When it comes to catchers these days, we all think about framing. That’s where the hype is, right? Cachers fooling umpires? Adding in a few extra strikes to help out their pitchers? Of course, there’s more to the catching position. Blocking pitches, right? Throwing runners out. Maybe even catcher interference.
I got thinking about that last bit this morning, and pulled out some information on CI. Then for extra measure I added in Passed Balls. How, I wondered, has the catcher ability rating seemed to influence these things? Any at all? Would I be able to tell? The data will be noisy at this stage, I’d think. But what the hell, let’s see what we get.
So first I sorted out the catcher interference events that have happened so far, noting each catcher’s defensive ratings.
There have been eight:
| Catcher | TEAM | AB | ARM |
|---|---|---|---|
| R. Klooster | MEX | 8 | 6 |
| H. Yi | YS9 | 6 | 7 |
| J. Pochin | EDM | 6 | 6 |
| P. Portillo | CLG | 6 | 7 |
| H. Park | OMA | 7 | 6 |
| R. Elìas | CHI | 8 | 9 |
| C. Hughes | ATC | 5 | 7 |
| G. Velázquez | MEX | 7 | 3 |
That’s interesting in itself, right? A quick scan shows no 9, 10, or 11 ability ratings. Is that relevant? Also, at present, no catcher has had more than one such event. It is, of course, still moderately early in the season. I suppose I should look again at the end of the year.
But for now, let’s press on.
In order to get some context, I wanted to look at the opportunity field. Raw counts are interesting, but I’m looking for something more substantial, so I grabbed my latest fielding stats/ratings view from today’s game file, and then tabulated Innings Played, and PB by ratings.
(Aside: It’s annoying that OOTP doesn’t give Catcher Interference in the options for adding a data field. I suppose I should request that, but for now I’ll just complain.)
Anyway…once I had the data tabulated, I then calculated a PB and CI rate per 1000 innings played. Here it is:
| ABILITY | IP | PB | CI | PB/1000 IP | CI/1000 IP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 1892.7 | 11 | 1 | 5.81 | 0.528 |
| 6 | 2742.7 | 13 | 3 | 4.74 | 1.094 |
| 7 | 5467.7 | 26 | 2 | 4.76 | 0.366 |
| 8 | 5892 | 27 | 2 | 4.58 | 0.339 |
| 9 | 2010.7 | 9 | 4.48 | 0.000 | |
| 10 | 3908.2 | 12 | 3.07 | 0.000 | |
| 11 | 18 | 0 | 0.00 | 0.000 | |
| TOTAL | 21932 | 98 | 8 | 4.47 | 0.365 |
Fascinating, right? I mean, yes, I’d be willing to bet the data is still unsettled, so that makes the results themselves unstable. For example, I figure it’s unlikely that a “6” Ability Catcher has more CI than a “5” Ability Catcher, but the indicators suggest that Catcher Ability does appear to influence both PB and CI events.
If you take this data to the bank, which you should not, it suggests a “10” Ability Catcher is half as likely to give a PB as a “5” Ability catcher. It also suggests that “9” and above Catcher Ability will result in very few if any Catcher Interference events, whereas lower ratings will put a guy on base every now and again.
I also found it interesting to see the IP of catchers of each rating.
I’m not sure why I find that interesting, beyond that fact that I do. I suppose it gives us GMs a bit of insight to the competitive field. After all, everything is relative. If the average BBA catcher’s Ability Rating is 6, we can get away with playing uglier defensive players than if the average BBA catcher’s Ability Rating is 7.69, which is what it is on a per inning played basis.
So I think the bottom line is that – while the sample size could be made better -- this little study with live data in a live league suggests that Catcher Ability influences PB (which is not surprising at all), as well as CI (which isn’t surprising, but which I don’t think I’d ever really looked at before). Is the balance/influence “right?” I have no idea. But if this is true, I like the basic concept.
So, kudos, I think, to the Dev team.
