Mike Zunino is GOOD ft. Future Rays Legend Blake Hunt
All the data I use is publicly available and found on Fangraphs, Baseball Reference, and Savant – I just do my best to contextualize everything and help paint a picture. It’s also important to figure out the “why”; everything the Rays do as an organization has a purpose. They’ll never just throw money at things or rush a decision. Approaching situations with this view and always asking “why” is what leads me to all of my analyses (analysis’s?? Analysises?? I don’t know)
TL;DR (I’ll be keeping these at the beginning just in case you’re not in the mood to read words and look at numbers)
Just to be clear, this was originally published on Reddit on June 25th, 2021. The data below is from day right before I posted it the first time, so while some numbers will be a little out-dated, the points I make are still relevant.
Most of Zunino’s value is in his defense and framing, and his bat has come back to life this year. He’s excellent in working with the entire pitching staff and absolutely deserves to be on the All-Star team this season. Francisco Mejia appears to be on his way to being a very good catcher in the near-term future, but Blake Hunt 👀 looks like he’s the real deal long-term.
If the TL;DR Wasn’t Satisfying Enough (or if you’re a nerd), Start Here
We’ll first take a look at Zunino’s elite numbers behind the plate. Catcher framing and other defensive metrics have come a long way in the last five years, but there is still a lot for us to try to quantify in terms of calling games and blocking pitches in the dirt. Each organization probably has their own way to measure these things, so we’ll do our deep-dive based on data that’s available to the public (I always use the holy trinity of Fangraphs, Baseball Reference, and Savant, but there are other places to look too). Next, we’ll shift to Zunino’s offensive performance both historically and this season. Lastly, we’ll discuss the future of the Rays at the catching position.
While Framing Metrics are Interesting, They Don’t Always Tell the Whole Story
For those who are unfamiliar, framing refers to the way a catcher receives and presents pitches in an attempt to get the home plate umpire to call more strikes. Below are the top five catchers in all of baseball (since 2015; that’s as far back as the data goes) ranked by runs extra strikes – basically how many runs they have prevented for their teams by being good at framing:
That Grandal guy is pretty good at this stuff, so it makes sense why so many teams were after him when he became a free agent a while ago. However, there is a slight confounding variable here that might possibly-maybe-potentially skew these numbers: the pitchers. Teams with good pitchers are typically going to get more strike calls anyways, but it presents a chicken versus the egg situation here. Which came first: the good framer or the good pitcher?
The Dodgers have had some pretty solid arms throwing to Grandal during his time with them, and now the White Sox do too (and let’s not forget when he was with the Brewers because they had some guys who could bring it in 2019). Posey has had a plethora of high-quality guys playing catch with him his entire career. Flowers moved from the White Sox to the Braves after 2015, but again, more quality arms. Hedges is now with the Indians (more great arms, shocking), but he began his career with the Padres, and even they have had pretty solid pitching staffs since 2015. Last on this list is Pérez; a catcher for the Indians who has an absolute cannon. For what it’s worth Zunino is ranked 11th best in all of baseball since 2015 with 21 runs extra strikes.
As you’ll notice, we won’t really see too many good framers on terrible pitching staffs. However, there are bad framers who were on good pitching staffs. Below are the five worst framers in all of baseball during the same time period and based on the same metric (Warning – number one will shock you):
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Yes, Salvador Perez ranks dead last by quite a large margin. The Royals pitching staff certainly isn’t what it used to be, but Perez hasn’t exactly been helping them out too much. McCann was on a pretty bad Tigers team where the pitching wasn’t great or awful, but he also spent time on the same team as Grandal in 2020 (McCann is with a decent staff now as a member of the Mets). Tampa Bay Rays Legend Robinson Chirinos was part of a very not-good staff with the Rangers, BUT he did get some time with the Astros and Mets. Wieters was with a pretty poor pitching staff in Baltimore even though their bullpen was decent. The well-traveled Suzuki has been on some good teams between the Twins, Braves, and Nationals. He’s with a pretty poor staff with the Angels now, but he hasn’t caught enough this season for his numbers to be dragged down that much. All of these catchers make-up for their subpar framing by swinging decent bats and having strong arms, so it’s not like any of these guys are completely useless.
