A Fable Agreed Upon

By Matt Himelfarb
Posted Thursday, September 20, 2007

One of the advantages of having an older sister who, despite being in a AP English class by her junior year doesn’t do justice to her writing ability, is that by the time you’re done arguing over who gets to do their homework on the computer desk or whether we order pizza or Chinese food for dinner, you can probably steal a few catchy phrases and metaphors for your next essay from her. After coining the term “History” as a “fable agreed upon”, I probably reiterated that phrase about 1,000 times over the next few months to make myself look smart.

Instead of going through a few paragraphs to try and explain precisely what she meant by that — if you haven’t figured it out already — one of the more notable parallels to that phrase was the research conducted by Voros McCracken over six years ago. What propelled him to sift through the necessary information was a determination to answer a simple question: Can pitchers control hits per balls in play? Despite many, many claims to the contrary, it turned that they had little control over their ability to prevent hits per balls in play.

Which raised another personal question for me: If we can separate the defense’s impact on a pitcher’s performance, than wouldn’t it be just as easy to separate the pitcher’s impact on a catcher’s ability to throw out would-be-base-stealers? Prompted by that and a recent study conducted by Baseball America’s Ben Badler about a minor league catcher’s ability to throw out runners, I looked to see if there were already any legitimate answers out there.

Fortunately for me, one of the most overlooked pieces was a column done by Baseball Prospectus’s Michael Wolverton over five and a half years ago. In it, Wolverton tried to fathom to what extent a catcher’s caught stealing percentage, (CS%) was affected by luck.

Although our conventional wisdom tell us that it’s obvious if the runner gets a good break because the pitcher doesn't hold him on well, has a poor move, slow delivery to or long stride to the plate, Wolverton found that, for the most part, CS% gives you a very good about a catcher’s ability (or lack thereof) when it comes to throwing runners out by using the correlations below:

Years Corr. Coeff.1998-1999 +0.591999-2000 +0.572000-2001 +0.78

Further, he added: “Those are pretty high numbers. For comparison, the correlation coefficient for pitchers' ERA from 2000 to 2001 was +0.40, and for hitters' batting average those same years it was +0.48. The bottom line is that knowing a catcher's CS% for one year tells you a lot about what it's going to be the next year.”

In spite of already having compiled some significant data, Wolverton didn’t stop there, contemplating the idea that many catchers traditionally catch the same pitchers year in and year out: “I've run across many others that are inconsistent with the "it's mostly the pitchers" theory. Of course, you could also probably come up with a few examples that would seem to support the theory. In fact, here's one — Mike Matheney's throwing numbers took a big step forward when he joined the Cardinals two years ago: ”Year SB CS CS% CPO SBRPMatheny MIL 1996 52 19 27% 2 1.8Matheny MIL 1997 69 34 33% 5 7.9Matheny MIL 1998 67 19 22% 0 -1.6Matheny TOR 1999 40 16 29% 0 1.3Matheny STL 2000 44 46 51% 3 16.9Matheny STL 2001 31 25 45% 5 9.7

Wolverton went on to look at a slew of catchers that switched teams and found that “The correlation coefficient for CS% from one team to the next was +0.53. That's still quite strong, and not a whole lot lower than the year-to-year correlations for all catchers shown above. In other words, knowing a catcher's CS numbers with one set of pitchers tells you a lot about what they're going to be with another set of pitchers.”

So what relevance does this all have to the Mets? Think Ramon Castro.

There’s little doubt that Castro contains the offensive prowess to take the toll of an everyday catcher. While not the 900+ OPS guy he was sporting a few months back, Mets fans have been more than satisfied with Castro’s 2007 line of .282/.324/.534. Aside from the overwhelmingly popularity of Paul Lo Duca in the eyes of Mets fans — albeit not Fred Wilpon — Castro’s defensive struggles this year (4% CS%) raises some doubts about his ability to maintain an everyday catching job. But like Mike Matheny’s jump in CS%, Castro’s defensive stats were actually quite consistent from 2004-2006 and yet, they’ve experienced an exorbitant drop-off in 2007:

Year….. Inn….. CS%

2004….. 246….. 33%
2005….. 576….. 27%
2006….. 307….. 35%
2007….. 300….. 4%

Castro’s arm has probably not been as strong or accurate this year for one reason or another, but there’s little doubt when his 2007 CS% differs so much from that of his past years that “luck” — in this case the pitchers he’s caught — has something to do with the stark drop-off. Therefore, I looked to see if Castro, like Matheny, caught a whole different set of pitchers in 2007 and 2007:

2006:

Pitcher CS% # of starts w/ Castro catching

Glavine...... 60% ...6
Trachsel...... 37%.. 5
Martinez...... 7%.. 5
Hernandez... 26%.. 4
Lima ............0% ..3
Zambrano..... 0%.. 2
Maine.......... N/A ..1

2007:

Pitcher CS% # of starts w/ Castro catching

Hernandez ....30% .....6
Perez ...........20% .....5
Maine ...........27%..... 4
Sosa ............30% .....4
Glavine..........60% .....3
Pelfrey ...........0% .....3
Vargas ...........0% ......2

What you need to extract out of that information are four things:

1) Glavine has been traditionally among the league leaders in CS%.

2) Trachsel’s propensity to take his time between pitches overshadows the fact it’s effective in upsetting a would-be base stealer’s timing; He does a solid job of holding runners for a right-hander by employing a quick, spinning pickoff move.

3) Castro was forced to catch the long, unorthodox wind-ups of Perez and Hernandez in 2007, enabling runners to get a much better jump than usual.

4) Inexperienced pitchers like Pelfrey and Vargas — whom Castro caught several times in 2007— have a tendency to pay little attention to runners on base.

Ramon Castro cannot start as the result of the fact he’s a defensive liability: A true fable agreed upon.
 

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