With the Blue Jays a whopping 16 games out of first place in the American League East and eight teams in front of them in the wild card race, right-hander Chris Bassitt and several other notable Toronto players could be traded before the fast-approaching July 30 trade deadline. It would make a lot of sense for the Blue Jays to move on from Bassitt, a 35-year-old on a contract worth $22 million annually that extends through next season. No shortage of contenders are seeking pitching help, and Bassitt would seemingly yield an attractive return.

His track record is that of a reliable starter. Since the beginning of the 2021 season, Bassitt has logged a 3.43 ERA and a 3.79 FIP while tossing the seventh-most innings in the majors. Moreover, after a rocky first month (5.64 ERA, 5.55 FIP across his first six starts), he has been at the top of his game since the beginning of May. Bassitt boasts a 2.69 ERA and a 3.02 FIP over his past 13 starts, and he’s gone at least five frames in all of them. Overall, he is 8-7 with a 3.52 ERA, a 3.73 FIP, and 2.0 WAR across 107 1/3 innings this season.

How does the 10-year veteran approach his craft? I sat down with him earlier this month to find out.

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David Laurila: Would you call yourself a pitching nerd?

Chris Bassitt: “I like to understand the art of it, for sure. I would say that it’s more been a fascination with just watching guys. I’ve been blessed to be teammates with a lot of guys who are really, really good, and I’ve always liked to watch the pitches they use, how they use them, who they use them against. Things like that.

“If I’m having struggles with, say, a certain type of hitter, I kind of go back to what I’ve seen in the past with other pitchers and what they’ve done. If that makes me a nerd, then yeah.”

Laurila: Are you mostly just watching — I’m sure video is a big part of that — or are you also digging into the data? Read the rest of this entry »

The National League Wild Card race is wide open, with eight of the league’s 15 teams separated by a grand total of four and a half games in the standings. Five of those teams are currently below .500, their flaws on display on a daily basis — and some of those teams are at a particular disadvantage when it comes to their defenses.

On Wednesday, I investigated what a handful of the major defensive metrics — Defensive Runs Saved, Ultimate Zone Rating, Statcast’s Fielding Run Value (FRV), and our catcher framing metric (hereafter abbreviated as FRM, as it is on our stat pages) — told us about the teams with the best defenses. Some of them appear to be playoff-bound, while others are barely hanging onto hope thanks in part to those defenses, among them the Diamondbacks. Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Ryan McMahon’s first stolen base of the season. McMahon, whose sprint speed was recently downgraded from the 19th percentile to the 18th, managed that first bag by way of a delayed steal. By completely dismissing McMahon as a threat, the Pirates presented him with a perfect storm of opportunity. He took an enormous lead off third base because no one bothered to hold him on, and he waited until catcher Yasmani Grandal unleashed a lollipop back to the pitcher, then waltzed home.

Where did McMahon, who had been caught stealing four times to that point in the season, get the idea for such a brazen daylight robbery? Probably from Garrett Stubbs, who had executed the same move just a few weeks prior, stealing third base right from under McMahon’s nose. Stubbs didn’t get the same gargantuan lead that McMahon did, nor did he get to take advantage of a catcher’s big, slow rainbow tosses back to the pitcher. He simply went because he saw that catcher Jacob Stallings was paying him no attention whatsoever.

On Monday, the Rockies were involved in yet another delayed steal. After walking in the bottom of the second inning, major league stolen base leader Elly De La Cruz somehow waited two whole pitches before taking off for second as Elias Díaz tossed the ball back to Ryan Feltner.

This latest delayed steal was very different from the first two. McMahon is extremely slow — and Stubbs, while not slow, is a catcher — but everyone in the ballpark was aware that De La Cruz would likely try to take second. Both broadcast crews were talking about the threat of a steal and both feeds made sure to cut to shots of De La Cruz’s lead. While Díaz has one of the quicker arms in the league, Feltner is extremely slow to the plate. He has allowed 20 stolen bases this season, second only to Corbin Burnes with 24. Díaz stared De La Cruz down before returning the ball to Feltner after the first pitch, and Feltner attempted a pickoff before delivering the second pitch. None of that mattered against a threat like De La Cruz, but I still found it surprising that he opted for a delayed steal considering that with a pitcher like Feltner on the mound, a conventional stolen base attempt was more or less a sure thing.

