Unfavorable strike zones have been costly to the White Sox - Sox Machine

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In 2021, Ethan Singer has compiled and made available a feature known as Ump Scorecards which have become quite popular on Twitter. The account creates visualizations to evaluate the performance of home plate umpires at accurately calling balls and strikes. Using the unique run expectancy of the 288 baserunner, amount of outs, and count combinations, Ethan’s program determines the cost or benefit in terms of runs of each pitch that is called incorrectly. You can read more about the process and access leaderboards on the Ump Scorecards website.

A secondary outcome to the analysis is that we can see which teams have benefited and which teams have been hurt by home plate umpires. According to Singer’s work, the White Sox are getting crushed by ball/strike calls. The White Sox are fourth-to-last in baseball with 10.0 runs lost, which is roughly equivalent to one win by the various WAR metrics.

Before jumping to any conclusions about the root cause of the damage, it’s important to understand the noise that goes into the the net runs lost number. The number includes pitches called on both offense and defense, so it’s a a comparison of how two teams fare with the same umpire on the same day. Further, the context of the situation is very important to the calculation; a blown call with the bases loaded and one out moves the needle far more than a missed call with two outs and the bases empty.

Of course, it’s natural to try to view these results in the context of pitch framing, as the way the catcher receives the ball is the only piece of the puzzle over which the White Sox have any control. However, Baseball Prospectus’ framing runs for White Sox catchers doesn’t tell a story anywhere near as bleak:

OK, so Collins has been pretty bad. But Baseball Prospectus’ model is only attributing about one run lost by the White Sox due to framing, which is nothing compared to the total of 10.0 lost on umpire calls. There’s several possible reasons for the discrepancy.

1. BP’s model is context-neutral and seeks to estimate the number of strikes gained or lost, and assigns an average run value to strikes. It’s possible that the Sox have had unlucky timing with regards to when calls go against them.
2. Because the 10.0 runs lost includes runs lost on offense, the Sox may have run into opposing catchers that have framed well.
3. There could be some noise from unlucky umpiring in just a half-season of play.
4. BP’s model might dampen outliers so as to not overreact to a small sample like Collins’ 1,700-ish framing chances (yes, this constitutes a small sample for framing).

This season, I’ve been logging the Ump Scorecards data by game and observing how the strike zone battle has gone for the White Sox under each of the two primary catchers. Here are the splits through the end of June:

Catcher	Total	Home	Away	Per Game	Per Home	Per Away
Grandal	0.25	2.40	(2.15)	0.01	0.09	(0.10)
Collins	(10.26)	(4.72)	(5.54)	(0.35)	(0.30)	(0.43)
Total	(10.01)	(2.32)	(7.69)	(0.13)	(0.05)	(0.22)

Two observations leap to mind:

1. Though it’s probably not all that surprising, the home team seems to get more favorable calls than the away team.
2. Nearly the entirety of strike zone runs lost are attributable to games started by Collins, regardless of the degree to which this is his fault.

There’s undoubtedly plenty outside of Collins’ control underlying this split. Unlucky calls could be happening against White Sox hitters in his starts, which would distort the number. He might have run into an above-average slate of framing catchers (though he’s “lost” all four of his starts against baseball’s worst framer, Salvador Perez). It’s also possible that umpires have simply missed some calls for reasons unrelated to how Collins receives pitches.

The thing in common to all of those Collins-absolving conjectures is that they’re all rooted in unfortunate things that are outside of his control. Since no catcher can sustainably draw unlucky umpiring or outstanding opposing framing catchers, the natural conclusion is that if the strike zone runs the White Sox have leaked in Collins’ starts aren’t primarily due to his receiving, they won’t continue at this untenable rate.

For that reason, I’ll be keeping a close eye on the “Per Game” numbers in the table above as we move further along into the season. The most likely outcome is that they’ll get better due to “positive regression” and we’ll be able to conclude that Collins is bad-but-playable behind the plate. However, if they don’t improve, there might need to be an honest look at where he fits within the team’s long-term plans with the logjam of 1B/DH types currently at their disposal.

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Unfavorable strike zones have been costly to the White Sox - Sox Machine
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