Comments on: How Lucroy’s Defensive Decline Affects His Value

By: What We Learned: Preparing for trade deadline weekend - MLB Feeds To The Fans

What We Learned: Preparing for trade deadline weekend - MLB Feeds To The Fans — Fri, 29 Jul 2016 13:28:43 +0000

[…] How Lucroy’s Defensive Decline Affects His Value | Seth Victor, BP Milwaukee […]

By: Spahnnie

Spahnnie — Thu, 28 Jul 2016 15:20:52 +0000

Agree Kalimantan. I’ve umpired before- nothing serious- and balls and strikes are registered when the ball crosses the plate. You know at that point and start the call, not waiting to see where the C holds his pose or jerks his glove. Also, in order to develop consistency a push has been made to standarize the strike zone and umps are held to a truer standard. Without checking I would guess framing rates are down across baseball the last couple years. Luc’s huge number of CS isn’t mentioned, although opportunity may factor in.

By: kalimantan

kalimantan — Wed, 27 Jul 2016 18:42:05 +0000

There’s a discussion going on elsewhere about Lucroy and framing, on the premise that he got too good at it, and by standing out (and by people writing about framing) he drew umpires’ attention to himself. Framing is tricking the umpire, getting them to call a ball a strike. Umpires don’t exist in a different universe, they read this stuff, and they don’t like being tricked. Ergo, they focus harder on catchers like Lucroy, work out how they are framing, and get better at distinguishing balls and strikes when he is catching. Or, they simply think – this is Lucroy, he must be framing my ass, and call more marginal pitches balls instead of strikes.