A Victor in the Catcher Wars

The year was 2009, and Colorado Rockies fans were settled deep into one of two metaphorical trenches opposing one another over a vast hellscape cluttered with broken numbers and inundated with a hazy fog of grit.  In one trench waved a banner bearing the name “Iannetta,” and in the other: “Torrealba.”  These were the Catcher Wars, and there was no end in sight. Catchers fascinate me.  Always have.  That was my primary position throughout my young life in organized baseball.  When I was 10 years old, it was mostly about getting to put on all that armor – it made me feel like a super hero.  As a pre-teen, it was mostly about staving off boredom – catchers get to touch the ball dozens of times an inning.  And as a teenager, I went all-in on the more high-minded aspects of the job – deciding when to call for that curveball, managing those poor pitchers’ fragile psyches, positioning my teammates… and even pitch-framing, a practice the adult-version of me has come to disdain. But however much I’d like to see pitch-framing be displaced by an automated strike zone, I have to admit that pitch-framing intrigues me.  Fooling umpires isn’t the [...]

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