Ausmus also gets the career laurel as the cumulative king of framing for the past quarter century. In an 18-year career behind the plate, he added roughly one win per season through his ability to earn extra strike calls. Once more, the purported divide between scouting and statistical analysis is revealed to be a false one: way before numbers-based discussions on framing were made, teams were willing to give playing time to weak-hitting catchers like Ausmus because of their defensive ability. ...Read More...

Clubhouse Confidential sits down with Baseball Prospectus’ Ben Lindbergh to examine the best pitch framing catchers and then talks to ex-catcher Dave Valle about the art of pitch-framing.

A lot of analytical baseball articles today will make some sort of reference to catcher pitch-framing. References to pitch-framing will often make references to Jose Molina, and they will less often but still somewhat often make references to Livan Hernandez. References to Livan Hernandez often lead to recollections of the 1997 NLCS, and Eric Gregg’s strike zone in Game 5. Consensus is that Gregg’s zone was extremely favorable to Hernandez, and it was a big reason why the Marlins were able ...