AJ

[Hawk]

The problem is you have zero way of knowing if that has to do with the catcher or not for sure. It could be just a natural progression of the pitchers skill. But I'll play along with the notion. So if it is the case, what does the fact that the young pitchers have gotten progressively worse as the year has gone on say about AJ's ability to call a game do you think? And why should we value his control of pitchers behind the plate if that is the case?

The pitcher and the catcher are almost like a conjoined defensive unit, it's going to be hard to completely separate them no matter what kind of defensive measurement you use. It's not really something that can be 'played along with' -- the information is there, that's not up for debate, but whether or not we have the time/energy to absorb it and make a nuanced argument is another story entirely.

As to your second question ... progressively worse? In what sense? ERA? Wins?

And why would those even be your barometers?

I'm more interested in how often AJ is making Folty throw secondary stuff, or the pitch sequencing he was employing with Alex Wood versus what Wood is using in Los Angeles, things of that nature.

 

[clvclv]

Outside of blocking the plate, framing, and throwing out runners, what other parts of a catcher's defense can you actually statistically quantify? There is calling a game and being able to settle down pitchers, but that's not something you can accurately judge.

And this - in a nutshell - is why defensive metrics (in many cases) fail to persuade many doubters in them. It's still early, and I'm not about to say that they can't or won't eventually evolve into much better tools down the road - they're just not there yet.

One of the things that the current metrics can't quantify is a Catcher's ability to handle a staff, and that's something the organization strongly believes in. A big part of that is helping young Pitchers learn to handle tough situations and struggles.Things like making a trip to the mound to give a Pitcher a chance to take a deep breath and clear his head, reminding him about varying his pickoff moves and amount of time he holds the ball before delivery to keep baserunners from getting easy reads, and not simply rushing to throw the ball right back to him after every pitch. Yesterday was a great example of the last situation. One of the things I always found impressive about Laird was the fact that he "paced" younger Pitchers instead of allowing them to pace themselves. Even the blind twosome of Chip and Joe noticed that the more Wisler struggled yesterday, the faster he was to the plate with the next pitch. By the time Roger finally went to get him he was going at breakneck speed, barely waiting to get the ball back before toeing the rubber and going again. Matt barely had time to breathe before throwing his next pitch, much less think about WHO the hitter was or what the plan of attack for that hitter had been in the meetings. Part of the problem was that Lavarnway did absolutely NOTHING to try to slow him down and get him to compose himself.

Laird was a master at that part of the game - holding the ball for effect for a few seconds after receiving pitches to make sure he had the Pitcher's attention completely - motioning for him to calm down, faking a throw back to the mound then coming out of his crouch to actually throw it back, even often delivering throws to the mound with quite a bit of zip on them to make sure he had the Pitcher's complete attention. A. J. doesn't always do all of those things, but he does several of them when guys are getting ahead of themselves. Bethancourt didn't when he was up earlier in the season, and Lavarnway didn't do any of those one single time yesterday when Wisler started to get rattled and began to unravel.

 

[50PoundHead]

The pitcher and the catcher are almost like a conjoined defensive unit, it's going to be hard to completely separate them no matter what kind of defensive measurement you use. It's not really something that can be 'played along with' -- the information is there, that's not up for debate, but whether or not we have the time/energy to absorb it and make a nuanced argument is another story entirely.

As to your second question ... progressively worse? In what sense? ERA? Wins?

And why would those even be your barometers?

I'm more interested in how often AJ is making Folty throw secondary stuff, or the pitch sequencing he was employing with Alex Wood versus what Wood is using in Los Angeles, things of that nature.

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