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Time to Change Dontrelle's Catcher Again?

After Saturday's game ended I was thinking that it might be time to re-couple Willis with Treanor.

Fortunately, Maverick ran the numbers saving me from having to do it and therefore allowing me to continue on with my lazy existence.  But I digress.  This is the tale of the tape, so to speak.

Dontrelle has made 22 starts this year, Olivo has caught 11, Treanor has caught 11 (gotta love when stuff works out like that). Your numbers:

Olivo: 1-5, 62.1 IP, 77 HA, 44 ER, 24 BB, 42 K, 6.35 ERA
Treanor: 5-3, 83 IP, 86 HA, 25 ER, 26 BB, 52 K, 2.71 ERA

(Note: I did some editing to make the numbers fit the site's borders.  I hope Maverick doesn't mind.)

Maverick believes that Treanor should be Dontrelle's personal catcher at the expense of Olivo's bat.  I must say, I agree completely.

Since Willis was brought up he has always had a veteran catcher receiving his pitches.  When he first came up Pudge was his catcher.  In 2004 it was Redmond until Lo Duca came on board.  The 2005 season was Lo Duca, mainly, and Treanor.

Dontrelle excels when he has an experienced hand to guide him through the game and the team needs Dontrelle to excel.

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Whoa whoa whoa
The simple fact is that things like opponent, ballpark, and defense affect these stats far more than who's behind the plate.  

Not to mention: what exactly do we mean by 'veteran' and 'experienced'?  Sure Treanor is older, but he has less major league experience than Olivo, both in terms of years and games.  Would a career minor leaguer who gets a call-up at 40 be even better?  He'd be older, and presumably have far more professional games caught; but doesn't major league experience count for anything?

There's a huge difference between when a knuckleballer needs a personal catcher and when a guy is just inconsistent (or from the limited amount of innings in those splits, perhaps even consistent within expected fluctutations).  For all we know about him, Dontrelle is most comfortable with Juan Pierre playing center.  His stats between last season and this are certainly disparate.  But are we going to suggest that it's because of his comfort with Pierre behind him?

We've seen Dontrelle have games where he's hitting his spots, games where he's hitting batters, and games where everything is getting hit.  If we're going to give him credit as an ace, as a former and future Cy Young candidate, shouldn't we accept his successes and failures as his own doing?  If we're going to chalk these things up to the guy behind the plate, how good can we really say Dontrelle is?  In the end, he's the one that has to make his pitches.

by dan 2.0 on Aug 1, 2006 12:07 PM EDT reply actions  

Logic!
W00T W00T W00T
I can't believe Mike doesn't remember Ocala - he was having a GREAT time!

by jrfelix on Aug 1, 2006 1:26 PM EDT up reply actions  

Olivo
Olivo aint exactly known for calling a good game

here's a look at who each has caught:

Olivo: @HOU, @NYM, WAS, @CIN, @CHC, PHI, STL, ATL, HOU, WAS, @PHI

Treanor: @ATL, @TB, NYM, @COL, @SF, ATL, @BAL, @NYY, BOS, @NYM, PIT

Olivo has caught more games in hitter friendly parks and I (along with many others) believe that Train's success this year is in due to who has been catching him. The number's speak for themselves and 11 starts each is a nice sample size.

by Maverick @ FishStripes on Aug 1, 2006 1:42 PM EDT up reply actions  

even more logic!
I can't believe Mike doesn't remember Ocala - he was having a GREAT time!

by jrfelix on Aug 1, 2006 2:59 PM EDT up reply actions  

I agree
with Dan on this.  If he's hitting his spots, he's very good.  If he's not, he struggles.  I think he's a very good pitcher as opposed to a guy with fantastic stuff.

by Double B on Aug 1, 2006 4:18 PM EDT up reply actions  

I guess I ought to respond
First off, I like the fact this has generated a discussion.  That is one of the joys of being a baseball fan - getting to discuss possible competing theories.

I will try to keep this short.  My last effort didn't work out so well in this area since the comments suggested that if I wanted to write a novel I should do it elsewhere.

I guess I will go paragraph by paragraph.  What you said about the effect on statistics is correct but that is completely understandable.  Statistically measuring a catcher's impact on the game is most difficult to pick up.

It is accepted that a catcher's biggest impact on the game is in his game-calling, i.e. pitch-calling and working with the pitcher and helping him throw more efficiently.

Bill James, Baseball Prospectus, SABR, THT, amongst others have tried to quantify this with only marginal success.

