Coming Down!

6-4-3: WTP turns two

Welcome to Warning Track Power, a weekly newsletter of baseball stories and analysis grounded in front office and scouting experiences and the personalities encountered along the way.

Could you be around Little League baseball and not hear it?

“Balls in! Coming down!”

It’s the cry of the catcher after the umpire’s prompt that the pitcher has only one warmup toss remaining. While there may be variations around the country, when it comes time for that throw down to second base — the universal cue that a new half-inning is about to begin — it’s two words that alert the middle infielders to expect a ball approaching from just over 127 feet away.

Coming down!

The return of baseball is not far away. When you awake on January 1, it’s perfectly acceptable to say to yourself and anyone sharing your bed: “Forty-five days til pitchers and catchers.”

Some of you may also want to reintroduce yourself to whomever you’re sharing this info with.

The new season will bring with it new rules, including a pitch timer and bigger bases. Combined, I expect certain players and teams to flourish, swiping bags at an impactful rate. Which players? Which teams? Relax; it’s still December.

Looking back on the year here at WTP, I was thinking, You know what we haven’t had here in a while?

A good old-fashioned chart. So let’s talk catchers and how they’ve been strengthening their defense of the running game.

If the above plotted line appears straight to you, congratulations; you’ve hit the sweet spot in your holiday drinking.

For the rest of us: On a stolen base attempt, pop time measures the time elapsed from the moment the pitch hits the catcher’s mitt to the instant the throw reaches the infielder’s glove at the targeted base. These times can pertain to pickoffs as well, but for this study we are focusing on attempted steals of second base only.

Technological improvements over the past several years has enabled us to measure these times more consistently. Statcast calculations straighten out errant throws and project the time they would have taken to reach the center of second base.

Often, when scouting, I’d get one good chance to capture a catcher’s pop time. Part of the fun was estimating how quickly an off-line throw would have made it down had it been on the bag. Perceived arm strength, footwork, and exchange from the mitt to the throwing hand all contributed to the outcome. The art of the stopwatch has now been replaced with the sterile but accurate readings of cameras.

It has long been accepted that the average time of a throw to second is two seconds flat. As the last 20 years of baseball has taught us, hold on tight to your conventions. So when, anecdotally, I noticed a lot of catchers on the stingy side of two seconds, I looked at the data.

The chart above shows the average pop times for all throws from catchers who threw down to second base at least five times in a given season. Notice a trend?

Incremental as it may be, catchers have been delivering the ball to second base at a faster rate almost year over year.

Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto has led all of baseball annually since 2018. This past season, he featured a dazzling 1.82 average, well ahead of Rene Pinto, Jorge Alfaro, Christian Bethancourt, and Sean Murphy, all of whom averaged 1.89 seconds.

At the other end of the scale, Stephen Vogt (who retired at the end of last season) featured a sluggish 2.12.

In 2023, the size of the base will increase from 15 inches square to 18 inches square. In turn, the distance between bases will be 4 1/2 inches shorter. The league touted player safety as the motivating factor behind the change, and I’m happy to believe it. I’m all for it. But with catchers delivering the ball to second base faster than ever, this adjustment also feels like a nod towards 1968, when pitchers’ dominance over hitters precipitated the lowering of the mound before the next season.

The average has dropped every year with one exception since 2016. The total time shaved off is minor, and I’ll admit it may feel particularly significant because the average has dipped under two seconds. But unlike, say, fastball velocity, there’s only so much room for improvement.

It makes sense that as pitchers have learned to throw the ball faster, so have catchers. Last season, Bethancourt, Alfaro, and Sam Huff all averaged over 88 MPH on their throws to second; Realmuto sat at 87.6 MPH. As we’ve all seen during slow-motion replays, hundredths of a second make the difference between a safe and out call.

In a game of bang-bang plays, a few inches feels like a generous concession.

Did you know that Orioles teammates Jorge Mateo and Cedric Mullins were atop the AL stolen base leaderboard last year with 35 and 34, respectively? Can you believe that, in 2012, it was American League Rookie of the Year Mike Trout who led all of baseball with 49 steals? What do you think Rickey Henderson and Vince Coleman think of a shorter distance between first and second base?

New Year’s resolution: Stretch those hammies every day.

Happy New Year to you all. Thank you for being a part of two full years of WTP! Let’s make 2023 the year we all take a bigger lead, get a better jump, and steal that base.