De La Cruz, being De La Cruz, stole third base four pitches later; then one pitch after that, he was caught stealing home on a first-and-third steal attempt because Díaz (legally) blocked home plate. Sam Miller wrote about the rise of first-and-third steals back in February and then again this weekend. “As long as I’ve been baseballing,” he wrote, “the first-and-third situation has been what separated the pros from the amateurs.” That’s no longer the case. Sam calculated that in May and June, the runner on first took off roughly 14% of the time, compared to 10.1% in 2023 and 6.6% in the 2010s. After watching all of those plays, he concluded that defenses still aren’t really sure how to handle that situation.

Much like first-and-third steals, delayed stealing has historically been reserved for amateur ball. Because it’s a difficult thing to search for, I’m not sure whether they’ve been happening more often too or whether I just happen to have noticed a cluster. Either way, this cluster made me wonder whether baserunners should be pulling this move more often. After all, the three that we’ve seen could not have been any easier. Only one of them even drew a throw, and that was a play when everyone knew a stolen base attempt was likely. It’s true that McMahon’s steal of home came when nobody was paying him the slightest attention and the catcher returned the ball to the pitcher like a grandfather pitching horseshoes, but Stubbs isn’t exactly a burner either, and his came on a normal throw from the catcher, following a pitch where both the pitcher and the shortstop were making a real effort to keep him from getting too big a lead. Maybe this is easier than we realize. Read the rest of this entry »

Like most things in baseball, baserunning is a blend of skills and smarts. It helps to be one of the faster guys in the league, but there are players who provide above average value on the bases despite not having above average speed, as instincts and feel can often make the difference between being safe or out.

One of my favorite parts of baserunning is the judgement calls that players are forced to make while running at full speed and expelling all their power and athleticism. In those moments, they have split seconds to weigh the many factors that can impact their chances of getting the extra base. While basestealing may be the single most exciting part of the game, the decision of whether to try and swipe a bag is much more black and white than other base-running plays.

Say you’re a major leaguer leading off first base and are determining whether to attempt to steal second. You already know the catcher’s pop time, and you have a pretty good idea of how long it takes the pitcher to deliver his pitch. You’re also familiar with the pitcher’s pickoff tendencies and footwork, as well as your own speed and ability to time your jump. Yes, maybe you can pick up on a pattern in real time that gives you a slight competitive advantage, or you notice either the pitcher, catcher, or both of them aren’t paying you much attention, allowing you to catch them by surprise. But for the most part, your decision to take off for second is still almost entirely going to come down to how fast all parties involved can boogie.

On the contrary, if you’re at the plate and lace a liner in the gap that splits two outfielders, you’re faced with several different variables that affect your decision outside of just your speed. How quickly do you get out of the box? Are you thinking two right away, meaning you’re running hard and already taking the angle that will allow you to cut the corner of first base and make a good turn that will give you a direct line to second.

From there, it’s based on feel and whatever data points you have in your head about the outfielders going for the ball. Which one is going to get there first? Does he have a strong arm? If so, is he accurate? Are his throws any weaker and less accurate if he’s pacing on a diagonal toward the gap and has to plant and throw off his back foot? Or, is the outfielder going to get to the ball quickly and have time to circle it, set his feet, crow-hop, and fire? There are other factors on top of these, too.

Let’s check out a few examples from some of the best base-running plays of the year. I’ll be using Statcast’s Runner Runs metric as a guide for choosing plays. This metric estimates the success rate for each base-running opportunity based on variables such as runner speed, outfielder arm strength, and distance from the given bag. Below, I’ve selected three plays — one at second, one at third, and one at home — that were worth at least .20 runs added.

