different umpires, pitchers and batters on this too, but even without doing it they for the most part don't sway things that much (Pitchers affect it the most of the three); likely because the each account for such a small part of a catchers workload.

 

A simple way to look at it is this: If you adjust for the batter, umpire and pitcher, and compare fastballs to fastballs and curveballs to curveballs, and a catcher is still getting more called strikes than his peers, and that it's measurable and consistent from year to year, then you're clearly measuring *something*. And what is that then, if not framing? Or "presenting", or "recieving skills" or whatever name you put on it? The main argument I see against it is that the size of the effect is "too big", that it feels unintuitive. And yeah, it does. But think about the scale of it. Grandal had 8000 framing chances last year. BPro's called strikes above average (CSAA) metric has him at 1.6% above average. It doesn't sound like much, but 1.6% more strikes is 128 extra strikes over a season. If the average run value of an extra strike is 0.13 runs (As I believe the number was), that's 17 runs above average for a year. The actual number is different because they take the run values for the individual counts and not the overall.

 

Anyway, that was just me summarizing things a bit. I'll post some articles below on various attempts at quantifying framing, that mostly cover what I've mentioned above. As an aside, the author of the first piece is now Director of Baseball Research and Development for the Brewers.

 

https://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2008/4/5/389840/framing-the-debate

https://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2010/3/26/1360581/a-first-pass-at-a-catcher-framing

https://tht.fangraphs.com/evaluating-catchers-quantifying-the-framing-pitches-skill/

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/15093/spinning-yarn-removing-the-mask-encore-presentation/

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/22934/framing-and-blocking-pitches-a-regressed-probabilistic-model-a-new-method-for-measuring-catcher-defense/

https://tht.fangraphs.com/dynamic-run-value-of-throwing-a-strike-instead-of-a-ball/

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/25514/moving-beyond-wowy-a-mixed-approach-to-measuring-catcher-framing/

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fangraphs-pitch-framing/

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/catcher_framing

[Eye Black]

Just a complete guess, but wondering if this is the trade where the Brewers say goodbye to Corey Ray?

[3and2Fastball]

Great to see Omar becoming a Brewer! Very interested to see the return though... hoping it is 2 mid level MiLB pitchers, and not Arcia.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

Guess which catcher the Mariners jettisoned when they traded for Narvaez last year ...

 

Hint: He's a PURE hitter!

 

Martín Maldonado

 

Vogt?

David Frietas

 

Bingo! Granted there was some lag. Brewers didn't trade for Freitas until April. Bet he's not too thrilled seeing that he's been kicked down the catching totem pole again by Narvaez. Of course, if it is Nottingham going back to the Mariners, maybe not.

[Jopal78]

I’m going to guess the players going to Seattle is going to sting a little bit. Arcia and Supak, or Faria and Lutz something like that.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

Just a complete guess, but wondering if this is the trade where the Brewers say goodbye to Corey Ray?

 

Seattle is in huge need of pitching. I'm going to guess Corbin Burnes or Freddy Peralta. Perhaps Small, Ashby or Rasmussen. The return is gonna sting a little.

[adambr2]

Just a complete guess, but wondering if this is the trade where the Brewers say goodbye to Corey Ray?

 

Seattle is in huge need of pitching. I'm going to guess Corbin Burnes or Freddy Peralta. Perhaps Small, Ashby or Rasmussen. The return is gonna sting a little.

 

I can't see Burnes or Peralta being on the table at all for Narvaez. Ray seems fair but only because his value has plummeted. I think we are overestimating the value of Narvaez a bit. He's entering arbitration so about to get a little more expensive and obviously does have some defensive concerns that make him more available than he otherwise would be. I think Nottingham + Supak is probably a fair deal. But I could be wrong.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

Hader for Narvaez, Kelenic, Kyle Seager and Vogelbach!

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

Just a complete guess, but wondering if this is the trade where the Brewers say goodbye to Corey Ray?

 

Seattle is in huge need of pitching. I'm going to guess Corbin Burnes or Freddy Peralta. Perhaps Small, Ashby or Rasmussen. The return is gonna sting a little.

 

I can't see Burnes or Peralta being on the table at all for Narvaez. Ray seems fair but only because his value has plummeted. I think we are overestimating the value of Narvaez a bit. He's entering arbitration so about to get a little more expensive and obviously does have some defensive concerns that make him more available than he otherwise would be. I think Nottingham + Supak is probably a fair deal. But I could be wrong.

 

I think it's gonna sting worse than that. We're talking about legit offensive upside at a position where that is very difficult to find. Narvaez puts up offensive numbers close to Grandal, at a fraction of the cost. The return might not just sting. It might legitimately hurt.

[TJseven7]

 

It's not about individual calls being blown or not blown. As you say, that will happen. There will be pitches down the middle of the plate called balls, there will be head-high pitches called strikes at times. Regardless of what the catcher does. The whole reason it has an impact is that there are so many pitches called each season for each catcher, several thousands of them. Even very small edges end up mattering a lot. Catching metrics don't concern themselves with individual pitches, and does not make a judgement on whether the umpire was "swayed" or not.

