Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 180: Carlos Quentin vs. Zack Greinke/Why Catcher Height Matters for Framing

Episode Date: April 12, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss the brawl between the Dodgers and Padres, then talk about Ben’s latest catcher framing research.

Good morning and welcome to episode 180 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from www.baseballperspectus.com. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. Ben, how are you? Great. Great. Yes. Great. You were up all night writing, I assume. We're coming to you from the morning time on Friday, which means that by now we know that Zach Granke has a, I believe, broken collarbone,

and that Matt Kemp believes that the Padres are a bitch. I've been there. I've had a broken collarbone. I've had three. Three? Three broken collarbones. Wow. All as a child. Right.

Yeah, mine was a horrendous seesaw accident. What were yours? One was wrestling, one was out of a high chair, and one was off a jungle gym. Uh-huh. Collarbone seems like a child's injury more than anything else. Zach Greinke looks like a child. Yes. Is it possible that he is a child?

I was impressed that the fracture happened, I guess, in the initial charge of the mound, and then they showed him kind of standing around after with just a completely impassive look on his face. Maybe just because he is Zach Greinke and isn't quite like the rest of us sometimes. But he didn't really give any sign that he had just broken a bone. Yeah, I also was shocked by that. That was pretty impressive.

I cried. I wonder, you cried when you broke yours? I was five or six, but yes, I cried. I wonder you cried when you broke yours. I was five or six, but yes, I cried. What, what did you fall off the seesaw naturally or did somebody prank you? Uh, no, it was, it was my grandma was like, she just pushed me off. Uh, I don't know. I was, there was a miscommunication. One of us was, was getting on the seesaw or getting off the seesaw and we, was a miscommunication. One of us was getting on the seesaw or getting off the seesaw and we didn't coordinate and there was a high price paid by me. Well, we're going to talk briefly in a little bit more detail about this fight that happened

last night and you're going to talk about? Something I wrote about catcher framing. Surprise. Surprise. All right. So a lot of the narrative on this fight developed while we were sleeping, but basically it seems like— While you were sleeping. While I was sleeping. So you actually might know more about this. But basically it seems like people think that Carlos Quentin is an idiot because, you know, obviously Carlos Quentin gets hit by more pitches than anybody

in the universe and that it's unlikely that Granke would have thrown at him to put the tying run on base and that he's a big, dumb moron and that he should be suspended for a very long time because Granke is hurt. And I have a few issues with a few of the pieces of logic involved there. But, you know, obviously, I don't really know as well as those guys know. But what do you make of the bad guys and the good guys here? I mean, it's sort of hard to understand. I assume there's more to it than I know from just watching on TV. I mean, Quentin says that there is a history between the two of them. And yes, Granke has hit him twice before, but everyone has hit Carlos Quentin twice

before. Eric Bedard has hit Carlos Quentin three times in nine plate appearances. So Eric Bedard must really, really hate Carlos Quentin. So I don't know. He said something about what Granke said to him that made him decide to charge the mound. But it seems like he just said stop, which I guess would be kind of annoying. He said stop at what point? I think when Quentin kind of initially reacted, supposedly, Granke said stop and then Quentin. So that's what that word is, yeah. I think, I don't know, at least I read and kind of looked like that, which, I don't know, I guess could be kind of annoying

but probably not a good reason to charge the mound. I don't know. I mean, he obviously gets hit all the time and does not charge the mound every time, so something about this seems different to him. I don't know whether it was that he got hit earlier in the week and was still residually annoyed about that. Or, I don't know, he seems to believe that it was intentional

or that the previous times were intentional. Granke denies that. And Granke is usually a guy who tells the truth about things that players don't tell the truth about typically. I mean, it would not be smart to admit that he did it intentionally. But if anyone were going to do that, and occasionally someone does, I would think it would be Granke. So I don't know. Frankie. So I don't know. I'm not ready to vilify him, I guess, but I don't particularly understand the thought process behind charging the mound. I mean, ever really, but particularly in this case.

Yeah, I basically trust Quentin's instinct in this. And I basically trust that he has some idea of when he's been kind of aggressively wronged. I've been kind of flipping frame by frame across Granke's face just before he charges and trying to sort of determine exactly how aggressive Granke's face looks. But, I mean, it seems clear that Quentin probably wouldn't have charged if Granky had you know simply walked walked away or whatever you know I mean Granky turns and faces Quentin and says something in a emphatic voice and I mean I'm not saying that that's exactly the same as like I don't know yelling a slur or something like that. I mean, I'm not saying that Granke deserves a broken collarbone for it, but it seems like there's some element of fighting words going on here.

And batters charge pitchers. Pitchers don't charge batters. And the pitcher equivalent of charging a batter is – I would love to see that. It would be interesting. But the pitcher equivalent is to throw a pitch and then aggressively face the guy. I mean, that's essentially inviting the guy to charge. I would love to see that. which he either intended to hit Quentin or didn't, and turning and facing Quentin and saying something at him, which he either intended to be fighting words or he didn't, there's a lot of ambiguity there, and I sort of appreciate Quentin's position.

