Petriello: Star catchers shine in new Statcast metrics

From Mike Petriello at MLB.com on March 9, 2018:

Gary Sanchez has the best throwing arm of any catcher in baseball, though by only a hair over Martin Maldonado. No one gets the ball out of his mitt more quickly than Salvador Perez, which you may have expected, or Chris Stewart, which you may have not. Yet when you add it all up, it’s not any of them who get the ball to second base the fastest. It’s Austin Hedges, ever so slightly over J.T. Realmuto.

We know these things because Statcast™ measures them. Now you can know them, too. Over on Baseball Savant, our new catcher defense leaderboards are live. You can find data on arm strength, exchange time and pop time, for each of the past three seasons. Go have fun.

Let’s take a second to explain how each of those three items are measured — and to show who’s great at doing each one.

Read the full article here: https://www.mlb.com/news/statcast-adds-pop-time-exchange-arm-strength/c-268064274



Originally published: March 10, 2018. Last Updated: March 10, 2018.