Analysis of framing has intensified over the past couple of years, with Joe Maddon talking about it on the radio and (via Ben Lindbergh) Clubhouse Confidential and MLB Network’s Diamond Demo series featuring discussions of the issue with guests like Jonathan Lucroy. Ben has been running a weekly column on the subject since the start of the season: in the first installment (as well as this piece for Grantland) he provided some background on the research so far, so you’re invited to have a look at that article before you read the rest of this one.

Framing evaluation is one of those research subjects that has been made possible by PITCHf/x data, which means that we’re now into the sixth full season for which catcher framing can be measured. However, for quite some time, I’ve been thinking about this: if one could get a good approximation of the framing numbers just using Retrosheet pitch sequences, 20 years of catcher framing could be added to the discussion. When Ben jogged my memory recently, I decided it was time to stop thinking about it and start doing some number-crunching.

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1.The hitters are ahead of the pitchers. You use this one after your staff gets pounded for fourteen runs early in the spring. After all, maybe the hitters are ahead of the pitchers at this point. Who’s to say which group develops faster?

2.The pitchers are ahead of the hitters. The opposite of number 1, so it should be used when you get shut out by three rookie pitchers nobody’s ever heard of.

During the first four or five months of the season, I don’t care which teams are playing, as long as there is at least one day game I can watch from my location six time zones ahead of the East Coast. But when September arrives, I often find myself looking at the schedule in disgust when I learn that the only game played at 1 PM features two teams already out of contention.

September also brings a different kind of baseball, as rosters expand and teams pull out all the stops to make the playoffs. Given the altered nature of the game in the final month of the regular season, the men in charge of pushing the buttons should know the answers to a few questions that either do not arise or are not really relevant earlier in the season. Let’s have a look at a few of them.

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One of the most-used arguments in favor of extending the DH rule to the National League is that the sight of a pitcher flailing about with a bat in his hands every two or three innings isn’t anyone’s idea of competition at the highest levels. This argument can be countered in several ways.

One could be the following: pitchers aren’t much worse at hitting than some oversized sluggers are at circling the bases (notice how I avoided using the word “running”). So why not make baseball a bit more like football? You could have a defensive unit and an offensive one, plus the special teams (the runners). That way, we would always see the best performers in each aspect of the game.

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In case you haven’t noticed, there is a sporting event being held besides baseball’s dog days of August (hint: it’s happening in London). For a brief time, baseball was a part of it. I can understand if you didn’t pay attention to it, though, since only lesser players were involved in Olympic baseball while it was part of the program.

If you agreed with that last sentence, I kindly suggest that you reconsider your position.

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On April 9 of this year, after watching one of the day games on the east coast, I turned to the Giants vs. Rockies game. Barry Zito was on the mound for the visiting Giants, and I was particularly interested in how he fared, as I had studied his career path extensively for the 2011 Hardball Times Annual. My analysis had been done at the end of a strange 2010 season in which Zito had looked like he was on the verge of a big rebound, only to decline down the stretch to the point that he was not included on the postseason roster.

The following season did not prove to be much help in deciphering whether Zito would continue to be the unspectacular back-of-the-rotation guy he had been since crossing the Bay Bridge or recover some resemblance to the pitcher who had induced the Giants to reach deep into their pockets in 2007.

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The season has reached its midpoint, so this seems like a good time to take a look at some rankings. I debuted here at Baseball Prospectus with a series on evaluating catchers defense, so catchers are the subject of the top-10 list that follows.

The catchers will be listed with four numbers beside their names. The first three cover batting, baserunning, and defense. The fourth is the sum of the numbers pertaining to each of those areas.

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When the third out is recorded, the pitcher goes back to the bench, puts on a jacket (or wraps a towel around his throwing arm), and sits on the bench for the other half of the inning. When his teammates are retired, he slowly trots back to the mound and delivers a handful of warm-up pitches, and he’s ready to go.

In one of my previous columns, I noticed that pitchers throw their fastballs slowest when there is nobody out and the bases are empty—in most of the cases, that’s at the beginning of the inning. One of the questions that came to my mind was whether they are a bit rusty after spending some time doing nothing on the bench.

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In my previous installment, I explored pitch speeds in several situations and discovered that pitchers can add some gas to their offerings in certain spots. Both here at Baseball Prospectus and at The Book Blog, readers made insightful comments on the subject, suggesting possible biases and ways to expand on the analysis.

This time, I’ll go over some of those points.

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In my last article, I explored the rich subject of pitch velocities. I tried to isolate the many factors influencing speed, from weather, to PITCHf/x calibration issues, to in-game situations.

One of the things I noted was that pitchers tend to throw (slightly) harder with runners on than they do with the bases empty. I had expected the contrary, since the full windup delivery should give the hurler some extra power. However, I reasoned that pitchers might reach back for something extra when they are in a tight spot, thus (more than) making up for the deficit due to the set position.

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Cooling off the radar guns
No more calling Strasburg's 91 mph pitch a 'changeup'. It's disheartening to like 98% of the rest of us for whom 91 is a 'fastball'.—@BMcCarthy32

Everyone likes looking at radar guns.

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The forces that influence run-scoring
As a reader of this site, you would be suspicious of any article that compared a starter’s ERA and a reliever’s ERA without making any adjustment for role: it has been shown several times (including by yours truly) that the luxury of pitching in short bursts and not having to face the same batters multiple times in a single outing significantly deflates relievers’ ERAs.

Similarly, we can’t model run-scoring on a team level without accounting for all the factors at play at any particular time. Many elements combine to shape the distribution of runs scored. Some of them are quite obvious, while others remain hidden until they’re exposed by the most brilliant analysts. In the following paragraphs, I’ll try to evaluate as many of those components as possible in an attempt to isolate their individual effects on offensive outcomes.

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