Veteran was a poor choice of words on my part.  Treanor who first came up in 2004 and his first full season was in 2005 has caught Willis more than anyone on the team.  Meaning, he may have a better understanding of Willis' game.  The other aspect of this is Treanor seems to be better with handling emotional pitchers and Dontrelle is one of those.

A catcher is involved with every pitch, a center fielder, not so much.

The final paragraph - I really don't know how to handle this.  If you believe that the catcher is irrelevant in pitching then nothing I can say or present will change your mind.  And that's okay, we just have different perceptions on how the game is played and I'm sure we each believe ourselves to be correct.

That's Cool.

by craig on Aug 2, 2006 4:16 AM EDT up reply actions  

I'm just trying to figure out
how big you're trying to say this impact is.

Based on the fact that the numbers seem to be positioned so to "speak for themselves," it comes off like you're suggesting that Dontrelle would have a sub 3 ERA had Treanor caught every game, and a 6+ ERA had it been Olivo.

What that says to me (and this is what I was trying to get at in the last paragraph) is that Dontrelle is essentially worthless in the equation.  That our ace can be great only when a certain catcher is behind him, or else he's terrible?  That doesn't say much for his ability to throw the ball.  And it almost suggest that he has no knowledge of the game, to be so bad at recognizing what he should throw that he's not shaking off whatever it is Olivo is calling for.  

As you said, the extent of the impact of a catcher has been difficult at best to determine.  The idea that in the case of Dontrelle Willis it's so overwhelmingly obvious, so overwhelmingly powerful, is simply impossible for me to believe.  Maybe Treanor calls for better pitchers, in better spots, than Olivo.  That's fine.  But again, it's up to Dontrelle to make those pitches.  I mean, if we're going to say that it's on the catchers, there's really two possible claims:

a) Dontrelle is a stud; Treanor calls smart pitches and Dontrelle executes; Olivo calls such ridiculously horrible games, and Dontrelle is so dumb to go with them, that he hits his spots on those bad calls and gets rocked.

b) Dontrelle is iffy; Treanor calls such an amazingly perfect game that Dontrelle, even with his poor performance, is still able to get through games with few runs; Olivo calls bad games and Dontrelle makes them worse by sometimes missing spots.

Or I guess there's c, which is that Treanor makes Dontrelle feel comfortable enough that he's pitches like a 2.71 pitcher, while Olivo makes him so uncomfortable that he pitches like a 6.35 pitcher.  And that, again, doesn't say much for Dontrelle, that his stuff and his makeup is so tenuous, so fleeting, that Olivo turns him into Jose Lima.

And how can it be that Dontrelle's third, fourth and fifth best games (by gamescore) and his four really out-of-the-ordinary terrible games have all been caught by Olivo?  If Olivo calls bad games, then are we going to say that Dontrelle is able to succeed in spite of him at some times, and succumbs to him at others?  Or is it more likely that Dontrelle has had a generally inconsistent year, where some games he looks like last year's stud and others like he needs extended spring training to fix his mechanics, and it just happens by distribution that his ugly, stat-killing games have all been caught by Olivo?

by dan 2.0 on Aug 2, 2006 6:10 AM EDT up reply actions  

Oh geez...
Since when does science quantify the ways of the human heart?  Or mind, or psyche or whatever screws up a pitcher's brain when he pitches?

Should we say nasty things about Olsen because he seems to have his best games when Treanor catches, so much so that Matt is pretty much his personal catcher at times?  Is Steve Carlton a lesser human being because he personally extended Tim McCarver's career beyond its rational limits?  Good Lord forgive us all for being so damn superior.  Or do we have to go back and reacquire LoDuca since he caught Dontrelle most of last year, his very successful season?

Can we try out one more explanation here?  Olivo's new to the club this year.  Dontrelle missed a chunk of spring training with the WBC (what effect that has had on D-Train is another issue).  The two didn't get that much time to work together as a result.  Some early bad results, plus the standard need for days off for a catcher, put Treanor behind the plate for a lot of Dontrelle's starts, meaning D and Olivo didn't get enough consistent work together to learn one another's tendencies, strengths and weaknesses, etc.  Result: really inconsistent results when Olivo catches Willis.  It makes sense, and nobody ends up being labeled "fragile" (hell, you might as well shoot him if you're gonna call him that, his career is pretty damaged either way).

The Kids Are Alright. More Often Than They Used To Be.

by Dr F on Aug 2, 2006 11:07 AM EDT reply actions  

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