2026 Positional Power Rankings: Catcher

If we were smart, we’d write these things backwards. I could really use a fully-charged battery to wade through the mess in (spoiler alert) Anaheim. But by the time you and I get to the Angels some five or six thousand words from now, I’ll be a chattering wretch with a brain so oversaturated by the deluge of major league-adjacent catchers that they’ll haunt my dreams for weeks. I don’t need a full brain to tell you why Cal Raleigh is the best catcher in baseball. You don’t even need me to tell you. This is Raleigh’s second season in a row putting the Mariners on top of our catcher positional power rankings. Just five more in a row and he’ll break Buster Posey’s record.

In 2025, Raleigh put up 9.1 WAR and hit 60 homers with a 161 wRC+. From both sides of the plate, Raleigh’s swing is designed to do damage in the air. He’s got the highest launch angle in baseball. He strikes out plenty, but he hits the ball hard and far, and he walks because why would you challenge a guy who can do that? After concerns that his framing was dropping off some, Raleigh ended the season ranked third according to Statcast. He also finished third in innings caught and led all catchers by a wide margin with 705 plate appearances. He obviously can’t keep this up forever, but even if he falls all the way back to his 2022-2024 form, he’ll be an All-Star with a 117 wRC+ and great defense.

Further down the depth chart, Andrew Knizner put up a career-high 0.2 WAR in 2025; Mariners fans surely hope he won’t have much chance to improve on that figure. Mitch Garver is coming off two down seasons and is on a minor league deal. He’s 35 and more of a DH than a catcher, but maybe he’ll hit again.

Alejandro Kirk is back. After two seasons with excellent defense but a combined 94 wRC+, Kirk ran a 116 wRC+ and put up his best defensive season yet. The diminutive backstop launched a career-best 15 home runs (plus five more in the playoffs) and also set a career high with 4.7 WAR. He doesn’t lift the ball all that much, but he’s a great contact hitter with above-average bat speed, and in 2025 that allowed him to surpass a 50% hard-hit rate. Statcast credited him with 22 fielding runs, second only to Patrick Bailey. He was also the best blocker in a game by a shockingly large margin. The projections don’t think he’s dropping back under the three-win mark, and Kirk’s game is so complete that you can understand why.

Tyler Heineman was fantastic in backup duty last year, putting up 2.1 WAR and running an astonishing 120 wRC+. That said, he overperformed his xwOBA by a neat 68 points, so maybe don’t expect him to keep hitting like this. Still, he’s an excellent defender. Brandon Valenzuela is a glove-first 25-year-old who has spent the past few years in the high minors. The projections see him as a replacement-level player, which is fine for a third catcher as long as nothing happens to the other two.

Hello and welcome to the best defender in baseball. Over his three years in the majors, Patrick Bailey has run a combined wRC+ of 76, costing the Giants 39 runs on offense. They don’t care. Bailey has been the game’s most valuable defender in each of those three seasons. Remember when “Wild Thing” Rick Vaughn threw a fastball that knocked the head off a batter? Bailey could make that pitch look like a strike. You know when the ball drops in Times Square on New Year’s Eve? He could make that look like a strike. Remember that one time 50 Cent threw out the first pitch at Citi Field? OK, even Bailey couldn’t help on that one, but you get the point.

One reason for caution: The projection here has Bailey set for a career-high 4.6 WAR, but that’s largely because it’s expecting him to get nearly 75 more plate appearances than he’s ever gotten in a season. It’s also at least possible the challenge system could cost him a few hard-earned stolen strikes. The good news? After hints that college-import manager Tony Vitello might want the Giants to call pitches from the dugout, the team indicated that it’ll remain Bailey’s bailiwick.

With Andrew Knizner and Sam Huff both gone, the 33-year-old Eric Haase is the only catcher here with major league experience. Daniel Susac has the inside track to the backup spot, especially because, as a Rule 5 pick, he has to stay on the 26-man roster. Jesus Rodriguez has spent the past few years raking in the minors, and he’s currently raking during spring training, but he’s also a third baseman and his catching is still a work in progress.

The Orioles checking in at fourth on this list is a testament both to how good Adley Rutschman was at the beginning of his career and how good of a hitter Samuel Basallo looks to be at the beginning of his. After posting a combined 11.1 WAR over his first two seasons, Rutschman has put up 3.9 WAR over the past two seasons. His wRC+ fell from 129 to 99. His fielding run value fell from 21 to 6. Some of those counting stats are lower because oblique strains cost Rutschman a large chunk of 2025, but it’s now been two season since he’s looked like a star.

