The whole "game management" thing is dependent on the savvy and knowledge and ability of the pitcher as well. A veteran pitcher can control a catcher by shaking off. It tends to irritate the pitcher to have to do that and they feel out of rhythm but it can be done. The whole Greg Maddux/Javy Lopez thing comes to mind. Greg didn't like throwing to Javy but would and did when he had to and Javy's "game management" ability was non existent in those games since he called what Greg wanted to throw, whether he liked it or not. To me "game management" is more a nuance than a skill unless the staff is too young to have a real understanding of what they want to do for themselves.
Some pitchers need a savvy catcher more than others. On our current staff, Folty stands out as someone who needs quite a bit of help when he loses his cool. Keuchel much less. And although he is very young, Soroka strikes me as someone who is going to be effective regardless of the catcher.
So when we try to analyze whether McCann might be a better game manager than Flowers, it is important to look at whether he is drawing some pitchers more often. Looking at the data I posted earlier we see that its pretty close to 50-50 for all the starting pitchers.
For Teheran, McCann has caught 8 games and Flowers 9.
For Fried, McCann has caught 7 and Flowers 10.
For Soroka, McCann has caught 7 and Flowers also 7.
For Gausman, McCann has caught 7 and Flowers 6.
For Folty, McCann has caught 6 and Flowers 5.
For Keuchel, McCann has caught both starts.
For Wilson, Flowers has caught both starts.
At some point, I might take a deeper dive and check on a couple things. Do one of McCann or Flowers call for the slider more when Fried is pitching. Same question about the change when Teheran is pitching.
And there are other very subtle things. Like in Wilson's last start, I thought he needed to slow down a little with runners on base and to pitch more to the edges of the strike zone when ahead in the count. I would have to see him work with McCann to see if these were things that were different from when Flowers was catching him.
And we shouldn't overlook how the two catchers handle the pen. I thought the catcher deserved some of the blame for how Minter pitched to Conforto in the last game.
