MLB catchers are wary of robo-umps
Seattle Mariners manager Scott Servais spent parts of 11 seasons and nearly 800 games behind home plate as a catcher with four franchises, mostly in the 1990s.
During that era – one dominated by Hall of Famers Mike Piazza and Ivan Rodriguez – the skills needed at backstop were clearly defined.
“Could you throw guys out, how did you do blocking the ball and could you hit with power?” Servais said. “That’s how the position was evaluated.”
A generation later, those attributes have been joined by a more subtle but equally significant skill: pitch framing. During baseball’s data revolution, the fine art of making borderline pitches look like strikes was found to be a game-changing craft – one that could be as impactful as Piazza’s power or Rodriguez’s arm.
The calculus, though, could be about to change, along with an equation that’s included the human element for nearly 150 years.
While pitch clocks, bigger bases and other rules changesdebut this year at the major league level, the Automated Ball-strike System will receive its biggest experiment yet at Triple-a. ABS will be used four days per week to call every pitch at baseball’s highest minor league level. On the other three days, umpires will traditionally call balls and strikes with a challenge system in place – teams will be able to appeal a handful of calls to the so-called robo-zone each game.
To many, ABS has begun to feel inevitable. Umpires have already agreed to allow it at the major league level when it is ready. Which means that within a season or two, everything around home plate could change. “It’s going to be here,” Servais said. Others think Major League Baseball, and specifically Commissioner
Rob Manfred, don’t recognize how seismically such a shift could alter the sport.
“I don’t see it happening,” said Yankees All-star and distinguished pitchframer Jose Trevino. “I don’t think Manfred has any idea what’s going on whenever he talks about that kind of stuff. He’s obviously never put the gear on, so he doesn’t know.”
Manfred, who last summer told ESPN that ABS could reach the majors by 2024, has cautioned this spring that the robo-umps remain in “the evaluation phase.” In order to be adopted in the big leagues, ABS would need to be approved by an 11-member competition committee that includes four players.
“There are issues that are still the topic of really considerable discussion within the ownership group and even more that are going to have to be resolved in the joint committee process with the players,” Manfred said. “The framing issue is one of those. I mean it’s a legitimate concern on the part of at least a subset of players.”
The subset includes some coaches, too, including New York Yankees director of catching Tanner Swanson – a pioneer of sorts in teaching backstops to steal strikes.
An appreciation for pitch framing had been under way for nearly a decade when Swanson jumped from college coaching to join the Minnesota Twins organization before the start of the 2018 season.
Among his most impactful ideas: If catchers received pitches while down on one knee as opposed to a traditional squat, they’d be better positioned to steal strikes near the bottom of the zone. Within just a couple seasons, the oneknee approach he coached with Minnesota was being used across the majors.
“When I got into pro ball, I think it really kind of opened the curtain to like, ‘OK, now this is not only extremely valuable, but this is something that we should be prioritizing,’ ’’ Swanson said.