Last year at this time, we could blame the mid-season thumb injury Rutschman suffered in 2024. This year, we can’t. Rutschman is 28, and the projections have him bouncing back to put up a 116 wRC+ and 3.7 WAR, basically something between his first two years and the last two. That’s what projections do. But I don’t think anybody really knows what to expect right now.

Despite running a 55 wRC+ over a 31-game big league debut in 2025, Basallo is our top catching prospect and fourth-ranked prospect overall. His Top 100 blurb calls him a kaiju. A kaiju! The 21-year-old definitely has power. He earned that call-up by running a 151 wRC+ in Triple-A. He chases too much, his receiving isn’t great, and he’s dealt with injuries. But he should mash, and that’s enough. Haverick Mandley – sorry, Maverick Handley, I have a condition – rounds out the group.

If I were William Contreras, I’d be furious to find myself all the way down here at fifth (but I’d also, hopefully, be focused on more important stuff). Contreras led all catchers in WAR in both 2023 and 2024, then finished fourth in 2025. Since 2023, Raleigh leads all catchers with 18.8 WAR, Contreras is behind him at 15.0, then Will Smith is in third down at 10.6. Contreras may not belong with Raleigh, but he’s been a cut above everybody else and somehow the Brewers still haven’t cracked our top four.

That said, Contreras took a step back in 2025. His 113 wRC+, though still great for a catcher, was the worst number he’d put up since 2021, as was his 102 DRC+. His defense is still good, but not as far above average as it once was. That’s still enough to make him a top-six catcher, and he’s only 28. It could just be a blip. He just ran the best walk and strikeout rates of his career, and he still mashes the ball.

Gary Sánchez is still hanging on at 33. His bat is right around average these days, and his framing is well below it. Sánchez put up -0.1 WAR last year and 0.4 the year before, but he can still hit the ball a long way. Reese McGuire is on a minor league deal, and should he make the club, he can provide good defense; he’s one of the game’s best framers on pitches at the top of the zone. The 23-year-old Jeferson Quero just ranked 76th on our Top 100 and should be a solid regular when he’s ready.

Austin Wells started mashing at the All-Star break in 2024. Two fantastic months earned him a 114 wRC+ in the second half, and all of a sudden, he looked not just like a good rookie catcher, but a genuine star. In 2025, his bat fell back to just south of league average. His glove was still great, and he took advantage of Yankee Stadium’s short porch to launch 21 homers. The projections think he can keep it going with another three-win season. He was the best framer in baseball on low pitches, but struggled mightily on high ones. He’s a great player who’s still just 26, and who knows, maybe he’ll hit another hot stretch again.

Ben Rice put up a monster 2025 with 26 bombs and a 133 wRC+, but he took just 20% of his plate appearances at catcher, and we see him getting even fewer reps there in 2026. The Yankees came into 2025 high on J.C. Escarra’s glove, and the 30-year-old rookie didn’t disappoint, racking up three fielding runs in roughly 23 games worth of work. He didn’t hit and got sent down in early September, but he has run good offensive numbers in the minors for the past two years. Even if that never translates in the Bronx, he’ll contribute with the glove. Besides, three left-handed hitting catchers is just plain fun, even if one of them doesn’t do much hitting and another’s not quite a catcher anymore.

If these rankings were just about each team’s starting catcher, the Diamondbacks would be in the top five. Gabriel Moreno has performed like a star in each of the past two years, but injuries have kept him under 100 games and 3.0 WAR. He’s a contact hitter with a surprisingly good hard-hit rate, and his defense is excellent. If Moreno gets back up to something like 115 games played, he could finally get the All-Star nod that has so far eluded him. The bad news here is that Moreno has elbow inflammation and has been shut down. The good news is that an MRI revealed no structural damage; it’s hoped that he should only be out for a few days.

Behind Moreno, James McCann is entering his age-35 season. McCann ran a 76 wRC+ over the previous four seasons, so you’ll excuse the projections for not believing in the 110 mark he put up in 2025. His defense has graded out as average, but this is what a veteran who’s shifted into a backup role looks like. Last year, Adrian Del Castillo checked in at no. 30 on the Top 100. He raked in the minors, but struck out 35.9% of the time with an 87 wRC+ over 44 games in Arizona, and that number was buoyed by some serious batted ball luck. The projections see him putting up roughly the same offensive line, just with actual improvement taking the place of the batted ball luck. He’ll also get a late start after a calf strain, but it’s possible the numbers are underestimating him here.

