A point of pride in recent years for Braves fans, particularly those of us here at OFR, has been Tyler Flowers‘ defense. He was a framing superstar, leading all of MLB in 2017 in framing runs via both Statcorner.com (+28) and Baseball Prospectus (+32). On a per-pitch basis, his 2017 numbers were much higher than we’re used to ever seeing. Flowers put together one of the greatest framing seasons of all time in 2017.
Brace yourselves. This season, Tyler Flowers has been merely a very, very good framer. He’s back to his 2016 levels, good enough for top-10 in the league, but not earth-shattering. Perhaps that’s due to his injury, and he’ll soon return to those 2017 levels, and if that happened, then he’ll again be a player I stump for in futility when it’s time for MVP voting. But for now, Flowers is back to being a very good framer.
And yet, over the course of his limited sample size of 28 games this year, he’s nearly making up for the slight framing dropoff with his bat. Flowers is slashing .270/.398/.438 for a wRC+ of 136, on pace for a career high. Check out his improvements at the plate:
- His 21.3% K-rate is the lowest of his career
- His 13.0% BB-rate is the highest of his career
- His chase rate of 20.3% is the lowest of his career
- His swing rate on pitches in the zone (71.8%) is the 2nd highest of his career
- His contact rate inside the strike zone (85.8%) is the highest of his career
- His overall contact rate (77.1%) is the 2nd highest of his career
- His groundball rate (37.9%) is the 2nd lowest of his career
I’m obviously a big fan of Kurt Suzuki and his self-reinvention at the plate. However, let’s make no mistake – Tyler Flowers is this team’s best catcher. He’s without question the better defender, and this season he’s been the superior hitter so far. Rather than being driven by good luck, as improvements often are, Flowers is having better results thanks to his having better habits at the plate. Those are the improvements that stick. He’s improving at age 32, and I’m thankful it’s happening with Atlanta. The Braves still have arguably baseball’s best catching situation, and they’re a big reason this team is atop the standings.
The pitchers are throwing more strikes this year. So his opportunities have been less. With pitchers ahead in the count, they will try to get a hitter to chase a pitch that isn’t in the strike zone. Harder to frame it for a strike. Great article.