In retrospect, Angels fans are certainly all longing for the days when their primary concern was if the team had acquired enough pitching to contend this season.

A winter of hand-wringing about the Angels missing out on marquee pitching acquisitions has given way to a spring of wondering if the coronavirus pandemic would subside soon enough for there even to be a baseball season.

In between, though, during a month of spring training in Arizona, the Angels had grown quietly optimistic that they had found at least part of a solution to their pitching issues … at the other end.

In order to get more value out of the pitchers throwing the ball, the Angels have two of the best at catching it.

Max Stassi, acquired last July, and Jason Castro, who was signed as a free agent in January, have been among the best pitch-framers in the majors for the past few years.

Assuming the season begins eventually, the Angels are banking on them making a difference.

“It’s huge,” Andrew Heaney said shortly before the COVID-19 shutdown. “Obviously, anytime you can steal some extra strikes, that’s a big thing.”

General Manager Billy Eppler said he and his counterparts have placed an increased emphasis on pitch-framing over the past decade simply because it is something a catcher does far more often than throwing or blocking.

“It’s an area that doesn’t jump off the page or jump off the screen, but if you have a catcher who you know can present a ball well and receive a ball well, that gives confidence to your pitchers and could potentially move a count from 2-1 to 1-2,” Eppler said.

The 1-and-1 pitch is often the fulcrum of discussion about framing because statistically there’s a huge difference in outcomes depending which way that pitch goes. Last year, hitters had an .828 OPS after a 2-and-1 count, compared with .518 after a 1-and-2 count.

That adds up to a guy like Stassi being able to comfortably have a job in the big leagues.

According to FanGraphs, of the catchers who have caught at least 1,000 innings over the past four years, Castro ranks ninth in framing runs and Stassi ranks 11th. However, it’s a cumulative stat, and Stassi has barely caught 1,000 innings, while all the catchers ahead of him have caught at least 2,500.

“I take a lot of pride in that,” Stassi said. “You want to be really well-rounded, but I think that framing is extremely important.”

Not coincidentally, Castro and Stassi both came about their proficiency at framing from the same place. Both were with the Houston Astros in 2013 when they had a meeting in spring training with Mike Fast, whom the club had hired to its analytics department a couple of years earlier. A former author for Baseball Prospectus, Fast had been among the first to publicly quantify the value of pitch-framing.

“They got all the catchers together and they had a presentation about the importance of keeping the ball in the zone,” Stassi said. “How a lot of guys take pitches out of the zone, and just the impact that has on the course of a game.”

Castro actually bristles somewhat at the term “framing,” because it implies deceit of the umpire, or trying to steal strikes on pitches that are out of the zone. In reality, he said he is much more focused on not losing any strikes.

Castro said catchers who move their glove too much to try to sneak borderline pitches into the zone can actually hurt the pitcher. When the catcher moves his glove perceptibly, he is essentially telling the umpire that he doesn’t think the pitch is a strike.

The most difficult and important part of framing, Castro said, is to catch a breaking ball that is moving out of the zone in such a way that the umpire can call it a strike if it clips the zone.

“My job is to keep strikes strikes,” Castro said. “I mean, that’s really what I’m trying to do: Reward the pitcher as often as possible for doing his job. Everything outside of that is kind of like cherry on top, if you can get some extra pitches.”

For all of the effort that Castro and Stassi have put into pitch-framing, they both acknowledge the elephant in the room. By all accounts, the electronic strike zone is coming eventually. There is no need for framing if a high-speed camera, rather than a human, is tracking the baseball.

“I don’t think it’s good for baseball,” Stassi said. “I think that the history of the game has been a certain way. You know, no one’s perfect and I’m not a fan of it for many reasons. I just think that it would completely change the game. It would change the way that pitchers pitch, the way that catchers catch.”

For example, Stassi said with a runner on first catchers would probably just set up in a throwing position, with one foot behind the other. Or they might start on one knee to focus on blocking. Catchers equipment might even change because of different ways they would set up, Stassi said.

Pitchers and hitters would need to get used to different pitches called strikes, like breaking balls that seem too high or low but nick the top or bottom of the zone.

“I don’t think it’s as clear as what people think that the electronic strike zone (would be better),” Stassi said. “A lot more hitters would be upset, I think. I just don’t think it’s good for baseball.”

Castro is also skeptical that an electronic strike zone would be good for the game, and he suggested there are still some “kinks in the system” that would need to be ironed out before it’s even worth considering.

“It could alter how the position is evaluated,” Castro said. “That’s such a major part of what the position is right now. So, it’ll be interesting to see what happens.”

In the meantime, as long as humans are still calling the balls and strikes, the Angels are thrilled that they have a chance to give their pitchers a boost by having Castro and Stassi behind the plate. Related Articles Jared Walsh rises as bright spot in Angels’ lefty woes

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Pitching coach Mickey Callaway, whose mantra all spring was for his pitchers to throw more strikes, said having quality framers makes a big difference.

“It’s big,” Callaway said. “You want to steal those extra 10 percent strikes if you can. That’s 10 pitches a game that can go in your favor. We want to turn that 2-1 count into a 1-2 count. That’s the key. If we control 10 more at-bats and get ahead because we’re framing well, that’s maybe two hits instead of three in those 10 at-bats. That’s something that’s very important.

“We take that very seriously here, and it helps the pitchers. The pitchers love (good pitch-framers). And the good thing is, we have two of them.”