Dillon Dingler just put up 4.1 WAR with a 109 wRC+. He won a Gold Glove, excelling at framing, blocking, and throwing (which, if you’re keeping track at home, is all the stuff we measure). The projections see his bat taking a step back this year, and you can understand why. He strikes out a lot, he doesn’t walk much, his bat speed is only middling, and he’s probably not going to run a .345 BABIP again. But Dingler also just posted a 45.6% hard-hit rate. It’s certainly possible that he’ll keep on dingling, hit another 13 home runs, and find his way to another above-average offensive line. Even if he doesn’t, defense like that will make him one of the better catchers in the game.

After two years as Detroit’s main catcher, Jake Rogers is now backing up Dingler. His defense took a step back in 2025, but the projections see the 30-year-old rebounding to be an above-average defender and a valuable backup. Entering his age-32 season, Tomás Nido will once again serve as a safe veteran option as a third catcher. Eduardo Valencia is Detroit’s eighth-ranked prospect, and he’s been mashing in the minors, but he’s been splitting time between catcher, first base, and DH, and may not see much time behind the dish.

Drake Baldwin wasted no time. Atlanta’s top prospect entering 2025 shot out of the gate, running a 176 wRC+ over the first 28 games of his career. He finished the season with a 125 wRC+, 3.1 WAR, and the NL Rookie of the Year award. The projections don’t expect that much regression at the plate, which is surprising considering Baldwin also ran a 125 wRC+ in the minors in 2024. The downgrade they’re expecting comes from his defense, which graded out a bit below average. I’m not saying I’m as smart as the computers, but I think the offense is more likely to get worse than the defense. It’s just hard to expect anyone to maintain the pace after a rookie campaign like that.

Hip labrum surgery is expected to keep Sean Murphy out until May; the injury had been bothering him for several years when he went under the knife last September. Murphy’s defense has always been great, but his offense dropped form excellent to below average in the last two seasons. Assuming he gets and stays healthy enough to receive significant playing time, he should be a useful piece, even if his offense doesn’t bounce back the way the projections expect.

That leaves Jonah Heim as the team’s primary backup for now. For one glorious season in 2023, Heim looked like a star, but he’s put up negative WAR in each of the past two seasons. He fell off a cliff on both defense and offense, and in 2025, he tried a new tactic of just not swinging at pitches in the zone. It, uh, didn’t work.

Thirty is the new whatever age Will Smith wants it to be. The Dodgers backstop celebrated a new decade on the earth by putting up his first four-win season since 2022. He ran a 153 wRC+, and came four points of batting average and three points of slugging from reaching .300/.400/.500.

The projections obviously don’t see Smith running back a 153 wRC+, but he drastically reduced his swing rate and added a couple of ticks to both his bat speed and what proved to be a career-high, 90th-percentile exit velocity. These are metrics that tend to be sticky; Smith might have unlocked something here. His defense is starting to border on being a liability, but even if his offense steps back to the level the projections expect, no one will care.

In 2023, Daulton Rushing ran a 147 wRC+ in the minors. In 2024, he ran a 145 wRC+ in the minors. In 2025, he ran a 143 wRC+ during his time at Triple-A. But in Los Angeles, he posted a 62 wRC. He struck out nearly six times more than he walked. He didn’t slug the way you’d expect from a guy who hits the ball that hard. His defense wasn’t great, either. The projections still believe in Rushing’s bat. Let’s give him another chance. Seby Zavala is the third catcher that every team wants to have and no team wants to use.

I want to believe in Francisco Alvarez. In 2025, he finished strong and put up a 124 wRC+, despite a hamate fracture, a start so bad it earned him a month in Triple-A Syracuse, and a thumb sprain. Still, his defense dropped off in a big way.

Here is his DRC+ over each of his five major league seasons: 101, 97, 97, 101, 98. DRC+ sees a thoroughly average hitter, as does xwOBA. Still, our projections see Alvarez running a 116 wRC+ this year. He whiffs too much, but his swing decisions graded out great and he ran an absurdly high hard-hit rate and average exit velocity last year. As I write this on March 15, he’s batting .375 and slugging .625 during spring training. This is a rosy projection, but it’s certainly not impossible, especially if Alvarez’s defense bounces back some.