Basically the purpose of this section was to provide some context about the catcher framing metrics used by Savant with a tiny disclaimer that this is not the holy grail of catching analytics. These statistics absolutely have value, but just keep in mind that pitchers can impact them as well.
Florida Man Frames Fantastically
Moving on to the protagonist of this post – Mike “Good” Zunino. We’ll take a look at his framing in each season since 2015:
Zunino in good company with Yadi, Lil D, and Rivera back in 2015.
Vazquez, Curt “David Price’s Father” Casali, Ross, and The Buffalo with Zunino in 2016.
Lil D and Yadi again with Zunino AND Tampa Bay Rays legend Stephen Vogt in 2017.
Zunino in the same territory as an all-time great framer in Flowers during the 2018 season.
Zunino, Lil D, and Mathis are usually better than their numbers in 2019.
This was a low point for Zunino’s framing during the 2020 season.
Zunino rebounded nicely in 2021 so far.
We can see him grow and become a pretty good framer during his career before having a few down seasons with the Rays before getting back on track this season. Honestly, there isn’t really one single explanation for Zunino falling off as much as he did upon arriving in Tampa (St. Pete). Maybe part of it was trying to get on board with a new coaching staff and synthesize his knowledge with theirs about framing. It could also be that he was having some pretty poor seasons next to the plate and he might have been getting in his own head. Or it might be he was just getting unlucky in important situations; his strike rate steadily rose each season (until the pandemic shortened season in 2020) to a career high 51.5% this year. Again, there is no single explanation for his performance dipping as much as it did that can be explained by the metrics available to us. I’d be interested in what the coaching staff has to say about it, but oh well. Anyways, Mike Zunino is good, and he’s back to being the very good framer that he always has been and it’s adding a lot of value to the team this season.
As mentioned above, Zunino has a strike rate of 51.5% this season and it’s a career high. This stat essentially tells us that when there’s a borderline call, Zunino is able to frame it in a way to get the umpire to call it a strike 51.5% of the time. This is critical to the success of the pitching staff for many reasons. Most obviously, it’s important because Zunino is able to “steal” strike calls and help turn a count around to favor the pitcher. Additionally, his framing ability allows pitchers to grip it and rip it; they can confidently throw their best stuff to the edges of the zone without having to worry about being perfect because they know big daddy Z will make it look pretty for whichever umpire is trying to screw the team over. The Rays are currently the third least favored team in all of baseball, getting on average 38.2% of borderline calls to go their way while they’re both pitching and hitting (according to UmpScorecards) – but I’ll save that rant for another post. However, that does remind me, elite pitch framers might see their value plummet if and when robo-umps are implemented, but we’ll discuss that in a little while; we’re not done gassing-up Zunino.
As you can see from the image above of Zunino’s 2021 season, he’s at his best framing pitches on the zone at the edge and slightly to the right of the plate. Stealing strikes 72.4% of the time in that area is especially important for guys like Yarbs and Flemming who typically like to work East to West around the strike zone. It benefits others too, but usually more so for the guys who rely on dancing around the plate. They don’t have the velocity or the big bending curveballs to benefit from above and below the zone, so it’s important that Zunino is so good in that area. Roe’s White Castle Special Deluxe Sliders (when he gets healthy) that sweep side-to-side will look really nice when they’re called strikes because of what Zunino can bring. Luckily, he is very good at framing both high and low pitches too, so that helps out guys like Hill and Glasnow (RIP in peace) who work North to South with fastballs and curveballs, or guys like JP and Wacha with their fastball-change combos. Basically, Mike Zunino is good because of his ability to frame pitches, and he’s one of the best active catchers to do it (currently ranked 10th among active catchers in runs extra strikes).
Here are some other defensive metrics to show how good Zunino is:
- Career caught stealing percentage = 29% (Compared to the league average of 27% during the same time frame)
- Career fielding percentage = .995 (3rd among active catchers)
- Defensive runs saved this season = 4 (tied for 3rd among all catchers in MLB)
- Defensive runs saved for his career = 50 (4th among all catchers with at least 6000 innings during the same time frame)
Poor Kurt 😔.
