Monday, December 16, 2013
Pitch-framing with Chris Stewart
A big focus of the Yankees was pitch-framing. Was it something they taught?
I don't know if they really taught it. I know they're really big on it. They might do it in their lower system now. But when I was there -- I was there for two years in the minor leagues [2008 and 2009]. It wasn't really that big of an issue. I think in the last year or two it's really kind of taken off. They're able to quantify how it affects the game. So I think more teams are trying to catch on to it. It's something I've always done pretty well, so it's actually nice. I have a skill set that I think doesn't get measured on paper -- yet. It's starting to come around, and they're starting to see how the small things I do affect how a pitching staff does. I think that's why the Yankees brought me back two years ago, because they liked my pitch-framing and how I worked with the pitchers.
Do you think [it's] a skill that can be developed, or something that you just naturally [are good at]?
I think it's a combination of both. Obviously, you have to have the ability to have soft hands. I played shortstop in high school. [But] you can definitely work on it. It's just repetition. It's bullpens. You try to stay soft and try to catch the ball. It's about reading the ball and catching it in the umpire's strike zone. If, say, a curveball drops low and it's going to drop down out of the strike zone, I catch it back here, or I try to catch it out there in the strike zone. There's a lot of mental preparation going into it -- how you're going to catch balls in a certain area. The idea is to make everything look like a strike to the umpire. It may not necessarily be a strike, but if you make it look like a strike. Or even if the umpire calls it a ball, if you make it look a lot closer than it was, in the umpire's mind, he's thinking, 'Okay, this guy's around the zone,' so therefore, maybe a ball two or three inches off the plate, he's thinking, 'Okay, this guy's been around the zone. Been throwing strikes. That might have been a strike.'"
So if you catch a pitch that he calls a ball and it's close, [and] you made it look like a strike, that might affect a pitch later on?
Later on. Exactly. That's the idea. Make everything look a whole lot better than it was. I don't want the umpires to feel bad, but at the same time, I'm trying to get every pitch called a strike.
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