Luis Torrens debuted in 2017, but somehow, he won’t reach free agency until next year. The last time he ran a wRC+ above 89 was 2021, but he’s quietly put up decent underlying numbers over the past two years, and his defense took a big step forward in 2025. Nobody’s expecting Torrens to suddenly start playing like a star in his age-30 season, but he put up 1.6 WAR last year, so maybe this projection doesn’t seem like a stretch at all.

“Would you rather have Ben Rortvedt, Hayden Senger, or Austin Barnes as your third catcher?” is the kind of question every GM hopes they never have to answer.

Welcome to the middle of the pack, and congratulations to the Twins for improving their roster at exactly one position this offseason. Ryan Jeffers is a good hitter and a not good defender who will see time at catcher and DH. In 2025, he had a much more passive approach, which turned into a bunch more walks and a strikeout rate that dipped below 20% for the first time in his entire career. He ran a career-low ISO, but getting on base is fun too. The projections will keep viewing him as an above-average hitter until he stops being an above-average hitter.

Victor Caratini parlayed a couple of above-average seasons at the plate in Houston into another two-year deal a thousand miles north. However, his defense took a big step back last year, and the projections don’t really trust his bat. They see a contact hitter who hit a few more home runs than usual despite hitting the ball softer. Alex Jackson has a career wRC+ of 48 and is now on his eighth major league franchise, but in 2025, he parlayed some great batted ball luck into 1.1 WAR.

The 19-year-old Eduardo Tait (pronounced Tah-eet) ranked 46th on our Top 100, but he’s a long way away.

The projections don’t really know what to do with the 26-year-old Bo Naylor. He raked in the minors and ran a 123 wRC+ as a rookie in 2023. In the following two seasons, he’s put up a combined 3.1 WAR with a 79 wRC+. His defense was great in 2024, then average in 2025. The projections see him as an average hitter going forward, expecting a bit more batted ball luck and a bit more slug. Maybe Naylor will turn into the power hitter we once expected, but he’s now more than 300 games and 1,000 plate appearances into his career. He might just be an average catcher.

You may be surprised to learn that Austin Hedges is still just 33 years old. He could keep doing this for another seven or eight years. And when I say “this,” I mean being an elite receiver while putting up an acrophobic wRC+. In each of the last two seasons, Hedges got exactly three base hits that weren’t yanked down the left field line, but he also caught the ball real pretty. David Fry hasn’t caught much in the past two seasons, but reports out of camp have him getting more reps behind the dish. Remember that hot stretch in 2024 when he was the best hitter in baseball? The Guardians definitely do. Dom Nuñez has 48 major league plate appearances in the past three seasons.

Pedro Páges is starting to look like a very good defender, which is great because he has a career wRC+ of 79 and his offensive numbers weren’t all that much better in the minors. He can yank homers down the left field line, but that really seems to be his only trick. The Cardinals have made it clear that he’s going to be their starter, so they will be hoping against hope that he keeps up the great framing and throwing.

Iván Herrera can really hit, and after offseason surgery to clean up his throwing elbow, the team hopes he can return to catching. Still, the backup job may go to Yohel Pozo. Last year, Pozo made it back to the majors for the first time since 2021, and he put the ball in play a whole lot. He just didn’t hit it hard, and his 76 wRC+ kept him right around replacement level. Jimmy Crooks is our 93rd-ranked prospect with a name straight out of a a Chicagoland gangster movie. He’s a polished defender who might be able to run into enough home runs to make things work. If he can’t, the beefy Crooks can always go back to breaking thumbs. Not yet on the list but on everyone’s mind is Rainel Rodriguez, the 19-year-old who just checked in at no. 25 on our Top 100. Rodriguez will need a while, but he destroyed the Complex League and Low-A in 2025.

What are you doing all the way down here, Shea Langeliers? Don’t you know you just put up a 3.9-WAR season with 31 homers and a 132 wRC+? You’ve now hit 60 home runs in the past two years with a combined 121 wRC+. Get up toward the top and jockey with Alejandro Kirk! What’s that you say? You’ve also been among the game’s worst defenders behind the dish for years now? Why didn’t you say so before, you insolent rhetorical device? I guess you can stay down here after all.

Playing in Sacramento might have boosted Langeliers’ home run totals last year – he hit six more than Statcast would have expected – but he’ll be playing there again, and even if his numbers come back down their 2024 levels, he’ll be plenty productive.

