Step one of pretty much any quality manual - measure the things you want to control

The plummeting rate of stolen base attempts has helped catchers adopt the one-knee stance. I wonder what will happen this year as stolen base attempts rise.

In 2010, pitches in the strike zone accounted for 73% of a player’s framing runs. In 2022, they accounted for 83%.

can someone explain what this sentence means? If a pitch is in the strike zone its supposed to be a strike, right? So why would a catcher get credit for a pitch in the strike zone??

can someone explain what this sentence means? If a pitch is in the strike zone its supposed to be a strike, right? So why would a catcher get credit for a pitch in the strike zone??

I mean, I'm not 100% sure what they mean for sure, but, my guess is its related to "not ####### the strike call up." If you have too much motion to catch a strike, particularly late lunges for the ball, like the catcher was fooled too, its much more likely to be called a ball. This is a known thing at all levels of baseball, not just MLB. I assume this is why catchers call the game.

can someone explain what this sentence means? If a pitch is in the strike zone its supposed to be a strike, right? So why would a catcher get credit for a pitch in the strike zone??

They have two points related to this (not just this sentence but the idea in it):

1) catchers once had pretty large variance in percentage of strikes that they get called strikes--at some level that has to matter
2) those variances have been shrinking as umpires have gotten more consistent.

A bit of #4 and in its way #5. Not all pitches in the zone, especially those on the edge of the zone, are called strikes. Bad catchers carry it out of the zone or oer-react in pulling it "back in" when it was already in; good (respected) Cs frame it well. So maybe the avverage "edge" strike is called a strike only 90% of the time but for Yadi (or whoever) it's 98% and for Contreras it's 82%.

The proportion explained ... bit harder to put in layman's terms probably. Bug figure that almost all framing runs come on pitches near the edge, one side or the other. There may simply be many more true strikes on the edge than true balls. It suggests, as #5 I think is implying, that the variatio among strikes that are called strikes on the edge is say 82% to 98% while the variations among balls that become strikes is 22% on the bad end to 30% on the good end. All numbers made up. I suppose it's much easier for a good framer to frame a strike than to frame a ball which makes sense.

If at all true you can see why pitchers like personal Cs -- how annoyed would a Kyle Hendricks get when his perfectly placed slop gets called a ball because Willson drifted it outside the zone. or jerked it back to the middle when it was perfectly fine where it was. It's hard enough sneaking a strike past a ML hitter, you don't need your C turning any true strikes into balls, that's what umpires are for.

have noted before, it has always amazed me that Cs who were able to snooker crappy umps into blundering on strike calls later noted by supervisors enjoyed the same edge in subsequent seasons.

umps have access to the replays also, and the Cs most talented at this who might threaten your job security - why continue to give the strike call on a particular edge where the C consistently fools the umps? you may not be talented enough to 'see it,' but clearly that's what was happening. so on that edge, call the pitch a ball and raise your score.

but I could be wrong.

umps have access to the replays also, and the Cs most talented at this who might threaten your job security - why continue to give the strike call on a particular edge where the C consistently fools the umps? you may not be talented enough to 'see it,' but clearly that's what was happening. so on that edge, call the pitch a ball and raise your score.

While I understand the point you're making, I think the answer is as simple as it's just not at all easy to factor in that additional information when you already have mere fractions of a second to make a call on a pitch that just came in at 90+ mph. If you try to mentally adjust for that as well based on who is catching, you are probably just as likely to let that bias you into calling a legit strike a ball.

So your best bet is to train yourself to ignore any such "history" (and, as much as possible, *anything* the catcher is doing, good or bad) and focus on calling the pitch properly.

Seems like a chicken and egg situation. Are catchers getting better at framing, or a umpires getting better at calling strikes? There's no real increase in balls being called strikes. If there's only a real increase in shadow zone strikes being called, I'd be hard pressed to separate the two.

#9 -- did you mean "pitches being called strikes" not "balls being called strikes"?

Anyway, possibly a lesson about aggregate vs individual (possibly one everybody already knows). Suppose that there's a big set of pitches that are essentially always called strikes and a set that are essentially always called balls. Then we've got a third set of pitches on the edges where, in reality, half are in the zone and half are out of the zone but they aren't always called correctly.

So half the pitches of concern are in the zone, half out. Of those in the zone, they are correctly called a strike 75% and incorrectly a ball 25%. Similarly the ones outside are called correctly 75% and incorrectly 25%. It will still be the case that half will be called strikes and half will be called balls so, in the aggregate, nothing to worry about and these things will even out across teams and even pitchers/batters with a large enough sample. A 25% error rate is not necessarily a problem if it's random across all umps, teams, players -- it will just piss off pitchers, batters and fans who will assume they're getting screwed and insist things get better. But we'll ignore their whining.

The problem is at the individual level. Here's an "odd" thing. Say Yadi gets a correct strike call 85% of the time and also steals strikes such that 35% of the balls just outside the zone are called strikes. That's a 15% error rate on the half in the zone and a 35% error rate on the half outside the zone and the overall error rate is still 25%. But instead of getting 50/50 strikes, the Cards pitchers are getting 60/40 strikes on the edge pitches. (That would be a pretty extreme effect I'd think.) On the other side, Willson is getting just 65% on those in the zone and 15% on those outside the zone -- still a 25% error rate overall but the Cub pitchers are getting 40/60 strike calls. But as long as every Yadi is balanced by a Willson, it will still be 50/50 in the aggregate. The problem is the across-team/C variation, not the aggregate.

Now suppose some umps better than others. Doug Harvey gets 85% right in the zone and only 15% wrong outside the zone -- that's a reduction to a 15% error rate but the strikes are still 50/50. Angel Hernandez gets 65% right in the zone and 35% wrong ouside the zone for a 35% error rate but it's still 50/50. That leads to a curious hypothetical of supposing there was a C out there who could turn a 75/25 ump into a 85/15 ump -- i.e. he made the ump more accurate. That wouldn't help his team as the calls would still come in 50/50. The problem is primarily across-team/C, not in the aggregate and not across umpire -- as players and coaches always say, they just want a consistent zone from an umpire.

I'm sure the reality isn't that clean (nor that dramatic). There's of course Eric Gregg who was probably close to 100% accuracy on true strikes, it was his 50% error rate on pitches outside the zone that was the problem -- still a 25% error rate overall but a 75/25 strike/ball ratio.

RE: #2 - I was a catcher my entire (VERY amateur) career. I used the one-knee stance the entire time. The reason was that the one-knee allowed me to get the ball from the glove into the throwing hand and out towards second base faster than any other stance, with, if anything, an increase in accuracy. I didn't have much of an arm, but I was able to control the opposing running game because it looked to the other team as though the ball just teleported from my glove to in the air. I never even lifted my knee. I recommend it, but then, I am not a MLB catcher.