 

Anyway, there are two components to framing. One is if changing a strike to a ball (or vice versa), regardless of how or why that happens or who's to be blamed or credited for it, has an impact on the game. Which I think is undeniable. It's very obvious in the case of a 3-2 pitch (For instance 1 on nobody out, vs nobody on one out), but also easy to see how a 1-1 pitch changes an at bat depending on whether it becomes 1-2 or 2-1. Can look at something basic like AVG/OBP/SLG after different counts, or more advanced methods. Either way, I don't think there is much disagreement, whether one is sabermetrically inclined or "old school", that different counts affect at bats. Putting a run value on the average value of a the difference between a called strike and called ball (again, still without assigning blame or credit to anyone) is fairly basic at this point as well. For a 3-2 pitch it's the difference in run expectancy between a walk and a strikeout (Or in other words, huge), for a 0-0 pitch it's a lot smaller.

 

The second part of it is how do we determine a catchers impact on it? Before statcast/pitchFX, it was a very inexact science. It'd be some combination of catchers who got more calls than others, trying to use the eye test or some WOWY model to see how much of that was due to the different pitchers they caught, and judging the catching mechanics with the eye test. Which could probably separate really good from really bad framers, but not really say how big the effect was. But with pitch-tracking data, we can do more. I'll mostly talk about how Baseball Prospectus does it, since that's the one I've read up on in the past.

 

The short and basic version of how it works is that you divide the strike zone and the surrounding area into many different and much smaller zones. You break down the overall PitchFX data and separate the different pitch types, and look at how often a specific pitch type is called a strike or a ball in a specific zone. Then to evaluate a catcher, the metrics compare the rate of how often they get strikes and balles called in the various zones to the average of all the hundreds of thousands (Or millions) of pitches tracked before them, again comparing curveballs to curveballs and fastballs to fastballs. Then you have the run values from before of changing balls into strikes and vice versa; either the average of all counts, or using the different value for each count; BPro uses the latter I believe. If a pitch is called a strike 100% of the time (Or more like 99.9%) in a part of the zone, and the result of an individual pitch in that zone is a called strike, the catcher gets no credit or blame. If it's called a strike 80% of the time and it's called a strike now, the catcher gets 20% of the run value for that count credited to him. If it had been called a ball, he's get deducted 80% of it. And so on, for thousands of pitches throughout a season. It's not making a jdugement on whether an umpire was tricked, or even on whether an individual pitch was a strike or a ball. There are methods for adjusting for the impact of different umpires, pitchers and batters on this too, but even without doing it they for the most part don't sway things that much (Pitchers affect it the most of the three); likely because the each account for such a small part of a catchers workload.

 

A simple way to look at it is this: If you adjust for the batter, umpire and pitcher, and compare fastballs to fastballs and curveballs to curveballs, and a catcher is still getting more called strikes than his peers, and that it's measurable and consistent from year to year, then you're clearly measuring *something*. And what is that then, if not framing? Or "presenting", or "recieving skills" or whatever name you put on it? The main argument I see against it is that the size of the effect is "too big", that it feels unintuitive. And yeah, it does. But think about the scale of it. Grandal had 8000 framing chances last year. BPro's called strikes above average (CSAA) metric has him at 1.6% above average. It doesn't sound like much, but 1.6% more strikes is 128 extra strikes over a season. If the average run value of an extra strike is 0.13 runs (As I believe the number was), that's 17 runs above average for a year. The actual number is different because they take the run values for the individual counts and not the overall.

 

Anyway, that was just me summarizing things a bit. I'll post some articles below on various attempts at quantifying framing, that mostly cover what I've mentioned above. As an aside, the author of the first piece is now Director of Baseball Research and Development for the Brewers.

 

https://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2008/4/5/389840/framing-the-debate

https://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2010/3/26/1360581/a-first-pass-at-a-catcher-framing

https://tht.fangraphs.com/evaluating-catchers-quantifying-the-framing-pitches-skill/

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/15093/spinning-yarn-removing-the-mask-encore-presentation/

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/22934/framing-and-blocking-pitches-a-regressed-probabilistic-model-a-new-method-for-measuring-catcher-defense/

https://tht.fangraphs.com/dynamic-run-value-of-throwing-a-strike-instead-of-a-ball/

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/25514/moving-beyond-wowy-a-mixed-approach-to-measuring-catcher-framing/

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fangraphs-pitch-framing/

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/catcher_framing

 

I'm NOT (oops) trying to dispute that quality work is being done in regards to this metric. I'm not disputing that this is a great post.

 

The evaluation is still flooded with issues, regardless of how many outcomes you test.

 

A catcher could have his frame rate tanked for a year if he catches for a young staff with high end movement that hasn't been harnessed. Umps show bias, it's human. The opposite could happen with a veteran staff. That has nothing to do with the catcher. This is the same thing as star fouls in the NBA. Bias is unavoidable. Putting that credit onto the catcher isn't quite as dramatic as giving QBs credit for wins, but it's on the same road.

On top of that, does it factor in spin rate, degree of break into the "did he steal a strike" evaluation? Location as a determining factor isn't enough. Movement of the pitch surely matters. Pitch type isn't good enough. Actual movement comparisons need to be done.