Austin Wynns has a career 74 wRC+, but – small sample size alert – over the past two seasons, he has a combined 137 wRC+. It’s amazing what you can do with smoke, mirrors, and a .388 BABIP. Shane McGuire is 26 and he reached Triple-A for the first time in 2025. I think we can all agree he’s due to make his debut.

Carson Kelly came out of nowhere to run an absurd 151 wRC+ in the first half of 2025. In the second half, he posted a 69. He ended at a 115 and 2.6 WAR, both the best marks of his entire career. After all that noise, the projections see him right below league average at the plate and right above league average with the glove, and, well, sure. Why not? The last two years have been something of a renaissance for Kelly, who had exceeded 0.6 WAR just twice in the first eight seasons of his career. Good for him.

Moisés Ballesteros is our 84th-ranked prospect, and – stop me if you’re getting tired of hearing this – he looks like he’ll be too good a hitter to spend all that much time catching. Miguel Amaya isn’t going to repeat the 124 wRC+ he put up in an oblique strain-shortened 2025, but over his three seasons in the majors, he’s quietly put up underlying numbers that aren’t all that far below league average. His defense leaves something to be desired, but that’s backup catchers for you. If they could do it all, they’d just be catchers.

Yainer Diaz had some rough luck in 2025. He ran a career-best DRC+ of 115, but a wRC+ of just 92. That kind of variance can happen when you never walk and almost never strike out. Diaz has plenty of pop, and he reached 20 homers for the second time in his career. But when the ball didn’t leave the yard, it tended to find a glove. The projections see him right around his career wRC+ of 109 and catching enough baserunners to nearly make up for his deficiencies as a framer and blocker.

Victor Caratini didn’t just leave Houston for Minnesota; he swapped places with Christian Vázquez, who signed a minor league deal with the Astros. Vázquez hasn’t hit in years now, but he’s a veteran and a good clubhouse presence, and everybody needs a job. Our Depth Charts have César Salazar as the primary backup, and while he’s a better hitter than Vázquez, that’s not really the kind of thing you put on your résumé.

If you think you know what to expect from Salvador Perez this year, I would love to hear your methodology. Sure, we should expect somewhere between 23 and 30 home runs, and we should expect a whole lot of aggressive hacks on pitches outside the zone, but Salvy does that in both his good years and his bad years. He’s 35 now, and only one of the past four years – 2024, when he put up a 117 wRC+ and 3.3 WAR – has been a good year, but Perez is one of those players you should never count out.

Still, I buried the lede here. Look at the table. Carter Jensen is projected to outperform Perez (which, it’s worth noting, he managed to do by putting up 0.7 WAR in a 20-game cup of coffee last year). As Leo Morgenstern noted in last year’s power rankings, we’ve been talking about Perez’s replacement in these pages for years. Every season or two, the name of the replacement changes, while Perez stays entrenched as the starter and launches another 30 bombs or so.

Here’s the case for why Jensen might be different. He’s our 32nd-ranked prospect and he’s done nothing but rake in the minors. Between Triple-A and the majors, he ran a 59% hard-hit rate last year. Fifty-nine percent! He might have a hole in his swing, and he might not have enough barrel variability to be a great hitter, but he certainly has the power and the approach to make the package work. His defense needs work, but he’s just 22. The Royals signed Elias Díaz to a minor league deal, which indicates that Jensen is definitely going to get plenty of playing time, even if he starts the season in Triple-A.

At long last, San Diego’s catching nightmare is over. Gone are Elias Díaz and Martín Maldonado. Mid-season acquisition Freddy Fermin is better suited as a backup (to Salvador Perez, of course), but he’s a perfectly cromulent catcher, and wow is that an upgrade for the Padres. He can block, he can throw out runners, he can put the ball in play. He doesn’t make good swing decisions, but he isn’t a liability.

That’s the end of the good news. Luis Campusano spent nearly the entire 2025 season in the minors. He’s put up -0.1 WAR over the course of his career, and in the past two seasons, that number is -0.9. His defense has always graded out poorly, but he did rake in the minors last year, which is presumably why our Depth Charts see him posting a .318 wOBA. Be skeptical. The 28-year-old Rodolfo Durán doesn’t appear to possess much upside, either, but after 11 years in the minors, he’s certainly due for his first shot at the big leagues.

