SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — When you are a Gold Glove catcher like Patrick Bailey, a huge part of your job boils down to threat assessment.
Which part of the opposing lineup is especially dangerous? Where is a hitter most likely to do damage in the strike zone? Which baserunners are plotting to steal?
Catchers have their heads behind a mask and on a swivel. They become so inured to danger behind the plate that they assess threats before they are upon them.So Bailey, who is the most skilled pitch framer in the league by a wide margin, who coaxes more borderline strikes than any other catcher, whose count-flipping abilities result in massive measurable value to the San Francisco Giants, and who won his first Gold Glove in large part because of those attributes, has an unequivocal opinion about MLB’s experimental strike zone challenge system.
He views it as a threat. An existential one.
“Not a fan at all,” Bailey said. “I think it’s going to change the game a lot more than people realize. It’s gonna take a lot of the value away from defensive catchers. I don’t think it’s going to be good for the game. It won’t be good for umpires and they have enough scrutiny already. They have the hardest job on the field and do a pretty dang good job. So they’re under the microscope even more, too.
“Yeah, no. Not a fan. Not a fan.”
It could be worse for Bailey and his framing ilk. Major League Baseball experimented with using ABS for every pitch in the minor leagues as well as a challenge-based system. The league opted to experiment with the challenge system in exhibition games after installing the cameras and technology in 13 of 23 spring training ballparks. In exhibition games played in those ballparks, which include the five two-team complexes in Arizona but not the Giants’ facility in Scottsdale, teams will receive two challenges per game. They must be invoked by a batter, pitcher or catcher within a second or two after the pitch. Teams retain their challenges on calls that result in an overturned ball or strike.
GO DEEPER
Robot umps are here: What MLB players need to know to navigate ABS this spring
The ABS zone for each player is based on measurements taken by one independent party and verified by another to prevent any slouching shenanigans; the top of the zone is defined as 53.5 percent of a player’s height and the bottom of the zone is 27 percent of their height. The zone is 17 inches wide — the width of home plate — and pitch location is measured at the midpoint between the front and back of the plate. Any part of the ball only needs to tick the edge of the zone to be a strike.
The ABS System!
— Rob Friedman (@pitchingninja.bsky.social) February 20, 2025 at 12:24 PM
MLB will not use any version of the ABS system during the 2025 regular season or postseason. But it’s possible that a challenge-based system will be in place as soon as 2026. Testing in the minors has gone sufficiently well — while adding a fun and dramatic wrinkle to games — that it’s probably a matter of time before some iteration of an automated strike zone will be employed in the major leagues.
There’s no disputing that a strike zone entirely ruled by robots would be disastrous for catchers with elite framing skills. But MLB officials say that a challenge-based system will only slightly diminish the impact of those skills. Hitters are likely to hesitate risking a challenge in the early innings or early in counts. Also, catchers with keen zone awareness like Bailey should be able to leverage the challenge system to flip counts here and there. MLB officials cite data from the minor league experimentation while insisting that receiving skills will remain a valuable part of the game.
“I’m waiting to see,” said Giants manager Bob Melvin, who caught in parts of 10 major-league seasons. “I originally thought framers would be put out to pasture. But I’m not sure.”
Melvin smiled and hurriedly added: “I’m not saying we’re putting Patrick out to pasture.”
Not surprisingly, the first people to disagree are those who made a career out of those skills.
“Thank goodness I’m not playing anymore,” former catcher Tyler Flowers said. “I’d be out of a job.”
Flowers, 39, played parts of 12 major-league seasons for the Chicago White Sox and Atlanta Braves before retiring after the 2020 season. He currently works for the Braves as a special assistant. He is revered by Bailey and the current cohort of major-league catchers as the godfather of pitch framing — a skill that always existed but hadn’t been quantified and fully leveraged until recent years.
Flowers suspects that if any kind of an automated zone existed 15 years ago, his career would’ve amounted to a cup of coffee.
