http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/ny-sports-flaherty-catching-grandal-postseason-20181018-story.html
Good perspective on that from ex-catcher John Flaherty.
“In today’s analytic-based front offices, catchers’ defense is valued differently,” Flaherty said. “Like pitch framing and game-calling.”
Pitch framing and “stealing strikes” - meaning being able to sell a pitch in the strike zone to a homeplate umpire - are valued in the analytical-heavy front offices as well as the ability to stick to the game plan. Those plans on how to pitch an opposing lineup are usually handed down from the baseball operations department and catchers are now evaluated on how closey they stick to the script.
“There is less seeing how a catcher reacts to situations by gut and feel for a game or a pitcher,” Flaherty said. “That’s part of it.”
“The velocity is up and the spin rate is up, but you are seeing guys who don’t have as much control,” Flaherty said Thursday in a phone interview. “I see catchers and it looks like it’s going very fast for them and they don’t have confidence in where the ball is going. They are asking them to cover the whole plate, inside and out, up and down and that’s really hard to do.”
Too many strikeouts, too, but the numbers say big flies are worth big money, so...
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