Hunter Goodman is a fun player to watch. He’s got plenty of bat speed and he hits the ball plenty hard. He ripped 31 dingers last year and they traveled quite far. He’s also got some of the worst plate discipline in baseball. He strikes out more than a quarter of the time. He walks not at all. He isn’t a bad framer, but trouble controlling the running game holds him back. He very much made that package work in 2025, putting up 3.4 WAR on the back of those 31 dingers and a .331 BABIP. But even if he keeps the home run total up, he’s probably due for some regression toward league average land. He’ll still be fun to watch, especially if you enjoy healthy cuts and gentle breezes.

Braxton Fulford is a weak defender who fell off our Rockies’ top prospects list in 2025, the same season he ran a 49 wRC+ in his debut. However, he’s hit well at just about every stop of the minors and he’s got a big league name if I’ve ever heard one. It looks like he’ll get another chance this year. At age 32, Brett Sullivan has 112 major league plate appearances under his belt. He’s on a minor league deal, and it’s hard to imagine him beating out Fulford.

Here are J.T. Realmuto’s WAR totals for the past three seasons: 2.0, 2.0, 2.1. Once the premier catcher in the game, Realmuto is about to be 35, and while the bat and arm are hanging on, the receiving is some of the worst in the game. Realmuto also possessed the game’s biggest framing split in 2025: He was worth seven runs on the third base side of the plate, and he cost the Phillies seven runs on the first base side. Our projections say he can make it four years in a row in that narrow band of WAR, but the offense really did seem to take a step back in 2025, and he’s got less meniscus than he once had, which tends to catch up with you sooner or later. If 2026 doesn’t go well, the three-year contract he signed over the offseason could feel pretty long.

Rafael Marchán took over Garrett Stubbs’ backup spot last year, and he went out and put up the exact same 0.3 WAR that Stubbs had posted in 2024. Marchán is all contact, no power – an improvement over Stubbs’ some contact, no power – and the projections think he can probably outdo the .230 BABIP he put up last season, dragging him halfway toward respectability at the plate. There isn’t much upside here, and the downside could get ugly in a hurry if Realmuto should miss any time.

The important thing to note is that Agustín Ramírez is the first catcher on this list with a positive projected baserunning value. In fact, he’s one of just two catchers expected to see major league time this year who has a positive number in the baserunning column. Agustín Ramírez, demon on 26.7-mph-sprint-speed wheels, we salute you and your 0.1 projected baserunning runs.

Ramírez came to Miami in the Jazz Chisholm Jr. trade. He entered his rookie campaign ranked 43rd on our Top 100, and although he ran a 91 wRC+, the underlying numbers were better, and he showcased the power we’d heard about, hitting 21 homers and running a 47% hard-hit rate. His defense was particularly ugly – he was the worst blocker in the game and it wasn’t close – but he’s still learning and he’s only 24. He’s made it known that he spent the offseason working on his defense, and he’ll get a chance to show that he’s improved, though he won’t have to fret about game calling: After a trial run in September, the Marlins will be calling pitches from the dugout, possibly freeing their catchers up to think about life’s deeper mysteries.

The Marlins are also the first team we’ve seen with three catchers projected to get over 100 plate appearances. Lefty-hitting Joe Mack was Miami’s competitive balance round pick in 2021, and he’s now our 56th-ranked prospect. He’s got big power and a questionable hit tool, and our prospect-knowers love his receiving, blocking, and throwing. He’ll strike out a lot, and the projections are none too rosy on the bat right now, but he could be fun. Mack is only 10 months younger than Ramírez.

In his major league debut, Liam Hicks combined an extremely passive approach with fantastic contact skills and non-existent bat speed. Pitchers were already pounding the zone against him, but you have to imagine his 11% walk rate will drop when they realize they should be giving him the full Luis Arraez treatment. His receiving graded out just around average, but the arm dragged down his defense.

If this were 2022, we’d be talking about Danny Jansen and Kyle Higashioka as a top-10 catching duo. However, the soon to be 31-year-old Jansen has bounced around the past couple years. His defense once graded out well enough, but despite excellent blocking, his arm and his framing are crushing his value. When he’s not lifting and pulling the ball over the fence, he’s not doing much of anything. Still, Jansen has always earned his walks, which gives him a high offensive floor for a catcher.

Higashioka has put up somewhere between 1.0 and 1.6 WAR in each of the last four seasons, and while Statcast didn’t like his defense in 2025, DRP and DRS did. However, the projections see his offense trending downward, and as he approaches his age-36 season, they are not inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. Higashioka seems to have traded some bat speed for contact ability in recent years, and he still hit 11 home runs in 2025. Maybe he can make it work, but he’ll be doing so without the blessing of the computers.

