MLB Strike Zone Box Graphic

[saevel25]

2 minutes ago, Double Mocha Man said:

They should coach the batter, through the minors, not to call the pitch themselves and start down to first base.  Umpires feel like they're being shown up and will often call it a strike.  Obviously that's what happened here.  Was Angel Hernandez behind the plate?

It probably has to do more with framing the pitch. 

FanGraphs Pitch Framing

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Pitch framing has come to FanGraphs.

Framing is so influential on the umpire that a catcher can save a team up to 50-60 runs a year or hurt their team by up to 50-60 runs per year. It is absolutely a skill at tricking the umpire into calling strikes more often. 

Quote

Our models show that each framing run (per game) adds 3.9% to a pitchers strikeout rate and subtracts 3.9% from his walk rate. Or put another way, it adds 7.8% to the difference. What does this amount to in terms of runs? For that, we can use Tango’s kwERA formula:

kwERA = 5.40 − 12 · (SO% − BB%)

Adding 7.8% to the difference between SO% and BB% should add 12 · 7.8% = 0.94 to a pitcher’s ERA. Again, this is consistent with the 0.92 we’d expect.

 

[Double Mocha Man]

Mariners rookie Julio Rodriguez being set up to fail by awful umpiring

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It’s getting ridiculous at this point.