Now, obviously, so here's the thing, though. I mean, I'm basically a total pacifist when it comes to sports and most things in life. And so, I mean, I think it's ridiculous that Quentin would go and fight an adult human being in front of lots of other people. It seems bizarre and weird and it's one of my least favorite things about baseball. But there is an acceptance of this general idea in baseball that it's okay to go fight on a mound as long as you're willing to get suspended for a few games. Once you allow that, it seems like a lot of the nuance that we're negotiating over is sort of undefined and it's hard to judge the guy over.

I mean, we allow people to fight. And so Carlos Quentin going and fighting doesn't seem any more wrong here than it does in the dozens of other brawls that we'll see this year next year and the year after yeah i mean it i guess it's it's not like granky's collarbone broke because because quentin i don't know pulled out a like a hammer and hit him with it he kind of did what what a hitter typically does when he charges the mound and for whatever reason it resulted in a broken bone this particular time um i mean maybe there was more intent to injure in this case than there is in the typical charge of the mound i don't know uh but but yeah i mean if you it seems like you should kind of

punish a a mound charge the same kind of regardless of whether anyone gets hurt as a result of it, unless there's some sort of egregious action that results in that injury. Um, I don't know whether, so does, does Granke's kind of aggressive, uh, reaction after the pitch make you, make you feel like it's more likely that it was intentional at all or do you just think it was just an inflammatory reaction either way but but yeah i'm not sure because you can really make a case for either one if he was throwing up and in to try to hit quentin then he would turn and say something to him to reinforce his point if he wasn't then he's turning and saying something about how quentin is overreacting. Sit down, you idiot.

I mean, you can make the case for either one of those. So I wouldn't say that I could presume to know. Yeah, he said something after the game about how he thinks Quentin might be doing this just sort of as an intimidation tactic and to make it— Which I—yeah, I thought about that last night, but that doesn't make sense because Quentin wants to get hit. Yeah, I guess that's true. Well, Grinke said that maybe he wants people to pitch him away

and not pitch him inside. I don't know if he struggles with inside pitches particularly. Obviously, the hitting, the getting hit by pitches helps him as long as it doesn't hurt him, I mean, physically. So, I don't't know maybe it would be interesting to see how he does on inside pitches and whether he'd have a lot of incentive to get people to to pitch to him outside but i guess that's a possible motivation and if cranky thought that that was what quentin was doing then it's understandable that he would react by kind of not, not being

cowed by the intimidation attempt. Mm-hmm. Uh, yeah, I wrote about Quentin's hit by pitches maybe a year and a half ago and, uh, found, if I recall correctly, that there is a situational bias toward him getting hit in some counts where it's more pitcher-friendly counts, which suggests to me that a lot of those hit-by-pitches are strategic, that he wants to get on base. But the idea that getting hit-by-pitch would be a way of getting pitchers to pitch him outside, and that intimidating pitchers would also be a way of getting pitchers to pitch him outside

is actually interesting. There's a very interesting topic there. It could potentially change the outcome of the NL West race. Who knows? Krenke is out for a while, and presumably Matt Kemp will be suspended for a while. Yeah, I wonder how long Kemp will get suspended. Because Kemp, if Kemp went, I might have the details wrong, but he kind of went after Quentin after the game as well, like in the parking lot, right?

I don't know. I didn't read about that. I think he did, and I think he went yelling names at him and such. If that's true, that seems to me to be a clear breach of the fighting limitations. Essentially, it's Solaire without the bat. It's taking the fight after the fight is over. The best part of any brawl is always the bullpens emptying. And the bullpen emptying in this brawl was fantastic. It was so delayed because it was like the initial scrum kind of happened. And I don't think the bullpens emptied initially.

I guess they figured it was going to blow over. And then it kind of started up again. And then all the relievers trotted in. But I guess the bullpens are pretty close together, so they kind of trotted in side by side peacefully to get to the brawl, at which point they would then start betting. I don't know. I always really enjoy the bullpen emptying because they never, ever get there,

really, before the hostilities are over. They always get there after it's all over, and then they just kind of stand around awkwardly showing their support. Ben, you're not a big guy, and you don't seem like a fighter. If you somehow figured out a way to get onto a major league team, like as a catcher who could really frame or something like that, and there was a fight like this, and let's say it was like a crazy fight

where there were lots of punches being thrown, et cetera you do would you go out would you run out uh i don't know i don't i mean yeah i guess i would run out because you can't not run out um because you have to kind of be a good teammate and all that uh But I don't know, I guess if I were a major leaguer, I would just have a different personality than the one I do. I guess it's kind of inconceivable that I could get to the major leagues because I don't have a very fiery competitive personality that probably serves you well as you attempt to become a major leaguer. So maybe everyone who gets to that point kind of has that personality. I don't know what I would do. I guess I would go out there and mill about, maybe hold someone back.

