Let’s Talk About Slam Dunk Framing

If you’re not familiar with Jerry Weinstein, you should be. He is a catching coach legend. After decades with the Rockies, he recently jumped to the Cubs, and lucky for us, he’s quite active online talking about catching philosophies and training. One thing he has discussed recently is “slam dunk” framing.

Some cues in baseball are universal, and slam dunk framing is one of them. It looks just like how it sounds: Catchers take their glove and quickly snap it down as if they were dunking a basketball. What’s the intention? By moving their glove down in a quick, fluid motion on pitches at the top of the zone, they’re attempting to give the impression that these pitches are lower than where they actually crossed the plate.

While this could easily just be another solo Patrick Bailey framing post, there is one other guy in particular, Cal Raleigh, who deserves to squat in the spotlight. To set the stage, here are the leaders in Strike% in Zone 12 (the upper third in the shadow zone) last season:

Each of these players excels at framing the top of the zone. Bailey is the king of framing breaking balls at the precise point in their sharp trajectories that they appear to be strikes even when they aren’t, while Raleigh shines with his ability to push upper third heaters down into the zone. Let’s start our analysis with Raleigh, who on Tuesday agreed to a six-year, $105 million extension with the Mariners:

Raleigh’s framing of heaters at the top of the zone stands out from a mechanical perspective. Lucky for the Mariners, this is an ideal trait for their catcher to have, because their pitching staff loves to target the top of the zone. In fact, Seattle threw pitches to that location at a higher rate than all but one team in baseball last season. Considering this, let’s walk through the fundamentals of slam dunk framing to understand how Raleigh does it.

Depending on the combination of a pitcher’s arm angle and approach angle, the mechanics of dunking fastballs at the top of the zone have some slight variations. For George Kirby’s heater on the corner, Raleigh loads up with a quarter turn from the left-handed batter’s box. To better control how he receives the pitch, Raleigh attacks it from the angle opposite where the ball enters the zone, making sure that his glove gets to the spot where the pitch is headed before the ball arrives. This is crucial: If he doesn’t beat the pitch to the location where he wants to frame it, the momentum and movement of the pitch will drag his glove with it on its current trajectory. Any noticeable glove movement after the catcher receives the pitch risks alerting the umpire to the illusion.

A different example of that is the heater from Luis Castillo. His sidearm angle with a flat approach angle means the pitch is staying on a similar plane the entire time (or even rising, from Raleigh’s perspective). Because of that, Raleigh never lets his glove go below the middle of his chest protector when Castillo is targeting up in the zone. If he starts too low on these high fastballs that hold their planes, he has to cover more space with his glove to catch it; more space to cover means more time to get there, and taking more time could result in getting beat to the spot. Here, though, Raleigh starts with his glove higher, beats the pitch to the location, and dunks in beautifully.

It’s important to point out Raleigh’s combination of posture and end point. He stands tall on these pitches to ensure that he catches the ball below his face — a visual cue for umpires to determine if a high pitch is a strike. Along the same lines, he always makes sure he finishes his dunk below the plane of his face mask. That combination helps him deceive the umpire into thinking the pitch is a strike. Raleigh’s framing is all about small, subtle movements, reminiscent of the way Carmelo Anthony would place the ball into the rim rather than jam it through. The next slam dunk framing we’ll highlight requires a different approach.

Bailey is the best defensive catcher in baseball, to the point that in a recent piece about how the implementation of an automated ball-strike challenge system would affect Bailey’s value, Michael Baumann wrote, “I don’t think it’s even a little hyperbolic to call him the best pitch-framing catcher who ever lived.” No wonder he’s the guy who most sticks out to me when it comes to stealing breaking balls at the top of the zone, among them: backup sliders, rainbow curves, or sweepers coming around the zone. Here are examples Bailey dunking each of those pitches:

Masterful work, really. Receiving backup sliders smoothly is very difficult. When you’re set up on the opposite side of the plate, the most difficult location to control is up on the glove side. On top of that, the spin is deceptive even to you as the catcher, making it harder to identify the plane of movement. It doesn’t affect Bailey, though. He’s as patient as possible, and because of that, his forearm and glove never travel farther than his elbow, giving the image to the umpire that the pitch is an easy strike. Unlike Raleigh’s Carmelo dunks, what Bailey does here is more like a basketball player who, needing to avoid a defender while in the air, slams it on an acute angle. To finish off the sharp angle of the pitch’s trajectory, he has to make a sharp movement to stop it in its tracks.

The patience Bailey shows in that first clip is also apparent in the second, when he receives Blake Snell’s loopy curve. Since Bailey’s posture isn’t upright, he has to let the ball travel far enough that he catches it below his face but not outside the width of his body. This slam dunk is to make sure it only goes as far as his inside leg.

On the sweeper coming around the corner, Bailey uses a more noticeable dunk, albeit one that is still difficult for an umpire to recognize. Another thing to note: Bailey primarily dunks with his wrist; in doing so, he avoids any louder movements that could alert an umpire that he’s attempting to make a ball look like a strike. As a catcher, the more that you move your arm, the easier it is to detect the deception. Bailey maintains quiet movements even as he covers a lot of space to get his glove in an optimal position for his slight of hand.

The incredible thing about catchers like Bailey and Raleigh is that they’re darn near elite in almost every area of the strike zone when it comes to receiving. To me, the top of the zone has always been difficult to master because catchers somehow need to make a loud movement quiet. The fact that they can do that while still commanding other parts of the zone is what makes them two of the best defenders in the sport.

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