Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty ImagesOften seen as a bit of an enigma defensively, Travis d’Arnaud just got quite a jump in value from FanGraphs’ rollout of their pitch framing stat and its incorporation into WAR.
There’s no shortage of nitty gritty to read on their site and I encourage everyone to give it a perusal, but the essence of pitch framing is that how a catcher sets up and receives a ball can make it more or less likely for a pitch to be called a strike. A single “stolen strike” isn’t much, but with catchers receiving thousands of pitches in a season, they add up—and quickly! Per FanGraphs, in 2018, Houston’s Max Stassi led baseball with 14.1 runs saved by framing, or nearly a…
