Cubs Hitters Have Been Helped More By Ball-Strike Calls Than Any Other Team

[Matthew Trueblood]

Is this a fluke or a skill? Will it regress, or will they continue to enjoy this edge? Yes. To all of it.

Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

 

Generally speaking, when we talk about pitch framing (that is, the value gained and lost by either team because of influences that distort the umpire's judgment of the strike zone), we think about three actors: the pitcher, the catcher, and the umpire himself. Catchers, research has taught us, can have a huge effect on the game by being good at presenting pitches near the edges of the strike zone. Naturally, they can do that better if their pitcher hits their spot, or comes near enough to doing so that the catcher doesn't have to lean, stab, or slide across the plate to receive the ball. Then, there's the ump. How susceptible to manipulation, either visual or political, are they? How good are they at calling balls and strikes in the first place?

Without a doubt, framing is real, and it's important. However, there's a key player in the drama of every pop in the mitt that we tend to overlook: the hitter. It's rarely said out loud, and too often ignored by those who criticize framing as almost cheating because of the deception component involved, but the hitter has the (semi-literal) hammer in all framing situations. Every called ball or strike by the umpire is, in part, the result of the batter's choice: he didn't swing.

By deciding whether or not to swing at any given pitch, the hitter decides whether or not the catcher and umpire even get to be involved in the outcome of that offering. There are also other, smaller ways a hitter can shape their zone--from where and how they stand in the box, to their body language as the pitch arrives, to reputation. The catcher is more important, on balance, but hitters have a say in the process. They get to make their own strike zone. In a piece earlier this month at Brewer Fanatic, I showed that this is (at least in some measure) a real and durable skill, and tried to illustrate some of the ways that might work and why.

Unlike the Brewers (who signed hitter-framing stud Rhys Hoskins this winter), the Cubs don't have an individual player who has enjoyed a benefit of multiple runs via framing effects this year. However, as a team, no one benefits from calls more than the Cubs do. Of the nine Cubs with 100 or more plate appearances so far this year, only one has a net negative count-sensitive framing runs above average: Michael Busch. By contrast, Mike Tauchman, Christopher Morel, and Ian Happ have each gained more than a run from framing, and between them, it's over 4.0. The team has a total Framing RAA of 8.4.

Paradoxically, this might hit you as bad news. Rarely does any fan base want to hear that their team has actually benefited most from calls made by officials. It has the ring of being told that their successes are somehow unearned, or that their failures are even greater than we already imagine. Remember, though, that this isn't exactly a fluke thing. Part of it is smart hitting, and a keen eye at the plate. 

It comes up far short of being a primary driver, but how often a batter swings at close pitches (those with between a 20 and an 80 percent chance of being called a strike, based on location and count) does correlate with the value they earn based on calls. Some guys cover the edges of the zone well; others are especially good at laying off the balls just off the black. Doing those things makes it more likely that called pitches will go your way. Again, the effect isn't strong or determinitive, but it's there.

TruMedia, whose database we're using to lay out this information, also tracks the number of pitches that went in the wrong direction when it wasn't even all that close. Marquee viewers will recognize these as the pitches Boog Sciambi and Jim Deshaies refer to as "egregious". The Cubs' top seven hitters--Tauchman, Morel, Happ, Cody Bellinger, Seiya Suzuki, Nico Hoerner and Dansby Swanson--have combined for 43 called balls on pitches that were at least 75 percent likely to be called a strike, and just 20 called strikes on pitches that were at least 75 percent likely to be called a ball. That ratio is phenomenal, to whatever extent it's about their skills.

Let's take a look at a few of these, to bring the concept to life. Remember the huge grand slam Ian Happ hit during that crazy game in Arizona in April? Well, on the first pitch of that plate appearance...

As you hear Boog begin to say at the end of that clip, the fact that Tucker Barnhart had to reach across the plate badly hurt his chances of getting a called strike on that pitch. Given the magnitude of the miss, the call doesn't feel especially egregious, and 0-0 pitches that get called wrong rarely draw much notice. The difference between 0-1 and 1-0 is huge, though, and in this case, that pitch began a sequence that ended with what could have been a decisive swing of the bat.

