THE IMPORTANCE OF PITCH FRAMING.

THE IMPORTANCE OF PITCH FRAMING. Pitch framing is currently a hot topic in baseball because sabermetric studies have come up with very large estimates for the number of runs that can be saved during the course of a season by a catcher who is good at framing pitches. Two Sabermetric studies cited by Lindbergh (footnote 8) show that the difference between a catcher who is good at framing pitches and one who is bad is about .33 runs per game (one third of a run per game). That is 40 runs per season for a catcher who plays 120 games a year. If the Wins Above Replacement assumption that 10 runs a year is roughly worth one win (see wikipedia article here), then the difference between a good framer and a bad framer would be on the order of 4 wins a year. For comparison, slugger David Ortiz was tenth in the American League in WAR in 2013 with a total of 4.9 WAR (see WAR stats here). You can see why pitch framing has become a hot topic.