The Rangers claimed Willie MacIver off waivers from the A’s. The 29-year-old made his major league debut in 2025. Jose Herrera is on a minor league deal and has put up negative WAR in three of his four big league seasons.

After finally putting together two healthy, full seasons in a row, life caught up with Tyler Stephenson. A fractured thumb and an oblique strain limited him to 88 games in 2025. He ran a 99 wRC+ with poor framing numbers. Stephenson has a decent eye, and although he doesn’t possess great bat speed, he ran a 49.2% hard-hit rate in 2025. However, he sacrificed some contact to get there, and his strikeout rate jumped all the way up to 33.9%. This might not be the best version of Stephenson, but it’s good enough.

Once one of the best framers in the game, Jose Trevino put up just average defensive numbers in 2025. The framing was still ok, but the blocking in particular fell hard, and throwing has never been his strong suit. Combine that with a 66 wRC+, and he was worth just 0.3 WAR. The projections expect him to bounce back, and it’s understandable. Each of the big three defensive metrics says he was worth at least six runs on defense in every season from 2021 to 2024, and then it all just disappeared. Trevino is 33 now, but it doesn’t usually vanish that quickly.

Back when he was a Marlins prospect, Will Banfield was drawing Austin Hedges comps, which makes sense, because the last time he ran a wRC+ above 99 at any minor league level was 2018. He got his first cup of coffee in 2025, and hopefully the glove can keep him afloat the next time he arrives in Cincinnati, because his .248 projected wOBA is the lowest on this entire list. The 20-year-old Alfredo Duno ranked 22nd on our Top 100 with big power and a high ceiling, but he’s likely to need some time to develop.

Carlos Narváez was a revelation in 2025. Acquired from the Yankees, where he was stuck at fourth on the depth chart, Narváez provided excellent defense and managed a 97 wRC+. He fell off after a particularly hot start, but he’s got solid bat speed and contact quality, and if he can find a way to improve his plate discipline, he could be a decent hitter. Still, he’s never been all that great a hitter in the minors, and the projections see him with a wRC+ somewhere around 90.

Narváez is on his own, though. Despite putting up -0.7 WAR in 2025, Connor Wong appears to be the backup again. Do you know how badly you have to play to put up -0.7 WAR in just 63 games? You know all those red and blue sliders on Baseball Savant pages? Wong is a catcher, and the furthest slider to the right on his page is sprint speed. He put up a fluky 112 wRC+ in 2024, and his 39 wRC+ in 2025 was probably fluky too, both because of bad batted ball luck and because he fractured a finger in April and missed less than a month. Still, he should be a third catcher.

The Red Sox claimed Mickey Gasper off waivers from the Nationals, who claimed him from the Twins, who received him in a trade with the Red Sox. The 30-year-old has really hit in the minors in the past couple years, but his defense has graded out poorly and over his short major league career, he has a .133 batting average. Matt Thaiss is on a minor league deal and has been good for 0.3 career WAR.

Kyle Teel suffered a Grade 2 hamstring strain during Team Italy’s pool play win over Team USA (he homered off Nolan McLean earlier in the game), and will likely miss the first month or so of the season. The White Sox would be well-advised to be careful with him, because he’s truly an exciting young player. He arrived in Chicago as the centerpiece of the Garrett Crochet trade, and he hit the ground running, posting a glorious 125 wRC+ in his rookie season and putting up 1.9 WAR over just 78 games. His blocking and his arm hurt him some, but his framing graded out fine.

Teel’s biggest strength at the plate is his plate disciple; he doesn’t blow anyone away with his exit velocity or contact ability. This is where I tell you that he only had a 100 DRC+, and the projections see him as a league-average bat going forward. Still, it was an impressive debut, and his defense should improve.

Until Teel returns, Edgar Quero will serve as the starter, with Korey Lee filling in as backup. Two years younger than Teel, Quero also made his debut in 2025, getting into 111 games and running a 95 wRC+. His defense was particularly bad, but Quero seems to have some underlying tools on offense. Whether he puts them together is anybody’s guess. Lee has a career wRC+ of 54, a far cry from the 113 he managed in 40 major league plate appearances last year.