All right. So let's go for it. What's the next topic? So I wrote about framing in my continuing effort to be typecast as the guy who writes about framing. I started a series this week at BP every Friday where I look back at some good and bad catcher frames from the previous week and talk about some framing stuff. You can read it at BP. It's free because it uses a lot of pitch effect stuff, and we are supposed to make pitch effect stuff free because pitch effects is free.

So this week, in addition to kind of looking at the good and bad frames, I looked at kind of the areas of the strike zone that certain catchers are good at framing in because, I don't know, I guess I just sort of used to assume that someone who was good at framing was good at framing everywhere. And if you could receive a pitch well on the outside corner, then you could receive a pitch well low or high. And that skill would just sort of translate. And with some guys it does. Like Jose Molina can just frame a pitch anywhere,

but there are other guys who just have really, really extreme, I guess you could say framing splits between how good they are at receiving a pitch in one area and how good they are at receiving a pitch in another. So someone like Joe Maurer is really, really good at receiving high strikes. And he gets a lot of high strikes called strikes or high pitches called strikes. But he's bad at low pitches, like significantly below average. And then Jonathan Lucroy is kind of the opposite. He is really, really, really good at low pitches, just way above average called strike rate on those, but below average on high pitches. And it was interesting because I looked at the top five guys in called high strike rate,

top five guys in in called high strike rate and they were all tall people uh joe mauer was 6'5 tyler flowers salta lamakia and kratz are all 6'4 and then molina was on there just because he's molina and he's 6'2 uh and so i thought maybe there was some sort of relationship there so and and lucroy lucroy do you know which one it is? I would have always guessed LeCroy. Yeah, that's what I always thought too, but then I heard someone say LeCroy. Now I doubt myself. And he's not a particularly big guy,

and he's good at low strike stuff. So I looked at the correlation between height and how good a guy is at framing high in the strike zone and low in the strike zone. And it turns out that there is one. Tall catchers tend to be better at framing high pitches. It's a moderate correlation of 0.35. So it's not always the case that a good catcher is good at high pitches, but it is often the case, or there's often a tendency towards that. And it doesn't extend quite so much in the other direction with, with low, uh, short catchers being good at low pitches. That correlation is only negative 0.12,

which is probably something, but is, is weak. Uh, so tall catchers have a bigger advantage on high pitches than short catchers do on low pitches. And that's probably, I would think, because it's easier to sort of drop the glove and get a low strike than it is to bring a glove up and get a high strike. bring a glove up and get a high strike. And if you're tall, then your target is already higher. So you don't have to bring it up as much and it doesn't distract the umpire as much. But it's interesting to me that there is that relationship. And I wonder whether there is a way for teams or certain teams to exploit it somehow. The split with Maurer is so drastic that I was thinking that since he does kind of split time between catcher and first base and DH, you could arrange his starts so that he tends to catch people who throw up in the zone more often. So if someone who throws up in the zone is starting, then maybe you make that one of the days that he is catching. If someone who works down in the zone is starting, then maybe that you make that one of his rest days

or one of the days that he plays first or DH. And I wonder whether there would be some advantage to kind of considering that when you are, I don't know, if you're just kind of choosing between catch and throw guys, backup guys who are more or less the same and decent receivers, if one of them is tall and one of them is short, maybe you could kind of pair them with your starting catcher in such a way that you always have a big guy with guys who work up in the zone and a small guy with guys who work down in the zone.

So I thought it was interesting. If you have a backup catcher who you're going to basically try to link to one pitcher as much as possible, like the Giants do with Hector Sanchez, for instance, then you would take that into account. Although I guess a lot of times you just let the backup catcher catch the day game after a night game, in which case this information would probably be a luxury that you wouldn't really get to act too much on. But just out of curiosity, let's say you had a backup catcher who was left-handed and a starting catcher who hit left-handed and a starting catcher who hit right-handed, and your plan is normally to get the backup catcher one start a week roughly

and to always have him batting against a right-handed pitcher so you at least get the platoon advantage. Would you guess that the catcher framing advantage of a situation like this where one catcher is significantly better on high pitches and you have a pitcher who works high in the zone, that sort of situation that you just described would be more valuable than the platoon advantage on the offensive side or less valuable? Yeah, I think it would be more valuable. I mean, it depends on the size of that split, but if it were a Maurer or Lucroix type split, then yeah,

I definitely think so. That would be, I think, worth more than whatever advantage you get from some bad hitter who has the platoon advantage. Yeah, I would definitely give more weight to the framing if it were a big difference between them. So it'd be interesting, you mentioned that Maurer has a big split between high and low, but I would like to see visually somehow how much variance there is for all catchers between each of these type of zones. Because like Molina, you noted, is extremely consistent in all of them,

and Domet, I assume, is bad in all of them. It would be interesting to see if Maurer is the freak here, See if Maurer is the freak here or if each catcher really does have usually one skill but not all three skills sort of a thing. Yep. Maybe I will look into it a little more in one of my many more articles about this topic. Yeah. Sounds good. All right.

So that's the end of the week. We'll be back on Monday with episode 181. Enjoy your baseball.