We begin with a hustle double from Bobby Witt Jr.:

Sheesh! Out of the box, this looked like a clear single, even when you consider Witt’s 100th percentile sprint speed. This is a typical line drive to center field, not one that splits two defenders. But Witt knew that in this situation — runners on second and third with one out in the seventh inning and the Royals leading 4-2 — the Tigers might throw to the plate instead of second; he also knew who was playing center field.

Riley Greene, an above average left fielder, had shifted shifted over to center earlier in the game, and his skills don’t exactly fit as well there. He has 66th percentile speed and 48th percentile arm strength. On top of that, Greene throws left-handed, meaning that because he was roaming to his right side (toward the left-center gap), he’d either have to take a few steps to line his body up with second (as he did) or plant his feet in the ground and pirouette before getting rid of the ball. In other words, this play is easier for a right-handed thrower. Add up all those factors, and you have a perfect recipe for Witt to take a calculated risk with only one out. If Matt Vierling were still playing center, as he was at the beginning of the game, his speed and righty throwing might have kept Witt at bay. Every single one of these details matters!

The next play features Anthony Volpe pushing for a triple on a line drive down the right field line. Volpe has very good, but not elite, speed (28.6 ft/sec, 86th percentile), and because of that he’s a bit more reliant on his decision-making than Witt. On this play, he had a favorable spray angle, but it was going to be bang-bang as long as Jo Adell played it right:

To me, Volpe seemed to realize that he had a shot at a triple as he rounded first and saw the ball bouncing around off the curved fence in right field. He didn’t have a particularly great turn around the bag, but the slight ricochet gave him enough leeway. Typically, runners should look up at the third base coach once they’re getting to second base, but in this case, Volpe was going three no matter what and kept his head down.

Adell delivered a great throw to the cutoff man, but the relay to third was short-hopped, which made it more difficult for the third baseman to field it cleanly and apply the tag before Volpe slid in safely. This is an example of a challenge play, where Volpe put the pressure on the fielders to do everything correctly, and because there were multiple steps that had to be executed perfectly, Volpe liked his odds that one part of the chain would be off by just enough for him to make it.

Coincidentally, our final play comes from the same Royals-Tigers series that also featured the Witt double from above. And like that play, the outfielder was Riley Greene. Though this time, the runner was MJ Melendez, who despite his 68th percentile speed has done well on the basepaths this year, with +2 Runner Runs. The play we’re about to watch shows how a runner with just slightly above-average speed can put himself in a position to have above-average outcomes. Here it is:

Wait a sec, how did he get around to score on a fly ball that seemed likely to be caught? You can’t see it on the broadcast, but Melendez played this exactly right. On a towering fly ball like this one, a runner who begins the play at first should be waiting on second base, ready to pivot in either direction. Once Greene dropped the ball, it was time to take off, and even though the ball landed right at Greene’s feet, there was enough time for Melendez to make it home ahead of the throw. That’s despite the fact that Melendez stumbled on his way around third base; he made up for that because he was in the right place when the ball dropped. Also, remember that Greene doesn’t have a particularly strong arm and was all the way out at the warning track.

We could keep going, but by looking at plays at second, third, and home, we now have a better idea of the circumstances that affect base-running decisions. We saw how electrifying speed can manifest plays out of nowhere, but also how sound fundamentals can put runners in a strong position for success. As you’re watching ball for the rest of the summer, pay attention to these types of plays and see if you can pick up on the factors that baserunners must consider when weighing whether to take the extra base. These small details can have a major impact.

The Guardians rate as one of baseball’s bigger surprises. After finishing 76-86 last year — their worst record since 2012 — they’ve rebounded to go 57-33 thus far, and entered Wednesday with the AL’s best record. Their offense is much more potent than it was last year, and despite losing ace Shane Bieber for the season due to Tommy John surgery, they rank second in the league in run prevention at 3.87 runs per game.

While Cleveland’s staff owns the AL’s second-highest strikeout rate (24.2%), a good amount of credit for the team’s run prevention belongs to its defense. By my evaluation of a handful of the major defensive metrics — Defensive Runs Saved, Ultimate Zone Rating, Statcast’s Fielding Run Value (FRV), and our catcher framing metric (hereafter abbreviated as FRM, as it is on our stat pages) — the Guardians rate as the majors’ second-best defensive team thus far this season. The Yankees, who spent much of the first half atop the AL East before a 5-16 slide knocked them into second place, are the only team ahead of them.