On a side note, transitioning to robot umpires would definitely hurt the value of catchers who are on their teams because of their framing ability. Catchers wouldn’t need to try to make the pitches look better because the home plate umpire would mainly be there just to decide on things like check-swings and catcher’s interference. Maybe the robots could do that too, but nobody really knows what it would look like. Either way, framing would become a lot less valuable if robo-umps were implemented. There isn’t much else to say that isn’t speculative, but I’ll definitely do some more research on it! ANYWAYS, even if we DO get robo-umps sometime soon, Zunino’s bat is alive and well, so he could still be very useful for the Rays (how about that segue?! 😎).
Florida Man Mashes Monstrous, Massive Homers
Zunino can absolutely bring it when he’s behind the plate AND when he’s standing next to it. Just look at this; it’s beautiful:
He’s crushing baseballs at a rate almost no other batters can match this season. This isn’t an exaggeration; his barrels per batted ball percentage is 27.9% – meaning 27.9% of the balls he’s hitting are barreled (a ball is barreled when it is hit at least 98mph with a launch angle between 26 and 30 degrees, and each mph a ball is over 98, the degrees for the optimal launch angle vary slightly). Zunino is by far the best in this metric, and the next closest is future Hall of Famer Shohei Ohtani (haha jk about him being a future HOFer… unless…😏😏😏) at 24.5%. Anyways, when Zunino makes contact, he usually hits it really, really hard. This explains why his xSLG is at a career best .549 this season. Yes, his batting average is low, but the Rays (and many of the other sabermetric-savvy teams) don’t really value BA as much as they used to. Speaking of batting, why did Zunino’s bat fall-off so drastically for a few years? And how did he get back on track?
Zunino really started chasing pitches when he arrived in Tampa (St. Pete). Whenever the Rays acquire a player, it’s because they have a plan for him. They’ll never just throw money or prospects around to get a guy for the sake of having him on the roster (pretend like the Pat Burrell and Manny Ramirez things never happened). They definitely valued Zunino for his defensive ability and intangibles first, and his bat second.
It seems like when he wasn’t performing the way they expected him to defensively, he started to try too hard with the bat. His chase rate rose from 30.6% in 2018 to 34.1% in 2019. He’s down to 29.7% this season after hanging at 31.3% last season in 2020. While it is only a few percentage points different, it actually is quite significant for a guy like Zunino. He will always be someone who strikes out a ton (career K% of 36.2%), so he’s already operating with a small margin of error. In addition to that, catchers typically get much fewer plate appearances than other position players because of the physically demanding nature of the position – they need regular rest to survive a full season.
So Zunino was chasing pitches out of the zone trying to add more value in fewer plate appearances than his teammates, and then it became cyclical at that point. Even anecdotally, there were times in 2019 and 2020 when it looked like he was trying to hit a seven-run homer with two outs and nobody on base (kind of like what we’ve seen with Yoshi when he was struggling with his bat; he couldn’t get playing time because he was performing poorly, and he couldn’t hit consistently because he wasn’t getting playing time, so he was always trying to do too much).
We saw a light at the end of the tunnel when Zunino began to come to life in the playoffs last season leading-up to the world series. He finished the 2020 with an OPS of .598 (yikes), but had a .776 OPS in the playoffs before a poor performance in the world series (.180 OPS against the Dodgers 😔). Thankfully, Zunino is back to commanding his strike zone offensively (9.7% BB this season), he’s swinging at fewer pitches out of the zone, and he’s not trying to do too much.
Rays Catchers of the Future
Francisco Mejia does a lot of things well and could be a good catcher in the future. “What do you mean? He’s not a good catcher now?” Well, no, not really – but he has potential, so we’ll see where he’s at and what the Rays see in him. Then we can turn our attention to future Rays legend Blake Hunt 👀.
