Ryan Jeffers is Setting Up His Pitchers to Maximize Strikes, After the Twins Changed the Way They Set Up Jeffers - Caretaker Exclusive

[Parker Hageman]

There's been a shift in the state of the art of pitch framing, having everything to do with where you set up to wait for the ball. The Twins are on the cutting edge of it, especially with the man they hope is their catcher of the medium-term future.

Image courtesy of © Jay Biggerstaff-USA TODAY Sports

If you log onto the World Wide Web and check out the 2024 Catcher Framing Leaderboard on Baseball Savant, you must scroll pretty far down to find Minnesota Twins catcher Ryan Jeffers. 

It's been a slow slide down that leaderboard since 2021, when he was near the top of the list, saving the team two runs in the process. But his downward trajectory isn't all his fault: the Twins have instructed catchers in the organization to sit middle-middle, presenting prominent targets.

This somewhat counters the bottomfeeder ethos introduced by Tanner Swanson. The Twins catchers were encouraged to get under the ball and get it back toward the middle of the zone, thus blurring the edges of the strike zone for pitches at or near the bottom.

Swanson moved on to the New York Yankees organization, and his successor, Tucker Frawley, leaned into the philosophy that catchers should set up middle-middle to present a clear target well within the borders of the strike zone for the pitcher. This method diverted from trying to nab pitches on the corners to some degree. Framing is still very much a practice the Twins emphasize in their receiving methods – catchers will still pull pitches toward the middle of the zone – but the newer practice centers on the idea that pitchers will miss less when aiming directly at the center of the zone.

Research shows that even the most elite pitchers in the league do not have the precision we like to believe. Many readers will swear Greg Maddux had command so fine he could hit a penny off a hummingbird's back, but most pitchers regularly miss their intended targets by up to two baseballs’ diameters. If a catcher is set up on the edges of the zone, this could mean pitches wind up in non-competitive areas.

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For more on the effects of target-setting behind the plate, with the other Twins catcher in the spotlight, check out Matthew Trueblood's piece on Pablo López, from last month.

The concepts of framing and targeting are intertwined. Both are mainly trying to increase the margins in favor of the defense, and to flip counts. By setting up middle-middle, the defensive side is hedging that they will be able to increase the number of favorable counts by having their pitchers throw more in-zone strikes – even if they miss their intended target. While a catcher might gain strikes by providing targets or setting up on the corners or bottom of the strike zone, pitchers may lose more strikes by egregiously missing their spot. No amount of showmanship behind the plate will win a strike that bounces on the way there.

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[Karbo]

I hope they figure out the ABS or robo ump system soon, so all this pitch framing stuff can go away.

[Schmoeman5]

The exact reason I was replying. Look how great our catcher is at stealing strikes from umpires. Except when the shoe is on the other foot. Then they yell. We need robo umps.  Ban framing. Ban the rectangular strike zone box.

[bean5302]

8 minutes ago, Karbo said:

I hope they figure out the ABS or robo ump system soon, so all this pitch framing stuff can go away.

That's basically what this article is speculating. Pitch framing has gone away because Jeffers isn't trying to frame pitches anymore, he's setting pitchers up with an initial reference point of a full on meatball, and the pitcher is able to adjust based on that. This is possible because of the PitchCom system where the following is relayed to the pitcher after the last pitch "pitch".... "location" i.e. "slider... low and away" so the catcher doesn't need to position their glove where they'd like the actual pitch. Instead, by placing their glove at a center-center reference point, the pitcher can work off that reference to throw more strikes.

It doesn't seem viable to me. I'm not a pitcher, but regardless of the sport, you keep your eyes fixated on a location as much as possible to maximize your chances of hitting that location. That makes me believe it's not likely this is actually happening a lot with a pitcher if that pitcher who is showing good control during the game. Pitchers are definitely going to miss their spots more with the speculated method. They'll throw more strikes, and more meatballs that'll end up in the seats and I'd much rather have a ball or two called than a home run allowed.

Also, Vazquez has high framing numbers while Jeffers is poor in the category so lack of consistency with the catchers means this isn't likely a "Twins approach." Also, pitch framing often bounces around from year to year so I don't think it's a reliable or particularly valuable metric.

[Andrew Bryz-Gornia]

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Research shows that even the most elite pitchers in the league do not have the precision we like to believe. Many readers will swear Greg Maddux had command so fine he could hit a penny off a hummingbird's back, but most pitchers regularly miss their intended targets by up to two baseballs’ diameters. If a catcher is set up on the edges of the zone, this could mean pitches wind up in non-competitive areas.

This is one of the simplest facts that baseball fans fail to understand. Back in 2013, Jeff Sullivan (then with FanGraphs) compared where the catcher set up to where Mariano Rivera threw his cutter. He found that Rivera still missed his target on multiple occasions. A similar thing was with former pitcher Matt Thornton, who credited his breakthrough in MLB with being coached that his stuff was so good that he could aim down the middle of the plate and let his pitches' movement carry the ball to the corners of the plate. 

