OU Vs UF WCWS Championship

[Amy in AZ.]

Since I only coach pitchers, I would prefer the better catcher, please. It makes all the difference in the world, to a young pitcher.

 

[Sweet Lou]

And that could be the right call for college programs (though I'm pretty sure if it is, they're right by accident). We can't know unless we can quantify how many runs the good receiving catcher is saving over the poor defensive catcher. That requires a lot of work and, probably, strike zone technology that I don't think has made its way to softball yet. I think it probably will at some point though.

And it is "relatively" recent even at the MLB level and currently requires "pitch Fx" data which is likely not available for all but a very small sample of college games to even do the statistical analysis. So any analysis might have too small a sample to be statistically significant. At the MLB level they have thousands of pitches per catcher to do regression analysis on.

 

[Eric F]

After further research Florida does have a few too many wild pitches compared to past years and compared to hit batters (a proxy for wildness), so a bunch are probably on Wheaton (she only has 4 PBs).

I'm not convinced that she's losing strikes doing it though - I just watched a bit of the Washington game and she was getting strike calls on probable balls while doing it. That and the ridiculous Florida ERA are fairly compelling evidence in my support.

Believe what you want, however you want to justify it. It doesn't change the fact that Wheaton's receiving mechanics are terrible - especially when compared with a player like Aubree Munro. From my observations of catchers from rec softball to MLB, good receiving simply gets more strikes called. I see it every day with the young catchers I work with. If any player came to me with receiving mechanics like Wheaton's, we would be spending some extra time together to get it sorted out. No doubt that Janell Wheaton is a great athlete, which certainly is the major contributor to her effectiveness as a catcher. However, she could be better. Her receiving could be a LOT better.

 

[riseball]

And that could be the right call for college programs (though I'm pretty sure if it is, they're right by accident). We can't know unless we can quantify how many runs the good receiving catcher is saving over the poor defensive catcher. That requires a lot of work and, probably, strike zone technology that I don't think has made its way to softball yet. I think it probably will at some point though.

The only way you can effectively compare catchers is when a single team has two of them. Things like fielding percentage, stolen bases, etc. are more trivia than useful information.

 

[Softball scholar]

I've never seen anything like this game.

I was rooting for Oklahoma, but both teams were excellent.

It seems that after Mendes' homerun in the 6th Florida stopped calling the rise. If a batter hits your best pitch, you still have to throw it.

As to umps, I thought the guy behind the plate was pretty good for an NCAA umpire. You can't expect NCAA ump's making $5000 a season as you do from a $180,000 a season MLB ump. T

I did hear the NCAA put the umpire up in the Holiday Inn the night before, so we had that going for us.

 

[Greenmonsters]

Unfortunately for the vast majority of college programs it is an area of minimal concern. If a kid who has a weak stick thinks they are going to wow a college coach with decent receiving skills, blocking, and pop-times they are sadly mistaken. Few pitchers hit so if it is the difference between a mediocre catcher hitting .250 and a good catcher hitting .200 they will go with the stick every time.

The difference between a 200 and 250 hitting catcher affects only one of every 20 at bats. The difference between a good and poor receiving catcher impacts every pitch of every single at bat. That said, there's no reason that a good hitting catcher shouldn't be well trained.

 

[riseball]

The difference between a 200 and 250 hitting catcher affects only one of every 20 at bats. The difference between a good and poor receiving catcher impacts every pitch of every single at bat. That said, there's no reason that a good hitting catcher shouldn't be well trained.

Agree. Does not change the ways things are, but I agree. In order to train anything, you need to know the material. Few programs have a qualified pitching coach, they are certainly not going to train a catcher. If they get they are happy to have her, but not going to develop an elite level catcher.

 

[CoachJD]

The only way you can effectively compare catchers is when a single team has two of them. Things like fielding percentage, stolen bases, etc. are more trivia than useful information.

I wouldn't use either of those.

But if you have strike zone data, you can see which catchers get more pitches out of the zone called strikes and vice versa. There would be some noise with different umpires having different zones (and having umpire data would be great to have here), but knowing Catcher A leads NCAA catchers in framing certainly would be useful.

 

[90210]

The difference between a 200 and 250 hitting catcher affects only one of every 20 at bats. The difference between a good and poor receiving catcher impacts every pitch of every single at bat. That said, there's no reason that a good hitting catcher shouldn't be well trained.

This is an extremely misleading comparison.

 

[CoachJD]

The difference between a good and poor receiving catcher impacts every pitch of every single at bat.

I mean, no, it doesn't really. You'd have to be remarkably poor at receiving a pitch to affect every pitch. What you're saying is that every single called pitch is the opposite call of what it should be solely based on the catcher's receiving.

But if your argument is that defense matters that much (you could be right), you gotta back it up with data. Just saying it doesn't make it so. Quantify it. How much more valuable is the great defensive catcher? How many runs is she worth over the course of a season? (And, while we're at it, we shouldn't use the essentially worthless batting average stat to try to place a value on a hitter, either)