Danny Jansen and the Brewers Have Already Gone to Work on His Receiving

After his pitch framing fell to career lows last season, improved receiving was a focus for Danny Jansen heading into 2025. Baseball Savant, which uses Statcast pitch tracking to capture framing data, ranked him in the 21st percentile of catchers with -4 runs.

"The goal is to try to improve on the balls at the bottom of the zone," he said. "I feel like the last couple years, I've been pretty good on the top of the zone and to my left a little bit, but struggled at the bottom."

The numbers back it up. Jansen notched 1 framing run around the third-base edge and a palatable -1 run around the top, but -4 runs around the bottom.

Catching with one knee on the ground has become the standard stance across baseball in recent years, but Jansen was one of the few to remain in the traditional squat with both knees up. Looking to get closer to the ground for the low pitch, he made the switch to a knee-down stance midway through this year's spring training with the Tampa Bay Rays.

"I was a bit stubborn before giving it a shot with the one knee stuff," he said, "but just looking at how the game's kind of changed and how it's going, I think it was a good choice to go down to it."

Public metrics saw no improvement in his receiving, though. When the Brewers acquired Jansen the week of the trade deadline, he was at -9 framing runs on the year, including -6 around the bottom of the zone. Here's how he looked behind the plate at that time:

Jansen's glove was too noisy as it hovered around the zone. He would briefly lower it mid-pitch, trying to work underneath and through the ball, only to bring that glove up and over the low pitch as he caught it. Those issues prevented him from properly presenting the pitch to the umpire.

"He was trying to catch the ball at the bottom the same way he would catch it at the top," said Brewers Major League field coordinator Nestor Corredor, who works extensively with catchers as one of his many duties on the staff. "Instead of going over, we want to go underneath."

Before Jansen arrived in Milwaukee, Corredor and the rest of the catching brass studied video to identify his strengths, weaknesses, and potential tweaks to his setup and mechanics. They saw potential for a better receiver.

"We noticed that he always had good hands, but he doesn't know how to use them," Corredor said. "That was the baseline."

Early in the year with the Rays, Jansen tried dropping his glove all the way to the ground mid-pitch so that he could work underneath the ball more naturally. It didn't work. Corredor suggested he go back to the glove drop, but with a new wrinkle.

"He said, 'Hey, you want to try this?'" Jansen recalled. "Never really forcing my hand, but just more of a trial, just to kind of see what we got."

"He was like, 'Well, I did that in Tampa. It didn't work,'" Corredor said. "I said, 'How did you do it?' So he showed me. I said, 'Well, listen, let's try [starting] from the bottom. Start with a bit of a new routine, try to get the glove down, and then work through the baseball and see what happens.'"

Many of the Brewers' recent framing success stories, including Omar Narvaez, William Contreras, and Eric Haase, stood under six feet tall with more compact body types, so they could maintain good control of their catching arm while sitting still behind the plate. Eliminating unnecessary movement in their setups made their receiving more precise and created a more natural-looking presentation.

For Jansen, who is listed at 6-foot-1 and 240 pounds, the Brewers had to take a different approach. They believed his wider frame gave him more room to make pitches look like strikes and that trying to keep still was counterproductive. Rather than eliminating movement, they decided that constant, controlled, and rhythmic motion would best help Jansen use his hands effectively throughout the zone, not just at the top.

"I think the catching group here, we did a good job because we didn't take him away from his strengths," Corredor said. "We tried working around his strengths."

With the Rays, Jansen stopped moving when his glove hit the ground. His hand then stabbed over the top of the ball as it came back up, resulting in poorly presented low pitches like this one:

With the Brewers, he has started dropping the glove and swiping it across the dirt before bringing it back up. The rhythmic motion is supposed to help Jansen receive and present the ball more naturally, as he did with this Nick Mears fastball to the same location:

"I've definitely attempted going to the ground with my glove, and I think that for me, just figuring out with some work that I kind of have to have some rhythm on the ground," Jansen said. "So [the glove swipe is] really just to kind of keep moving instead of being still."

The sample size is still too small to tell if it's working, as Jansen has only caught 10 games since the trade. In that time, his overall strike rate around the edges of the zone has bumped from 38.2% to 41.2%, but his percentage on takes around the bottom is nearly identical. He and the Brewers think he's trending in the right direction, though.

"I felt like there was some progress right off the bat, so I'm just trying to ride that out," Jansen said.

"With him, it was easier because he was open-minded to change, and he was all-in to try and do something new," Corredor said. "So that's been the key. Now, the more comfortable he gets, the better he gets."