Luck of the draw exists, no matter how many outcomes you test. It'll be a constant variable that needs to be omitted over the whole but will not present itself at a constant degree upon any individual no matter how many outcomes you test.

 

I'll read into these links. Thank you, but like many dynamic analytic measurements, I'm fairly certain that this is another case of "best we can come up with" more than accurate. There are aspects that you can weigh, like the value of a strike, but there are parts of this you still can't touch even with the technology they are using currently.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Give me the 30 HR catcher over someone that hits .220 and has a "good reputation for defense." Call me simple if you must. I'm taking the hitter every time. I don't mean to downplay the defense but I'll wait to see this guy be a total butcher in MKE before I condemn him. I'm ecstatic waking up to this.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Just a complete guess, but wondering if this is the trade where the Brewers say goodbye to Corey Ray?

 

Seattle is in huge need of pitching. I'm going to guess Corbin Burnes or Freddy Peralta. Perhaps Small, Ashby or Rasmussen. The return is gonna sting a little.

 

I'll be pretty surprised if the Brewers send Burnes anywhere. I think there's too much there to give up just yet.

[adambr2]

Rosenthal saying the Mariners would receive "at least one minor leaguer" in return implies to me that there aren't MLB pieces going back and that Peralta and Burnes aren't involved. Maybe I'm reading too much into that but I stand by my belief that Burnes and/or Peralta aren't going back to Seattle in this deal.

[TJseven7]

Just a complete guess, but wondering if this is the trade where the Brewers say goodbye to Corey Ray?

 

Seattle is in huge need of pitching. I'm going to guess Corbin Burnes or Freddy Peralta. Perhaps Small, Ashby or Rasmussen. The return is gonna sting a little.

 

A poster earlier stated they are looking for pitching and my 1st thought was, "I guess we'll see what they think of Burnes."

 

If it's Supak and Nottingham, I'll be thrilled. Ashby Rasmussen or Small would be unfortunate. Not that I've given up on Burnes but I could justify it to myself that they think he's a big risk now. Peralta I could justify because I see him as a RP. The 3 younger guys have done nothing to present a degree of concern yet.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

Part of me kinda wonders if this might end up being a bigger deal than just Narvaez. Kyle Seager could slot in at 3B, and Vogelbach would be a nice bat, if you believe he can play a passable 1B. Mariners have quite a few neat pieces.

[Baldkin]

Omar comin!

[liveforoctober]

I'm bracing for the impact on the return as well although the Mariners may have lost a little leverage when they announced he was no the block due to their catching surplus so I'm hoping we retained a bit of ground in the negotiations...

 

Love the get though.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

I just can't see Burnes. A young, controllable SP who had a season so bad it'd be hard to replicate, so recently removed from playing really good baseball. The Brewers can't afford to give up on a guy like that so soon. That would really surprise me.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

I just can't see Burnes. A young, controllable SP who had a season so bad it'd be hard to replicate, so recently removed from playing really good baseball. The Brewers can't afford to give up on a guy like that so soon. That would really surprise me.

 

I'd be disappointed, but not surprised. Narvaez has 3 years of control, is looking at a $2.9 million salary this season, and provides legit offense at a position where it is rare to get it. Brewers are going to have to give up something pretty valuable for that I fear. This isn't a Yelich-level "get", but it is hugely significant nonetheless.

[MKEguy]

Omar comin!

 

^ This is my favorite part of today so far.

[Fear The Chorizo]

I can also see them trying to work out parameters to add Seager to this deal that would help soften the blow of whatever prospect or player(s) are headed to Seattle. Omar + Seager and a good chunk of his remaining contract would fill two obvious roster holes, and it wouldn't surprise me given the state of the Brewers' current 40 man roster that they include prospects not yet on it.

[MKEguy]

I just can't see Burnes. A young, controllable SP who had a season so bad it'd be hard to replicate, so recently removed from playing really good baseball. The Brewers can't afford to give up on a guy like that so soon. That would really surprise me.

 

I disagree. We are getting a known commodity that has produced at an above average level. Burnes was absolute garbage last year. He’s obviously still got a high ceiling still, but we’d be trading a what if and potential for a known producer with less control left.

 

It would hurt, as I like Burnes, but I think it would still be a good deal.

[burnzy24]

I just can't see Burnes. A young, controllable SP who had a season so bad it'd be hard to replicate, so recently removed from playing really good baseball. The Brewers can't afford to give up on a guy like that so soon. That would really surprise me.

 

In Rosenthal's tweet he said Seattle will be getting at least one minor leaguer in return so I'm not sure why people are speculating Arcia, Peralta or even Burnes. Can they trade Zack Brown prior to rule 5? If so, that is my guess.

[Jopal78]

These moves don’t happen in a vacuum. Seattle basically states they wanted to move him over salary concerns. Two teams with needs at catcher already signed Grandal and d’Arnaud. How many teams are looking to upgrade at catcher and willing to part with players to do it.

That being said, I’m sure Seattle won’t be giving him away for spare parts.