Atlanta Braves: who are the team’s best pitch-framing catchers?
Who are the Top 3 Statcast era framers to don a Braves uniform?
1.) Brian McCann
McCann ranked Top 3 in +Calls and RAA for 6 years in a row (2007-2013). Brian McCann also never finished below the Top 20 in the PerGame category during this 6-year span, and finished Top 10 in 5 of those 6 years (’08-’12).
By measuring catchers overall contribution from framing (using +Calls, oStr, and RAA), McCann’s only real competition among the top catchers during this time period were:
All of these players, including McCann, will go down as some of the best catchers in the first half of the 21st century, including the likes of recently elected Hall of Fame members Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez, and Mike Piazza.
2.) David Ross
Even though Ross never landed a 1st place spot in any framing rankings, he was still very helpful behind the plate for the Braves.
His skill as a framer could probably be attributed to playing with Brian McCann for 4 years in Atlanta. When you are platooning with arguably the best pitch framing catcher in the league at the time, you’re bound to learn a few things about framing.
Something strikingly similar to this dynamic duo of McCann and Ross is currently occurring in Atlanta with Tyler Flowers and Kurt Suzuki.
3.) Tyler Flowers
I was hesitant to place Ross over Flowers, but Ross showed consistency for 4 straight years behind the plate when it comes to pitch-framing. Flowers has only had 2 good years, while Ross had 4.
Flowers showed us how good of a framer he was in 2016, but he really made a name for himself in during his first year at SunTrust Park. In 2017, Flowers claimed the #1 spot in 4 of the 5 categories measured:
- #1 in oStr% (12.4)
- #1 in +Calls (211)
- #1 in PerGame (1.30)
- #1 in RAA (28.1)
As for the stats of the guy that came in 2nd behind Flowers, Yasmani Grandal:
- #2 in oStr% (10.7) – 1.7 behind Flowers
- #2 in +Calls (142) – 69 behind Flowers
- #3 in PerGame (1.37) – 0.07 behind Flowers
- #2 in RAA (18.9) – 9.2 behind Flowers
If Flowers can keep this up, I sure hope the Braves will extend him or resign him once he is a free agent in 2018. Having this elite skillset behind home plate is such a great thing to have with the young pitching staff that the Braves are building.
The only negative thing that I see is that the youngsters may get a little spoiled with Flowers’ supreme framing abilities.
Here is the list of Atlanta Braves catchers NOT included in this statistical analysis, due to either having 0 or 1 season(s) with a “1,000 pitches caught” sample, or simply poor framing abilities while with the Braves SINCE 2007:
- Clint Sammons – Only 1 out of 3 seasons with 1000+ pitches caught, in 2008 with 1,314, and his framing stats were not bad, but not great either.
- J.C. Boscan – Most pitches caught with ATL was 263 in 2012.
- Gerald Laird – Extremely poor framing stats while with Braves; similar to Pierzynski.
- Ryan Doumit – Only 1 year with the Braves, had 174 pitches caught in 2014.
- Jarrod Saltalamacchia – Only a half of a season with ATL with 1,139 pitches caught, but had positive stats with the Braves, ranking #18 overall in 2007.
- Ryan Lavarnway – Only a half of a season with ATL, had just 1,139 pitches caught (same exact number as Saltamacchia), with negative stats in +Calls, PerGame, and RAA in 2015.
Next: Atlanta Braves: what they’re doing down under
All catching statistics retrieved from the StatCorner Catcher Report.