I took a deeper dive into MLB Catchers for the year 2023. I found lots of interesting stuff. Let’s get to it.
In this post, I decided to focus on catcher framing. Some catchers are better than others in fooling umpires that a ball is a strike. That is what catcher framing is all about. This may surprise some of you, but all this data is now readily available. Every pitch is tracked with impressive accuracy, with terabytes of data generated for each game played.
I created this figure to illustrate the standardized zones used for pitches thrown to home plate. The following is taken from the perspective of the catcher and home plate umpire.
Take Zone 11, for example. The reams of data tell us the percentage of pitches in that area that are taken and called strikes. In 2023, 19.2% of all pitches thrown into that zone were called strikes. Austin Hedges, then a catcher for the world-champion Texas Rangers, managed to get 27.6% of those pitches called strikes by the sweaty man crouching behind him. Get the idea? Hedges’ strike rate for that zone led all of MLB.
Hedges’ work in Zone 13 was even more impressive. The league average for pitches thrown up and away to right-handed batters was 23.6%. Hedges managed to get strike calls on 42.2% of those pitches. Extraordinary.
I ran a Cluster Analysis of all the framing data across all the zones to recognize the top ten catchers in MLB in 2023. Hedges and Patrich Bailey of the San Francisco Giants stand apart based on their superior performance.
And, yes, what is a top ten list without a bottom ten list? There might be a name or two on there that will surprise you.
In a previous post, I had identified J.T. Realmuto as having an outstanding defensive season in 2023. Regarding pitch framing, he ranked a ridiculous 63rd. I admit, I found that unexpected.
Now, we can move on to something very cool. I have known what heatmaps are for a long time, but I have never needed to create one. It simply never came up. Guess what is next; go ahead.
I want to point out one aspect of this map: Hedges was well below the league average regarding framing pitches in Zone 14. I must admit, that is curious. I do not know why he would be so bad in that area and excel in all the other zones. I have no explanation for that anomalous chunk of data.
And, yes, I also generated a heatmap for the bottom ten catchers in 2023.
Another strange fact is that Martin Maldonado was very good at getting strike calls in Zone 11 but well below average in all the others. Does that have something to do with the pitchers on the Houston Astros in 2023? That line of reasoning might lead to a possible explanation.
I thought that was the end of this post, but I decided to test the new AI release that ChatGPT just dropped. I asked it for recommendations on how it would display this data. It offered up something very cool. Here are Radar Plots of the top 5 and bottom 5 catchers for pitch framing for the 2023 season.
Note that Hedges in Zone 13 and Miguel Amaya in Zone 17 stand out.
These plots are beautiful, but I haven’t decided on their utility. Are they diagnostic enough to merit their use? We will look more into that question in future posts.
At least for now, the takeaway is that determining the best defensive catcher in 2023 is much more subtle and nuanced than one might have imagined. Stay tuned; there is more to come.
