Catcher Block Study

Data covered block attempts from April 5, 2015 through April 7, 2026. The full dataset was 366,974 attempts. Because routine opportunities are almost always made (97.9% success rate on plays rated “certain”), data was subsetted to opportunties rated as even chances or more difficult.

Summary of Results

1. Overall Analysis (Full subset – 18,623 block opportunities)

Traditional stance: 12,722 observations, 47.19% BlockSuccess
Knee-down stance: 5,901 observations, 45.18% BlockSuccess
Difference: +2.01 percentage points in favor of traditional
p-value = 0.0106 → Statistically significant at p < 0.05

Conclusion: Across the entire data subset, the traditional stance shows a small but statistically significant advantage in block success rate.

2. Overall Arm Side vs Glove Side Success Rates by Stance

Stance	Total n	Arm n	Arm Success %	Glove n	Glove Success %	Difference (Arm - Glove)	p-value	Significant
Traditional	11726	869	35.6	10857	48.9	-13.3	0	TRUE
Knee Down	5601	342	32.8	5259	46.6	-13.8	0	TRUE

Key Takeaways:

Glove-side pitches have a substantially higher block success rate than arm-side pitches.
The gap is large and highly statistically significant (p < 0.0001) for both stances.
The disadvantage on arm-side pitches is slightly larger with the knee-down stance (-13.8 points) than with the traditional stance (-13.3 points), but both are strongly significant.

3. Qualified Catchers (40–60% traditional usage, n ≥ 100)

We also examined the performance of 11 catchers who used both tradtional and knee-down stances more or less evenly:

Catcher	n_trad	Success Trad	n_knee	Success Knee	p-value	Significant
Hedges, Austin	147	44.90%	139	61.15%	0.0059	Yes
Vazquez, Christian	89	34.83%	121	42.15%	0.2828	No
Perez, Salvador	216	46.76%	190	41.58%	0.2944	No
Mejia, Francisco	43	48.84%	61	59.02%	0.3043	No
d'Arnaud, Travis	144	44.44%	115	49.57%	0.4118	No
McGuire, Reese	60	56.67%	41	48.78%	0.4352	No
Sanchez, Gary	138	33.33%	116	37.07%	0.5342	No
Realmuto, J.T.	167	44.91%	163	47.24%	0.6713	No
Stephenson, Tyler	67	55.22%	51	52.94%	0.8052	No
Caratini, Victor	75	44.00%	85	45.88%	0.8112	No
Murphy, Sean	83	55.42%	120	55.00%	0.9526	No

Key takeaway: Among catchers who use both stances relatively evenly, Austin Hedges is the only one showing a statistically significant difference (knee-down substantially better for him). Most others show no meaningful difference.