The pitching staff has given up a lot of home runs relative to the rest of the league, but they're also 2nd in the league in strikeout rate and 3rd in walk rate. I'm sure that coaching the pitchers to aim for the corners might lead to fewer home runs allowed, but likely would also cause the strikeout and walk rates to trend in the wrong directions as well. 

[Doctor Gast]

Also the fad is that the catcher creeps up & catches the ball earlier to steal strikes. This also causes more catcher interference & injury to catchers catching a bat across the forearms. Hurry up & bring in the ABS system.

[ashbury]

7 hours ago, Andrew Bryz-Gornia said:

I'm sure that coaching the pitchers to aim for the corners might lead to fewer home runs allowed, but likely would also cause the strikeout and walk rates to trend in the wrong directions as well. 

Home runs can be pretty dire though.  I'd give up a little on the K and BB rates to get a little better HR rate in return.

Your overall point is well taken, that these issues are all intertwined.  Elementary stats look static and easy to analyze, but I hope the Twins analytics staff know how to walk and chew gum at the same time when figuring out how to guide the on-field staff. (And vice versa.)

[Reptevia]

If I was an umpire, I’d call every “framed” pitch a ball. 

[ashbury]

29 minutes ago, Reptevia said:

If I was an umpire, I’d call every “framed” pitch a ball. 

It's possible the two clauses of your sentence are even more closely related than you intended. 😀

[Parker Hageman]

22 hours ago, Doctor Gast said:

Also the fad is that the catcher creeps up & catches the ball earlier to steal strikes. This also causes more catcher interference & injury to catchers catching a bat across the forearms. Hurry up & bring in the ABS system.

It's also a tactic to "save" passed balls/wild pitches. 

Frawley talked about that strategy a little bit in the article linked above:

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"Blocking is a really good topic where we have an emotional attachment to a ball that hits the dirt and squares us up in the chest and the catcher recovers and keeps the guy from moving on to the next base. When in reality, if we just pick that clean or our depth is good enough where we don’t even have to pick it, it’s in a sense just as efficient as the ball that we were accustomed to calling an actual block."

 

I can't tell you if this is happening with Jeffers -- if you just look at the photo above, he appears to be in the same depth as he was in 2021. League wide, however, we've see a big drop in the number of passed balls allowed (even with the one-knee set-up!). 

From 2014 through 2021 (excluding the shortened 2020 season), catchers averaged 354 passed balls per season. Starting in 2022, that dropped to 231 and was 232 last year. This year's pace is set to be even lower than that. Wild pitches are also down about 200 per season in the last two years.

10 years ago catcher called fastballs at a 57% clip. That's down to 47% this year. In theory, with pitches with more spin, there should be more balls in the dirt. If a catcher is further up toward the plate, there is less of a chance that ball hits the dirt. 

The other factor for this is that a lot of the decline in passed balls/wild pitches happened after pitch com was introduced, theoritically eliminating more of the cross-ups that might happen when a catcher is throwing down longer sign sequences. 

[Matt Johnson]

On 6/11/2024 at 11:08 AM, Schmoeman5 said:

The exact reason I was replying. Look how great our catcher is at stealing strikes from umpires. Except when the shoe is on the other foot. Then they yell. We need robo umps.  Ban framing. Ban the rectangular strike zone box.

Catchers have been framing pitches since the 1800s. 

[Matt Johnson]

On 6/11/2024 at 7:34 PM, Reptevia said:

If I was an umpire, I’d call every “framed” pitch a ball. 

You must have hated Brian Harper. 

[Matt Johnson]

On 6/12/2024 at 10:50 AM, Parker Hageman said:

It's also a tactic to "save" passed balls/wild pitches. 

Frawley talked about that strategy a little bit in the article linked above:

I can't tell you if this is happening with Jeffers -- if you just look at the photo above, he appears to be in the same depth as he was in 2021. League wide, however, we've see a big drop in the number of passed balls allowed (even with the one-knee set-up!). 

From 2014 through 2021 (excluding the shortened 2020 season), catchers averaged 354 passed balls per season. Starting in 2022, that dropped to 231 and was 232 last year. This year's pace is set to be even lower than that. Wild pitches are also down about 200 per season in the last two years.

10 years ago catcher called fastballs at a 57% clip. That's down to 47% this year. In theory, with pitches with more spin, there should be more balls in the dirt. If a catcher is further up toward the plate, there is less of a chance that ball hits the dirt. 

The other factor for this is that a lot of the decline in passed balls/wild pitches happened after pitch com was introduced, theoritically eliminating more of the cross-ups that might happen when a catcher is throwing down longer sign sequences. 

DO NOT tell this to Jeff Frye 🤣

[Schmoeman5]

8 minutes ago, Matt Johnson said:

Catchers have been framing pitches since the 1800s. 

The history of baseball. Did Roger Bresnahan sharpen those framing techniques. He had to be the guy who invented it. On the advice from John McGraw. You know. The guy who took balls in the outfield and if one was hit in the gap would miraculously throw runners out trying for extra bases. They used to do that too.