WHAT FRAMING A PITCH DOES.

WHAT FRAMING A PITCH DOES. There is currently a great deal of attention to what seems the simplest and most basic event in baseball. A pitcher throws a ball and the catcher catches it. But how well does the catcher catch it? That question is what is receiving attention. The question is expressed in terms of how well a catcher “frames” a pitch. Framing a pitch is the art of a catcher catching a pitch so that it looks like a strike even when it is not. In other words, a catcher can fool an umpire into incorrectly calling a strike. I have always been able to identify extreme examples, where a catcher give the impression that the pitch was in an unexpected location—the pitcher seemed wild, and so the umpire concludes that the pitch was probably not a strike.