When Mejia was coming-up as a prospect, his best tool was his throwing – 80 grade on the scale of 20 to 80. It’s fairly rare that a player receives an 80 for any of their tools, and Mejia doesn’t disappoint. He has a very strong arm and he’s pretty quick on the exchange as well as popping out of his catching position into a throwing stance. Mejia did struggle to throw-out baserunners in 2019 (his first season where he got a substantial share of playing time in the major leagues), only throwing out 17% of base stealers when the league average that season was 26%. He didn’t get tested much in 2020 but baserunners did go 2 for 2 in stolen base attempts against him that season. However, this season, it’s clear the Rays coaching staff had a plan for him; Mejia has thrown out 27% of base stealers compared to the league average of 24%. While this metric can be skewed by sample sizes and how quickly pitchers move through their wind-up, it’s still a testament to how good Mejia is with throwing because Zunino has thrown-out only 23% of base stealers this season. Okay, so the arm is good, but how is he with his pitch framing? I really like him and I don’t want to seem like I’m ripping on him, but he’s still young and there’s plenty of room to grow so we need to be patient.
Mejia is in Kurt Suzuki territory with his framing (if you don’t know what that means, go back and reread the stuff about framing before we talked about Zunino’s defense). Mejia is only 25 so he still has room to learn and grow in this area so he doesn’t spend his career in the Suzuki zone. If it’ll make us feel better, he’s in some interesting company this season:
For what it’s worth, Gary Sanchez is dead-last on this list at number 36.
Mejia doesn’t do Rays pitchers too many favors, and we saw that on display the other day against the Red Sox when he worked (“worked” is a strong word; I’m debating changing that to “attempted to work”) with Yarbs. They were out of sync, couldn’t get into a rhythm, had a difficult time with the home plate umpire, and Mejia struggled to receive pitches cleanly against a tough, right-handed-heavy Red Sox line-up. It’s a good learning opportunity for a young catcher, so I’m confident he can rebound from that game. We’ll check back in later in the season when he gets around 2000 pitches caught and we’ll see what kind of progress he’s made. I’m not a catching expert by any means, but it seems like he’ll get better as he learns the pitching staff more (remember, it took Zunino a little while to get settled in).
Mejia has the potential to be a pretty good major league hitter. He’s always been able to handle the bat well and put the ball in play, but not with too much authority (career .268 BABIP and 87.2mph average exit velocity). He has a career OPS of .810 across seven seasons and over 500 games in the minor leagues. Mejia absolutely has the track record to do it, so we can reasonably expect him to be at least an average major league hitter as he continues to grow and get consistent playing time. Interestingly, this is only his second season in the majors getting more than 100 plate appearances. He might not figure things out offensively or defensively this season, but he’ll continue to show flashes of his potential and I think Mejia will really come into his own next season.
Blake Hunt is The Truth
I love Blake Snell, but man, the Padres got absolutely FLEECED in that trade. The Rays got two young, talented, major-league-ready players in Patino and Mejia who are both under team control for a long time. Additionally, the Rays got RHP Cole Wilcox who has been tearing it up in Charleston (42 IP, 28.3% K, 3% BB, 2.31 FIP, 2.14 ERA) AND Future Tampa Bays Rays Legend Blake Hunt. Hunt is a big boy (6’3, 215 lbs.) who has taken a huge step forward offensively this season. He has six home runs in just 33 games after hitting five in 89 games in his previous season. Hunt has a career high wRC+ of 129 (100 is average) this season to go along with an impressive .828 OPS. His strikeout percentage this season is somewhat high at 31.1%, but he has also been walking a career high 12.8% of the time.
In addition to his impressive bat, Hunt has a very strong arm and scouts have clocked his pop time (how quickly a catcher can up out of their stance and get the ball to second base) at just under 1.9 seconds. To put that in perspective, the major league average each season sits around two seconds. Hunt is only 22 years old with plenty of room to grow both offensively and defensively (I can’t find much about his framing ability) because of his impressive physical tools. He should be moving on to Montgomery as soon as there’s room for him on that roster.
I think in five years, we’re going to be calling it the Hunt trade instead of the Snell trade.