On an individual level, even a full season of data isn’t enough to get the clearest picture of a player’s defense, and it’s not at all surprising that a 600-inning sample produces divergent values across the major metrics. After all, they’re based on differing methodologies that produce varying spreads in runs from top to bottom, spreads that owe something to what they don’t measure, as well as how much regression is built into their systems. Pitchers don’t have UZRs or FRVs, catchers don’t have UZRs, and DRS tends to produce the most extreme ratings. Still, within this aggregation I do think we get enough signal at this point in the season to make it worth checking in; I don’t proclaim this to be a bulletproof methodology so much as a good point of entry into a broad topic. Read the rest of this entry »

Remember back in 2021 when Gen Z tried to tell everyone to move their side parts to the middle and swap their skinny jeans for a looser variety? While most Millennials responded with outward indigence, offline they begrudgingly tried on high-waisted mom jeans and posted up in the bathroom blowing out their hair in a new direction. But before long they let their hair go back to lying in the manner to which it had become accustomed and eschewed jeans completely in favor of athleisure-wear. Even as many of us considered complying with the directive of our teenaged overlords, it felt absurd that people who haven’t even finished developing their prefrontal cortexes are left in charge of dictating what’s cool. As it turns out, though, that’s exactly why teenagers decide what’s cool. Teenagers are the only members of society with the time, energy, and lack of rationality to care so deeply about something that matters so very little.

Those who stuck to their dated stylings and weathered the petty hail storm of Zoomer mocking were vindicated a couple of months ago, when the celebrity and influencer cohort brought back the side part, declaring it on-trend once more. Around that same time another trend was taking hold among the baseball commentariat: Using strength of schedule to determine which teams had actually earned their W-L records. Mostly, this meant arguing that the Phillies weren’t a top team in the league because they’d played a soft schedule. The discourse eventually spawned multiple articles arguing that while yes, Philadelphia hadn’t exactly been slaying dragons while walking a tightrope, its act wasn’t entirely smoke (generated by the clubhouse fog machine) and mirrors either.

Strength of schedule is not typically a prominent talking point when comparing MLB teams. It might occasionally come up when comparing September schedules in a tight postseason race, but as a phrase uttered in May, it’s typically part of a college baseball discussion, or because you’ve wandered into a BCS-era college football forum. College sports need strength-of-schedule metrics because teams don’t all play one another and the variation in team quality spans the Big Ten’s new geographical footprint. But in the major professional leagues, the schedule is fairly balanced, and even though the White Sox and Rockies exist, dominating the worst teams in MLB presents a tougher task than rolling over the University of Maryland Baltimore County Golden Retrievers. Read the rest of this entry »

There are just too many players in baseball these days. I don’t mean that in a “contract the league” way – I think that there should be expansion, in fact. I’ll get back to that, for the record. The problem, instead, is with me. As teams have increasingly realized that the best way to get the most out of players is by giving them frequent rest, more people are playing relevant roles every year. Take the Giants, for example: The 2010 World Series team featured 19 pitchers, from Matt Cain’s 223 1/3 innings all the way down to Waldis Joaquin’s 4 2/3. This year’s Giants have already used 24 pitchers, and we haven’t even hit the All-Star break.

Back in those days, it was easy to know most of your team’s bullpen, as well as the regular starters. It was just fewer names to keep track of, fewer different styles and deliveries and permutations of facial hair. The present-day Giants have an honest-to-goodness pair of identical twins and a closer with his own light show. They have the tallest player in baseball. It’s a wildly eclectic bullpen. And I haven’t even mentioned their best pitcher yet, which is kind of my point. Ryan Walker is having a season for the ages, and he’s doing it in anonymity.

