Red Sox and Pitch Framing

            Thanks to a 7 run 8^th inning, the Red Sox came back and beat the Oakland A’s today, 7-4. They improved to 27-31, only 5.5 games back from the division leading New York Yankees. In my last Red Sox blog post, I detailed the struggles of the pitching staff, offense, and defense. Over the past few weeks, the pitching staff has started to right itself. Steven Wright has replaced Justin Masterson in the starting rotation and thrown 23 innings of 3.91 ERA and allowing a .222/.250/.404 slash line (AVG/OBP/SLG). In two starts, Eduardo Rodriguez has struck out 14 batters while only walking 4. Clay Buchholz (until today), Wade Miley, and even Joe Kelly had turned in good starts recently. When I talked about the struggles of the Red Sox pitching staff, I forgot to include something very important, something that sabermetricians had been unable to measure until only very recently: pitch framing.

            Over the past few years, the sabremetric community has come to realize the importance of pitch framing—the ability of catchers to “frame” borderline pitches so they appear to be strikes. The more strikes the better. Within baseball circles, the idea that some catchers were better at getting strike calls was well-known, but the sabermetric community had yet to find a way to analyze it. Thanks to the development of PITCHf/x technology, in 2011, Mike Fast, an analyst at Baseball Prospectus (and who now works for the Houston Astros), found a way to measure catcher’s pitch framing abilities. Fast found the difference between the best and worst framing catchers was significant. From 2007-2011, Jose Molina added 73 runs to his team through his framing ability (the equivalent of about 7 wins). Ryan Doumit, on the other hand, cost his team 66 runs (or about 6 and a half losses).

            In recent years, major league teams have placed a higher emphasis on pitch framing. The Pittsburgh Pirates, as outlined in Travis Sawchik’s excellent new book, Big Data Baseball, identified in 2012 pitch framing as an undervalued skill in the free agent market. As result, they managed to sign Russell Martin, who ranked second behind Molina in framing runs from 2007-2011, to a two year, 17 million dollar deal. Martin was worth 13 framing runs in 2013. In 2012, Pirates catchers Rod Barajas and Michael McKenry combined for -14.9. That’s a swing of almost three wins. It turns out that this once largely hidden skill could have a big impact on a team’s win-loss record.

            So how have the Red Sox catchers done so far in pitch framing this season? Not so good. Below are the pitch framing numbers from Baseball Prospectus for the three players who have caught for the Red Sox this season.

	Framing Chances	Extra Strikes	Framing Runs	Framing Runs per 7000 chances[1]
Ryan Hanigan	1104	-3	-0.4	-2.8
Blake Swihart	1578	-5	-0.8	-3.5
Sandy Leon	1055	-16	-1.1	-3.1

Hanigan, who suffered a broken right hand and has not caught since May 1, is the best Red Sox catcher at pitch framing. This year he ranks a woeful 50^th in framing runs. Throughout his career, however, Hanigan has been one of the better pitch framers in the league. From 2008-2014, Hanigan has been worth 75 framing runs (or about seven and a half wins). The Red Sox expected to pair Hanigan with incumbent starter Christian Vazquez who finished ninth in the majors last season with 14.1 framing runs and got 94 extra strikes for the Red Sox pitching staff. Vazquez, however, tore his ulnar collateral ligament during spring training and required Tommy John surgery. He won’t play again until the 2016 season.

            Instead of having two catchers with good track records at pitch framing, the Red Sox have had to rely on rookie Blake Swihart, who was expected to spend most of the season at AAA, refining his bat and pitch calling abilities, and Sandy Leon, acquired after being designated for assignment by the Nationals towards the end of spring training. In limited opportunities, Leon has not demonstrated any particular pitch framing skill. In 986 framing chances in 2014, Leon earned zero extra strikes. This season he has cost Red Sox pitchers 16 strikes and it’s only June.

So as the Red Sox continue to struggle to win games, it seems they won’t be getting any help from their catchers getting those borderline strike calls for the pitching staff. 

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[1] 7000 is the approximate number of pitches thrown per season, so Framing Runs per 7000 estimates a catcher’s framing runs if he caught the entire season.