Happ might not have been taking all the way there, but I don't think he took that pitch because he thought it was a ball, either. He took it because he was locked in on a particular combination of pitch and location, and what he got didn't match it. That's a good reason not to swing 0-0, and we should give a slice of the credit for the resulting ball to Happ, for not being jumpy and for knowing what he was really looking for in a crucial situation. At the same time, we can agree that most of the responsibility for the call here goes to the pitcher and the umpire, with Happ and Barnhart playing real but secondary roles.

Happ got another favorable call on a first pitch in a big spot, at the beginning of this month against the Brewers.

We'd have to parse the contributions to this call differently, right? Happ does seem to think this one's inside, and it's very close, either way. Bryan Hudson certainly hit his spot this time, and William Contreras (who has done well framing the inside corner against righties this year) did an imperfect but adequate job of presenting the ball. The ump just missed this one, despite being right on top of the call. It's on the black, but this should have been called a strike. No big kudos to Happ here, but the value accrues, anyway.

Let's turn our attention to Tauchman, who has derived a lot of value from this skill since the start of last year--3.4 runs, with almost half that amount coming already this year. Tauchman will protect with two strikes, but he's diligent about not chasing along the edges (or even hitting a pitcher-friendly pitch) early in the count, or when he's ahead.

This game can be ruthless, and right there, it was ruthless to Jared Jones. That ball is comfortably within the strike zone, but it's in a very tough quadrant for the umpire to call. It's meant to get a hitter who's looking for a fastball they can drive jumping at the ball, whiffing or mishitting it. He ran into a problem there, because Tauchman is a smart, patient hitter, and he stays within himself even in leveraged counts. Again, there's plenty of other accounting to do, but Tauchman earned his call.

How about a couple of Christopher Morel calls, as we all carefully watch and mentally track his evolving approach? Here's a high breaking ball from Bailey Falter that went his way, just last weekend.

These are the types of calls that stand out more in people's minds. That should have been strike three, and instead, Morel got to a full count. It wasn't anywhere near the pitch Falter meant to execute, and Morel saw both the fact that it was a curve and that it wasn't going to be down in his sweet spot right away. Still, by rights, it should have been a strike. We can divvy up the credit and blame pretty evenly here, with Morel and the catcher doing their jobs well but Falter and the umpire doing theirs poorly. Had Falter done his better, Morel might have done something totally different, but the ump had the last job in the line, and had he done his, Morel still would have been out, despite a good non-swing decision.

Here's another pitch with some notable similarites--but also some key differences.

It's a testament to the better organization and understanding of his approach that Morel has exhibited this season that he knew Yoshinobu Yamamoto would try a curve, and thus, that anything heading inside on him was a bad mistake worthy of dodging. Still, Yamamoto's pitch had enough bite to come back and find the zone despite the misfire, and it was pretty well-framed. Should Morel get credit for being (in one way) right inside his opponent's head, even when behind in the count? Or should we fault him for being badly fooled on a ball that ended up a should-be strike? It's probably some of both, so while the full value of that ball goes toward his 1.2 runs of framing value (offset, of course, by the odd bad called strike, but still in the equation), we probably wouldn't ascribe the full responsibility for it to him in a more advanced hitter framing model.

In 2022, the Cubs lost 8 runs at the plate based on calls. In 2023, they swung that all the way across to a positive 8 runs. This year, they're on pace to triple that, or thereabouts. Will that happen? Probably not. Some of their luck will even out. Some of their guys' approaches will get out of whack, and they'll be punished for it. The mix of pitching they face will be different. A lot can swing this back toward zero, or just stall them out and prevent them from accruing more value based on calls. For now, though, it's been a helpful part of their offense--worth nearly a full win on its own.

We can both credit Craig Counsell, the team's battery of hitting coaches, and the hitters themselves, and acknowledge that some of that realized value is just a little bit of help from the men in blue. Count that as part of their good fortune in still being above .500, amid a turbulent start to the season. They'll need to be better going forward, in case some of their umpire luck (or bias) turns for the worse even as they get healthy.

 

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[Guest234]

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Edited May 24, 2024 by Guest234