The Baseball Hipsters' War Against Salvador Perez: Episode I
If I were to ask you what were the most important traits for a catcher to have, the most likely answers you would receive would be: good leadership, a cannon arm, a willingness to sacrifice the body and a solid bat that can play in the No. 4 through No. 7 spot in the lineup every day.
Sadly, according to most baseball hipsters, you would be wrong because the most important traits for a catcher are the ability to draw walks and the ability to deceive the umpire. Those two traits right there are the only traits that matter in a catcher because baseball hipsters want to relegate catcher to the status of modern-day NBA centers, a defensive centric position who might as well sit on the bench when the offense is doing its thing.
Now the reason why American League baseball is superior to National League baseball is the inclusion of the designated hitter, which eliminates the comedy routine of pitchers hitting from the game. Why you would want to have your catcher merely replace your pitcher in the lineup is a complete mystery to me.
Assuming that you haven’t been living under a rock for this entire baseball season, it should come as no surprise that Salvador Perez is having another great season and is once again proving that he is one of the top five catchers in baseball. In fact, if he keeps going at this rate, he could add another silver slugger and perhaps another Gold Glove to his personal trophy cabinet.
Except the baseball hipsters don’t seem to see it that way, as you can see below.
Well, if it's war they want, then it’s a war they shall have — and it will be a war that they lose with their own statistics. So, without further ado, let’s start the process of destroying the hipster narrative that Salvy is nothing more than a smiling weeble-wobble behind the plate who should be cut in the offseason.
A Sabermetric Worth Talking About
Pitch framing has become the newest and hottest statistic for people to evaluate catchers on because every broadcast now has a floating box in the middle of the plate that represents the strike zone. Keep in mind that this zone is about as official as the yellow first down line for NFL games, but we need to ignore that so we can create a convoluted stat.
If you were to look at Baseball Savant, you would see that they have Perez rated as the worst framing catcher in baseball when it comes to Runs Extra Strikes (RES), a statistic so hazy it literally bases its entire existence off something called the “shadow zone”.
Catcher framing is the art of a catcher receiving a pitch in a way that makes it more likely for an umpire to call it a strike. This page breaks down the catcher’s view into eight zones around the strike zone and shows the called strike percentage of all non-swings in that zone.
Strike Rate shows the cumulative total of all zones. Runs From Extra Strikes converts strikes to runs saved on a .125 run/strike basis and includes park and pitchers adjustment To qualify, a catcher must receive 6 called pitches per team game.
How to say it: “In 2018, Jeff Mathis converted 55 percent of non-swing pitches into called strikes in the Shadow Zone the best rate of any catcher in baseball.”
Qualifier: 6 called pitches (i.e., takes, or non-swings) in the ‘shadow zone’ per team game. (The shadow zone is essentially the edges of the strike zone, roughly one ball width inside and one ball wide outside of the zone.-Baseball Savant
For the full list of RES leaders, here you go.
However, there is something wrong with basing a catcher's value based solely upon this stat and it is quite obvious to all those who have a lick of common sense. This might come as a bit of a shock to the litany of baseball hipsters, but catchers play on both offense and defense.
Now I could go through the entire 58 catchers ranked ahead of Perez and explain why he is better than every one of them. But frankly, I just don’t have the time and if I did this article would be so long it would crash your browser. We need a quicker way to compare Perez to the top catchers in baseball.
So, in the spirit of sabermetrics, I have created my own statistic to evaluate a catcher’s overall worth to his team: RES+RBI or RR for short. Now the reason I chose to use RBI’s as part of this stat is that it eliminates the likes of Jonah Heim, Austin Hedges, and Tomas Nido guys who might be great defensively but simply lack the ability with the bat to be an everyday player.
This list will be made up of truly the best catchers in baseball and determine which one of them truly gives their team the most amount of runs when you combine both their works offensively and defensively.
So here are the leaders in RR, excluding Salvador Perez so the baseline can be established.
* Indicates Negatives RES, ** Indicates 0 RES, # Indicates All-Star
(1) Sean Murphy 64
(2) Will Smith *63
(3) J.T. Realmuto #62
(4) Mike Zunino #56
(5) Omar Narvaez #50
(6) Yadier Molina #*49
(7) Jacob Stallings, Yasmani Grandal **48
(8) Tucker Barnhardt, Buster Posey 46
(9) Willson Contreras 41
(10) Christian Vazquez 40
(11) Gary Sanchez *39
So, as we can see there’s a lot of RES darlings like Sean Murphy, Mike Zunino, Omar Narvaez and Jacob Stallings on this list. Now ignoring the fact that Yadier Molina is somehow ranked as a poor defender the rest of the list makes sense because the likes of Gary Sanchez, Will Smith and Yasmani Grandal all can mash at the plate enough to cancel out their poor-to-mediocre defense.
These catchers according, to RR, are the most valuable catchers in baseball and will be the players that we will compare to Salvador Perez for the duration of the article.
Now here are the RR leaders with Salvador Perez.
* Indicates Negatives RES, ** Indicates 0 RES, # Indicates All-Star
(1) Salvador Perez *#79
(2) Sean Murphy 64
(3) Will Smith *63
(4) J.T. Realmuto #62
(5) Mike Zunino #56
(6) Omar Narvaez #50,
(7) Yadier Molina #*49
(8) Jacob Stallings, Yasmani Grandal **48
(9) Tucker Barnhardt, Buster Posey 46
(10) Willson Contreras 41
(11) Christian Vazquez 40
(12) Gary Sanchez *39
Salvador Perez is 15 runs better than the next closest qualifier, which means that he could’ve struck out against the Mariners instead of mashing those two grand slams and he still would’ve been the RR leader. In short, his bat is so good that his inability to frame a pitch is canceled out entirely and it exposes just how terrible most catchers are at driving in runs.
But it is strange how the perception of Salvador Perez defensively has changed — he did manage to hoover up four gold gloves in a row from 2013-2016 but has only won one since. So, what seismic event happened in 2017 to change people’s perception of Salvador Perez?
The permanent K-Zone graphic became standard a broadcast feature for every team after the 2016 season, that’s what happened.
Now it should go without saying that advancements in technology most of the time are a benefit to the game, as it allows fans to fully appreciate the game at its most nuanced levels. However, adding the K-zone to modern-day baseball broadcast has turned many clueless baseball hipsters into catching experts.
Type "Salvador Perez pitch framing" into YouTube and see what pops up, then try to find a breakdown on why he is terrible at pitch framing. If you can find one, please send it my way. You’ll probably have more luck finding a written article on his pitch framing, but again, there is no in-depth breakdown — just a bunch of standard baseball gibberish.
That concludes Episode I, but keep your eyes peeled for Episode II which will be dropping later this week.
