How does ABS help Salvador Perez’s defensive metrics?

Many announcers and writers have called Salvador Perez a future Hall of Famer, but I do not think that he is going to make it to Cooperstown. Two things have kept him in that tier just below elite. First, he is a free-swinger in an era where on-base percentage is valued higher than batting average, hindering his perceived offensive value. Second, the rise of catcher framing statistics have diminished his perceived defensive value despite his Gold Gloves. Both on-base percentage and framing metrics have really limited his value by Wins Above Replacement (WAR). His Baseball Reference (BR) career WAR is sitting at 35.5 compared to an average Hall of Fame catcher WAR of 53.6. His Fangraphs WAR is a paltry 18.4 because they include the framing values while BR defensive WAR does not.

Salvy’s framing values have vacillated, as all statistics do, but they have been consistently negative. The only season where his framing metric (FRM) value was positive was 2020 when it was 0.3 in the COVID shortened season. The new ABS challenge system is exactly the sort of thing that would be beneficial to a catcher like Perez. He throws well and has been around average at blocking per Statcast, though we will never know how that would have rated in his younger seasons before blocking metrics were tracked. He has even had some very nice defensive value seasons despite the framing issues, but over the years, Salvador has accumulated -125.5 FRM, which is largely responsible for the 17 WAR disparity between Baseball Reference and Fangraphs.

When it comes to catchers taking advantage of the new ABS system, Salvador Perez is near the top of the leaderboard. He has won 74% of his catching challenges for a 74% success rate. Only William Contreras and Tyler Stephenson have won more challenges. Each one of those wins represents a strike that would have counted against his framing in past years that he can now salvage for his pitcher. It hasn’t been enough to make Salvy’s 2026 framing value positive—he currently sits at -1.0 FRM—but he’s on pace for roughly -3 FRM, which would rank as the third-best framing season of his career over a full year. Each framing call – either turning a ball into a strike or a strike into a ball – is worth roughly 0.12 to 0.13 runs. Perez being successful on 31 challenges implies that it would be worth around 3.7 runs in framing negatives that he avoided. That would have put him on pace for closer to a -12 FRM and he generally hangs out in the -8 to -13 range, so that makes it feel like it is a “real” difference from ABS.

More broadly, ABS seems to be taking some value away from the top framing performers, as you might have expected it would. Both Fangraphs and Baseball Savant had Patrick Bailey worth more than 20 runs from framing in each of 2024 and 2025 and many other players are often in the upper teens. Right now, Dillon Dingler is leading FRM with a pace for around +11. Statcast does have Adley Rutschman and Brandon Valenzuela pacing closer to +14, but the top end does seem to be a little compressed as some of your framed strikes could get overturned along with the generally tighter strike zone that we have seen presumably as umps try not to expand the zone now that they can get embarrassed on overturns. Bailey is only on pace for +5 to +6 FRM, which would be quite the drop for him despite having won 28 ABS challenges but having 21 overturned the other direction by the batters. Salvador has only had batters overturn 10 calls against him. Being good at framing just creates more opportunities for batters to challenge and presumably fewer for the catcher.

Highly negative framing values are a little harder to deal with, though maybe some of those catchers will get more chances in an ABS era. When there are issues in an area like this it can cost people playing time and thus not show us what the overall seasons might typically look like. Tyler Stephenson is the worst framer so far this season, but is having an overall positive defensive contribution, so he is likely to get to continue behind the dish despite the framing deficiencies. It is hard to say how ABS is going to affect the bottom end of the spectrum here, and it might take several years before we know.

What we’ve seen so far suggests that Salvador knows what a strike is and is using that to have a high success rate in his challenges. That may also be helping to buoy his FRM value above its typical level. Early returns suggest ABS may substantially mitigate Salvy’s framing deficiencies, reducing their impact to perhaps a quarter or a third of what they would have been under the previous system. Unfortunately, he is nearing the end of his career so ABS is not going to take away all the negative framing value he has already accrued in his long and successful big-league career.