“It was basically the only thing I was good at,” Flowers said of his framing skills. “I had a 10-year career and with (an automated zone), I’d probably have played maybe two or three years. I tried to take advantage of it the best I could. I was a good hitter in the minor leagues but I knew I wasn’t going to bat cleanup. What do I do to set myself apart from other people? So I set up on one knee and focused on framing. That was my claim to fame.”
Flowers recalled one day in 2013 when he saw an MLB Network segment on the top 10 pitch-framing catchers. It was a term he hadn’t heard before, but he knew what it meant. Catchers have always tried to set a good target, receive the ball cleanly and win strikes for the guy on the mound. But the skill and its impact was becoming better measured and understood. Flowers considered himself one of the better receivers in the league along with guys like Brian McCann, Russell Martin and Jeff Mathis — catchers who received anecdotal praise for being “clean” and “quiet” behind the plate. When Flowers’ name didn’t appear on the MLB Network leaderboard, he wanted to learn why. He and a White Sox video coordinator dived into the data.
“I figured out I wasn’t as good at the bottom of the zone,” Flowers said. “That was when I went to the one-knee setup. I looked at video of Russell Martin and some of the really good catchers who would drop their glove early so you’re receiving the ball on the way up into the zone.
“Let’s just remember that the biggest strength of my career is what we’re talking about right now. It’s a skill set, as much as the ability to drive a ball to the opposite-field gap with runners in base. I know how hard I worked at it and how hard other catchers work at it.”
Nobody was better at it last season than Bailey. His 52.5 percent strike rate on pitches in the shadow areas, which Statcast defines as a ball width inside and a ball width outside the strike zone, was the best in the major leagues. Statcast correlated Bailey’s strike rate to an MLB-best 16 catcher framing runs — the second consecutive season in which he led the league. Statcast also breaks down strike percentage into eight specific zone perimeter shadow areas. Remarkably, Bailey ranks in the top five in just two of those areas without leading in any of them. His framing ranks first overall only because he is solidly above average in every part of the perimeter. And that’s significant when you’re catching everything from Logan Webb’s sinking two-seamer, Tyler Rogers’ counterintuitively rising slider and Kyle Harrison’s top-rail fastball.
Bailey’s best attribute is that he can enhance any pitcher on the Giants staff.
“He adapts to whatever that pitcher does,” said Webb, who benefited from more shadow strikes than any MLB pitcher last season. “He practices all the shapes. It’s definitely an advantage for a guy like me who gets a lot of movement. Any sinker guy would enjoy having Patty back there.”
“It’s nice knowing that if you throw one in the gray area, you’re more than likely going to get that call,” Rogers said. “The sliders in the top part of the zone, he’s really good at getting those. Guys who throw up in the zone, he gives that high target. But he’s the best at the ones that are yanked down and clip the bottom of the zone. Somehow he finds a way to get underneath those.”
Right-hander Keaton Winn knew he was working with a unique catcher when Bailey caught him at High-A Eugene in 2022.
“I threw a fastball in to a righty and it would’ve been off (the plate), but he caught it in his palm and kept his glove right where it was,” Winn said. “I was like, ‘Dude, how did you do that?’ And he said, ‘I palmed it for you.’ I love Pat. There’s no one else I’d rather have on my team. If they gave the Gold Glove to anyone else, it’s a sham.”
Bailey shakes his head when he looks back at videos from his time at North Carolina State. He was the rare college catcher who was allowed to call his own game. His setup was totally different back then. He tried to receive pitches as softly as he could. But he wasn’t giving the plate umpire the most flattering angle. When he dedicated himself to framing, Flowers was one of the catchers he emulated.
“I try to present the ball the best I can every pitch and give the umpire the best view of it,” Bailey said.
It’s here that Bailey pauses and chooses his words carefully. He wants to push back on what he views as a misconception about pitch framing. He’ll gladly accept strike calls on pitches out of the zone, of course. But he said the goal isn’t to trick the umpire or to steal pitches.