Joey Bart has quietly put together a couple good offensive seasons now. Since arriving in Pittsburgh in 2024, he has a combined 110 wRC+, and he’s posted two straight 1.3-WAR seasons. In 2025, his walk rate jumped to 12%, thanks to the third-best SEAGER score in baseball – right below the actual Corey Seager, in fact. Bart still strikes out too much, his power seemed to disappear in 2025, and his defense has now graded out as below average in three of the past four seasons. That’s what you expect at the bottom of the list, but Bart could end up surprising us again.

Henry Davis reportedly came into camp with a whole new swing after undergoing a biomechanical assessment. With a career batting average of .181, he could stand to try something new. The good news is that in 2025, for the first time, Davis’s defense graded out as above average, largely because he did a great job of throwing out baserunners. Rafael Flores Jr. came over in the David Bednar trade, and there are real questions about his arm and his bat, but he has raked and hit a lot of homers in the minors. Somehow Endy Rodríguez has a better offensive projection than Davis. Once a 55-FV prospect, injuries have derailed the early part of his big league career.

Welcome to the bottom tier. It’s dark in here. Nick Fortes put up 1.0 WAR last year. He’s still a solid defender, and he’s still not a hitter, so why not just put him down for another one-win season and call it a day? Probably because he put up 0.6 WAR in the two previous seasons, but hope springs eternal.

Hunter Feduccia, who the Rays acquired from the Dodgers last trade deadline, managed to put up -0.4 WAR in just 38 games last year, which is impressive in its own way. Dom Keegan has been optioned to minor league camp, and last year, Eric Longenhagen wasn’t convinced he could stick behind the plate, though he is on the 40-man. And that’s it. That’s the Rays catching situation. They have Nick Fortes and Hunter Feduccia. Nathan Flewelling, the highest-rated catcher in their farm system from last list cycle apart from Taitn Gray, last year’s third-round pick, just turned 19. I know the Rays aren’t at the very bottom here, but for my money, this is the scariest situation on the list.

The Nationals avoid ranking 30th thanks to Harry Ford, but they’re the only team without a single catcher projected for at least 1.0 WAR. That’d change if we could say confidently that Ford will be the starter, but he’s in a competition with Keibert Ruiz.

Ruiz has accrued negative value in each of the last three seasons, and in 2025, a pair of concussions ended his season in July. Ruiz makes tons of contact, but he never walks and he never hits the ball hard. He ran the second-worst SEAGER score of all catchers, ahead of only Jonah Heim, who, you might recall, just stopped swinging. Ruiz’s defense has been disastrously bad for years now.

Ford, acquired from the Mariners this offseason, has lost some of his prospect shine. His bat speed is average, he’s struggled to catch up to high fastballs, and he’s still not a great receiver. The upside is lower. But he’s athletic, he’s got a great approach, and he’s hit well at every level. He’s 74th on our Top 100, and he’s projected to be average at and behind the plate. If all you did was swap the plate appearance totals around so Ford got 320 and Ruiz got 154, the Nationals would instantly move into a tie for 18th place. If Ford doesn’t win this competition, Washingtonians should consider rioting.

We’ve got Drew Millas penciled in for a surprising number of plate appearances, which is good. Riley Adams has received more than enough chances, with -1.4 career WAR to show for it.

Well, we finally made it. Welcome to Anaheim, or as it’s known around these parts, the bottom. Logan O’Hoppe came into the season with a career wRC+ of 105, and despite bashing 19 home runs, his wRC+ in 2025 was 72. That tends to happen when you strike out nearly 31% of the time, walk just 5.3% of the time, and run one of the game’s worst whiff rates. O’Hoppe can hit the ball hard enough, but he just did not make enough contact last year. He also took a big step back in all three facets of catcher defense. The projections see O’Hoppe bouncing back to be fine with the bat and, well, still pretty bad defensively. If he doesn’t bounce back, the Angels will have to do something, anything.

Unfortunately, they don’t have too many options. The 37-year-old Travis d’Arnaud is next on the depth chart, and he suffered two concussions last year. Over the past six seasons, d’Arnaud has alternated between good and bad years at the plate, so maybe he’s due to put up a wRC+ over 100 in 2026, but the projections aren’t buying it, and he jumped all the way up to a 32% strikeout rate in 2025. It’s also been a couple years since he put up an average defensive season. Sebastián Rivero’s projected .249 wOBA is the second-lowest of the 101 catchers you’ve seen on this page, and it’s 24 points above his career mark.