But I was trying to update this chart:. Because it's not getting better. Lincecum threw a pitch in the strike zone If the goal of having Hector Sanchez catch Lincecum is to make him feel comfortable, it's not working.
Last night, Lincecum looked as uncomfortable as he ever has. That's Lincecum's problem -- he can't command his pitches. It's why he leaves them up where they can get hit.
It's why they're thrown in spots that wouldn't even tempt Pablo Sandoval, which is what makes his walk rate horrific. That didn't change when Sanchez took over; Lincecum is walking even more batters with Sanchez catching than he did when Posey was catching.
Maybe Lincecum feels more comfortable with Sanchez. Maybe Bochy just doesn't want Posey diving around, trying to catch Lincecum. Maybe it's Posey who asked for the shift, but Bochy doesn't want to say that publicly. No idea. But if Hector Sanchez is catching Tim Lincecum because it makes Lincecum feel comfortable, well, it's not working. Nice try. But it didn't work.
He's still quite uncomfortable out there and wild as all heck. Buster Posey catching, Brandon Belt starting at first, and Gregor Blanco starting in left is the best permutation of players the Giants can put out there. That should be the lineup throughout the postseason. It won't be during the games that Lincecum starts. But I majored in finding green boxes in rectangles at San Jose State, so most of this stuff is probably okay. So for every And for every This sounds pretty damning, but Lincecum has thrown balls about By my math, which is awful, that's about one uncalled strike for every pitches thrown.
That can be big if the uncalled strike is in the wrong spot at the wrong time. But it's still one pitch out of every This did not look at close pitches -- balls that could have been called strikes with better framing. If you add in the benefit of a strike-thief like Jose Molina or Jonathan Lucroy, it would make a pretty big difference. Small samples ahoy -- even though we're talking about thousands of pitches, there is still a lot of room for noise.
Sanchez isn't exactly good. But he's not usually that bad. Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from.
By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Barry Lamar Bonds 50 awesome things about no-hitters Full Archive. Stories Schedule Roster Stats. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. Victor Decolongon. The first is the pitch chart from Lincecum's first start, where Miller was kind enough to circle all the instances of Lincecum throwing pitches that were strikes but called balls: via www.
Was it Sanchez? A lot of it was probably Sanchez. In 56 games last year, Sanchez gave back eight runs on framing alone; apply those runs to his WARP and the Giants' replacement level backup turns into a very questionable major leaguer, for now at least. So Lincecum's debut was also Sanchez's debut. In one way of looking at it, it went great—the Giants won; Lincecum didn't allow an earned run—and in another way of looking at it Lincecum walked seven and Sanchez struggled to convince the umpire that pitches right down the middle were pitches in the strike zone at all.
Here's Lincecum's called-pitch chart for the game, with helpful asymmetrical circles drawn around each of the borderline or, in some cases, not borderline pitches that were called balls:. It's never easy to say who gets the blame for these pitches being called balls. Was it Lincecum, for missing his spots? Lincecum did miss a lot of spots, but most pitchers do, and part of what we judge good catchers on is their ability to catch those pitches quietly and sturdily.
Was it umpire Bruce Dreckman? Certainly, the rulebook doesn't say anything about the catcher's target, or ability to receive a pitch, affecting the strike zone, so in a sense yes, it's his fault that pitches in the strike zone weren't called strikes. But teams don't get to take moral stands on this issue; they need to work with the umpiring culture that actually exists.
And Dreckman has been a fair, perhaps slightly pitcher-friendly umpire in his career. Was it Sanchez? A lot of it was probably Sanchez. Let's take a look at some of these pitches:. Fastball, count to Josh Beckett :. In Mike Fast 's September piece on catcher framing , he identified a few negative tendencies that seem to cost catchers calls.
One was a catcher who "dropped his head to follow the pitch into his glove and he hunched down slightly, as if he were trying to coax the ball carefully into his glove.
Fastball, first pitch, A. Ellis :. My first instinct watching this pitch was that Lincecum missed his target by so much that there was little Sanchez could do to frame it. But in fact Lincecum didn't miss it by nearly as much as Sanchez makes it look like he missed it by, which is basically the point of catcher framing.
Here's the target, and the last frame before the ball disappears. Lincecum doesn't want to throw pitches that leak over the plate like that, for obvious reasons. But if he can't count on that to be a strike—it was 1.
This seems like a convincing case of catcher error, umpire error, or a combination. Curveball, first pitch, Juan Uribe :. Somehow, Juan Uribe got all the luck Wednesday. Of the 10 balls that Lincecum threw that were closest to the center of the strike zone, but not called strikes, Uribe was the batter for five of them.
It's a borderline low strike that Sanchez stab-stab-stabs at and drags down to the ground:. Obviously, it's not easy to catch a running fastball that is at or just below the knees with heavy sink.
You can understand Sanchez's challenge. But as I'm cropping the two pictures above, I look up and that very moment see Jose Molina do this:. Two-seam fastball, first pitch, Carl Crawford :. This is probably the quietest Sanchez receives a pitch on this list, and it's not very quiet.
It's another low strike, and again Sanchez drops his head and doesn't get the call. Jonathan Lucroy talked about his framing strategy on MLB.
For me it's a lot easier to come up to a ball and make it look like a strike than it is to give a high target and come down. If you give a high target and come down the ball's gonna take you down, the umpire's going to call it because that's what he sees. I always try to bring the balls up. You can get easy strikes like that. This one is incredible because it's on , when just about any close pitch is called a strike. In the few frames after Sanchez catches it, you can even see Lincecum seem to freeze up at the non-call.
Sanchez' head drops, for no reason. Posey likes to make a plan, stick to the plan, and has been known to utter a few sharp words to pitchers—even Lincecum, even when Posey was young—during games to get them back on the plan. So we speculate—and that's all it is, speculation, but it's not unreasonable speculation—that Lincecum is simply more comfortable throwing to Hector Sanchez.
The price he pays for this comfort is having a worse hitter in his lineup Posey generally plays first base these days, and Sanchez hits instead of Brandon Belt or an outfielder and throwing to a catcher who costs him strikes. Maybe it's worth it, for Lincecum and for the Giants. Someday, maybe we won't ignore the comfort stuff when we analyze these things. But for now, catcher framing is what we've got, and for now Sanchez is hard to watch.
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Login or Subscribe. On "fastball, first pitch, to Josh Beckett ," doesn't Dreckman signal a strike? I looked back at the box, and Beckett had a ball and a bunt foul on his two first pitches seen from Lincecum, but Dreckman gives a strike call on whatever pitch that was above.
That's not to say this isn't another great piece, Sam, and a real concern for the Giants. When other pitchers have gone with "personal catchers," they've usually been pretty damn good defensively, no?
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