“The most important thing I can do as a catcher is keep a strike a strike,” Bailey said. “Maybe you get lazy on a missed location and let it drag across the zone and it’s called a ball. That means I’ve got to get a ball framed as a strike to get back to even. With the ABS and challenge system, I think a lot of people are disregarding how good umpires are and how hard it is. I’m just trying to give them the best picture possible.”
Flowers described the goal of framing in similar terms.
“It was never about stealing strikes to me,” Flowers said. “It was about making sure every pitch that is a strike is called a strike. ”
Sometimes Flowers tried to convince more than the plate umpire. He knew that on-base wizard Juan Soto tracked pitches into the glove and so he’d often try to get in his head by pulling pitches back into the zone. The elite pitch framers are so good that they often fool their own pitchers, too.
“There was one game when I threw a few pitches that were just off the plate to a lefty,” Rogers said. “Inning ends, I get to the dugout and BoMel (Bob Melvin) asked me, ‘Were those pitches there?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know. Patrick made them look really good. So maybe you shouldn’t ask me.’ I went back and looked … total balls. He just made them look so good.”
At the outset this spring, Melvin isn’t forbidding his pitchers from instituting challenges. But his general advice: unless your name is Webb or future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander, it’s probably better to let Bailey be the judge.
GO DEEPER
Terry Francona says Reds will opt out of ABS testing: ‘Why work on strategy we’re not going to use?’
Bailey said he wouldn’t hesitate to challenge a pitch in any count if he felt confident that it clipped the zone because count leverage is vital throughout a plate appearance. He’s thinking of other opportunities to game the challenge system, too. He theorized that there might be advantages to “un-framing” a strike with an especially temperamental opposing hitter at the plate.
“For sure,” Bailey said. “You’re going to start having catchers trying to deceive hitters into challenging pitches that were strikes that you caught poorly.”
And if the umpire calls that poorly framed pitch a ball?
“You just challenge it,” Bailey said. “That’s why I think it’s going to look a lot sloppier with ABS there. I didn’t experience it for long at Triple A, but I remember a game when five of the first eight pitches of the game were challenges. We’re literally laughing, hitter and catcher, like, ‘What is going on? This is ridiculous.’”
Flowers might be tempted to use a stronger adjective.
“You’re going to turn the catching position into guys who are walking billboards with a cannon who can throw 94 mph to second base,” he said. “That’s all the league will have left to value. We’re already relaying pitch signals. The pitching coach can call the game if they want to. What’s the point of a catcher if we keep taking skills off the table?”
Bailey and Flowers both acknowledge the obvious: their opinion is heavily biased. You’d expect the same to be true for Buster Posey, a future Hall of Fame catcher. But Posey is also in his first season as the club’s president of baseball operations. He is a member of ownership’s executive board along with CEO and control person Greg Johnson, who serves on MLB’s competition committee that helped to steer the ABS experiment.
Posey said he wants to see how this spring trial plays out before he ventures an opinion. He made it clear that he doesn’t view a challenge-based ABS system as an existential threat to defensive catchers.
“I do think it’ll decrease their value a little bit,” Posey said. “I don’t think it’ll be as much as we might think because challenges will be used up or guys will be hesitant to challenge or a manager may say to a player, ‘Hey, you don’t get to challenge anymore because you’ve missed three times and we need to save them for someone like Brandon Belt who knows the strike zone.’ We’ve done studies on how it impacted framing in the minors. It impacted it, but not as much as you think.
“It’ll be fun to watch it in spring. I definitely think we’ll get a good sense about who knows the strike zone from a hitter’s standpoint and a catcher’s standpoint. There’s a psychology factor that will come into play. That’ll be fun to watch.”
It’s not as if Bailey won his Gold Glove through framing alone. He has an improvisational ability to deliver the baseball from any position or arm angle and his 0.58 exchange time was the fastest among 32 catchers who had at least 50 stolen bases attempted against them. He ranked third among those catchers with a 29 percent caught stealing rate and those numbers look even better — behind just the Dodgers’ Will Smith — when you control for pitchers’ times to the plate.
