Pitch framing is valued very highly in baseball. Do you need any proof? Jeff Mathis has gotten two-year contracts in both of his last two trips in free agency. Jeff Mathis, the guy who has hit .200/.260/.294 since 2013, has gotten two 2-year deals. The reason being is that he consistently rates as one of the best framers in baseball despite his offensive shortcomings.

The statistic that measures pitch framing is called Framing Runs Above Average or FRAA for short. Why is framing so important? Well, the answer is, teams have been smarter about stealing bases and they have seen a long-term benefit in using pitch framing.

Steals are always fun but typically you always hear a 77% success rate as the magic number. Let us take a look at Baseball Prospectus’ Run Matrix to explain that. If Brandon Nimmo led off the inning with a walk, the Mets would have a run expectancy of 0.8945 as per the 2017 run matrix.

If Nimmo took off on the next pitch and successfully stole second, the Mets run expectancy increases to 1.1095.If he also stole third with no-outs, the run expetancy would increase to 1.3618. Esentially, Nimmo would need to steal second and third with no-outs, on two separate occasions to create a run or he would need to swipe second base five times with no-outs to create a run.

The numbers for run expectancy stay roughly the same when the number of outs increase. With one-out, six steals of second would produce a run and with two-outs, it would be ten steals. The difference between being on second base or being on third base is not huge so let us primarily focus on stealing second.

No base runner has a success rate of 100% though. If Nimmo is on first with no-outs and gets caught stealing the second, the Mets run expectancy drops from 0.8945 to 0.2858. This is why it’s been taught around baseball that if you try to steal a base, you better make it. Because if you don’t, it can tank an inning.

Many times, people will point steals for being the main reason that a pitcher struggles. But odds are, the pitcher is already having a bad day so the steals just make it look exasperated.

The best good pitch framers tend to save somewhere between 8-15 runs with their pitch framing. As you could probably guess, you would need to do a lot as a catcher to match that level of defense with just your arm alone. To make 15 runs with your arm, one would have to throw out 25 baserunners or so. But teams don’t really try stealing bases anymore because as caught stealing can kill an inning and giving up a stolen base is not really the end of the world.

Top Five in FRAA in 2018

Jeff Mathis 18.4
Yasmani Grandal 17.7
Max Stassi 14.5
Tyler Flowers 13.2
Jorge Alfaro 12.2

Bottom Five in FRAA in 2018 (Out of 117 catchers)

Tucker Barnhart -10.2
Robinson Chirinos -10.8
Nick Hundley -14.0
Willson Contreras -15.4
Omar Narvaez -17.6

In the long run, teams see a better benefit with pitch framing than stolen bases so they value that behind the dish. There are many examples around baseball of catchers who have little-to-no offensive upside getting contracts before catchers who are mediocre hitters but terrible framers.

Jonathan Lucroy waited until March last year to get a deal. Meanwhile, Jeff Mathis has been one of the first free agents off the board in each of his last trips to free agency. Chris Iannetta is still getting deals around baseball because of his framing skills. The Rays dealt a four-win position player for Mike Zunino. The examples are endless.