Shohei Ohtani and Elly De La Cruz combined to steal 126 bases last season. Against Bailey, they each attempted to steal once. They combined to go 0 for 2.
“The coolest thing for me is I think I improved on everything last year,” Bailey said. “That was the big emphasis with me and (Giants catching coach) Alex Burg: staying focused, cleaning up the throwing errors, being a better blocker. That’s the expectation I have going into the season.”
Posey gave Bailey a few more areas to emphasize when they met prior to the opening of camp.
“Honestly, my focus in that conversation was, ‘Patty, First and foremost, your responsibility is to lead the staff,’” Posey said earlier this month. “And that’s not just framing metrics or how many runners you’re throwing out. It’s truly to lead the staff.’ That’s where I want his focus to be. He’s shown flashes of being a really productive offensive player, and that’s great but ultimately, I truly believe that if he leads the staff and continues to improve defensively, that we’re going to be in a good spot.”
Bailey has made major progress to reach this point. Winn noted that Bailey has far more energy and engagement behind the plate than he did in A-ball.
“In the minor leagues, not to dunk on Patty, but sometimes it’d be like, ‘C’mon Pat, help me out,’” Winn said. “Setting up behind the dish, he would do things his way. Now it’s a night-and-day difference. He’s doing everything he can for you.”
Posey expanded on some of his thoughts about catching on Sunday morning. The new regime will make one more ask of Bailey this season: not to over-index on framing to the point where he sacrifices aesthetics. The easiest way to address that is to clean up some of the dropped pitches that Bailey had last year. When you try to palm a strike, it doesn’t always stay in the glove.
“The big thing for me that I’ve relayed to our catchers is, ‘I don’t care how you do it or what it looks like, but we want to keep the ball off the backstop,’” Posey said. “Within reason, of course. Do I want you to get beat up when there’s nobody on base and the ball’s spiked 3 feet in front of the plate? No, but if the pitch is in the air and nobody’s on base, we want you catching the ball. It’s important. That’s the look and that’s the mentality we want to show our pitchers that we’re back there working for them all the time.
“If there’s nobody on base and you’re fighting like crazy to present that pitch, and it happens, fine. It’s a different story if someone’s on base and it costs us 90 feet. And the ones that are not fringe pitches, the ones that are clearly balls, I want those caught.”
The dropped pitches might be a minor pet peeve to some in the coaching staff and front office. What’s truly important to Posey is that Bailey continues to enhance his leadership qualities. Framing strikes is important. But as Posey views it, creating and instilling a winning frame of mind will make an even greater if less quantifiable impact.
It’s the kind of impact that will resonate no matter how balls and strikes are adjudicated.
“I look back now on the early footage of my career and how I’d catch some of the low pitches and I cringe a little,” Posey said. “I do think it’s so much more advanced with how catching is taught now. I look at our catchers in camp here and how polished they are and (proficiency at catching) the bottom of the zone stands out to me the most. But one thing I’ve tried to talk to Bailey about: ‘You’re one of the best in the world at this but there’s so much more to catching than just framing.’ And a lot of it doesn’t even happen between the lines. It’s the conversations before and after the games. I think the really good catchers in the game can sense momentum shifts in the game and can seize the moment, whether it’s having a shutdown inning or pitch calling or body language or a trip to the mound.
“I truly believe that for us to win a lot of games, it boils down to his ability to lead the staff. That can be ambiguous because it’s different from person to person and year to year. I don’t want to put so much pressure on him to become a burden, but I do believe and I’ve said our foundation is going to be pitching and defense and he’s going to play a huge part of that.
“He’s already at such an advanced spot in his career defensively. We just look forward to him getting even better at everything. He seems to want to embrace that. He wants to continue to build trust with the staff. That’s the next step forward for him.”
(Photo: Orlando Ramirez / USA Today)