One “problem” with Walker – note: not actually a problem – is that he’s an archetype of pitchers we’ve seen before. He throws a sinker, and he throws a slider. He hides the ball well and throws hard. He misses bats, and always has: Starting in 2019, his first full season, he compiled a 28% strikeout rate in the minors. There’s nothing particularly novel or unprecedented about Walker’s game – it’s just effective.
Read the rest of this entry »

Juan Nieves had a promising career cut short by a shoulder injury. A 21-year-old when he debuted with the Milwaukee Brewers in April 1986, the southpaw from Santurce, Puerto Rico pitched just three big league seasons before a tear in his rotator cuff was discovered. With 490.2 innings, 32 wins, and a no-hitter already under his belt, Nieves threw his last pitch at baseball’s highest level prior to celebrating his 24th birthday.

He joined the coaching ranks not long thereafter. Nieves has been tutoring hurlers since 1992, most recently as the assistant pitching coach for the Detroit Tigers, a position he’s held since November 2020. He looked back at his playing days when the Tigers visited Fenway Park earlier this season.

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David Laurila: You faced some great hitters during your relatively short stint in the majors. How did you view those matchups at the time?

Juan Nieves: “It’s funny. Coming from Puerto Rico, I grew up watching the Pirates because of Roberto Clemente, and because of Turner Broadcasting we saw a lot of the Braves. It was more National League, and I ended up in the American League [the Brewers joined the senior circuit in 1998]. Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Sox have had quite the auspicious last few weeks. Their 16-6 record since June 12 is the best in baseball, and they’ve elevated their playoff odds to a season-high 48.0%, an excellent performance for a team that entered the year with a sub-.500 projection. In a tight AL Wild Card race, they’ve needed every single one of these recent victories, as Dan Szymborski recently found that Boston’s playoff hopes are more sensitive to small changes in the standings than those of any other team. As the trade deadline approaches, the Red Sox may find themselves in the running for big names. Much of their current success, though, is thanks to major improvements from players currently on the roster, such as pitchers Tanner Houck and Kutter Crawford and catcher Connor Wong, whom Jay Jaffe wrote about yesterday. And no Red Sox player has leveled up his game more than the current team leader in plate appearances, runs scored, and WAR: Jarren Duran.

Duran’s breakout has come during his first season of full-time play; after cups of coffee in 2021 and ’22, he served as the strong side of a platoon last season, amassing a 120 wRC+ across 362 plate appearances. But there were some signs of future regression, as he outperformed his xwOBA by 35 points and relied on a .381 BABIP to slash .295/.346/.482. And while those raw numbers from 2023 have actually declined this season, to .275/.337/.473, Duran has put up a nearly identical 121 wRC+. Most encouragingly, he has much stronger peripherals backing up his slash line this year, indicating that his current production is sustainable.

The biggest change we’ve seen from Duran in 2024 is in his approach at the plate. Previously, it seemed as though his goal was to swing at anything near the strike zone and put the ball in play; he offered at the first pitch nearly 40% of the time. And while this strategy worked for him because he made a lot of contact, frequently on a line, his success depended on well-placed balls in play and didn’t make the most of his strength. Instead, it often felt like he sacrificed damage for contact, an unnecessary tradeoff given his solid bat-to-ball skills, especially on pitches in the strike zone. His power numbers last year – a 20th percentile barrel rate and 35th percentile xSLG – were far from what he was capable of.

Although Duran doesn’t look like the most physically imposing player on the field, he has excellent raw power, with maximum exit velocities over 112.5 mph in each of the past two seasons. He’s especially lethal against pitches down and in, where his bat speed, exit velocity, and overall production are all elite. Comparatively, he’s generated negative run values against pitches on the outer third or top of the zone, as his relatively long swing isn’t able to cover the needed distance in time. Understanding this, Duran has become more selective. He’s cut his first-pitch swing rate nearly in half, watching such offerings go by at nearly Mike Trout levels. He’s dropped his swing rate on strikes in his cold zones by nine points, in addition to a reduction in chase rate. The results of these adjustments has been staggering, and Duran has looked like a brand new hitter this year. Even without an increase in raw strength, Duran’s focus on swinging only at the best pitches have vaulted his barrel rate above the league average, along with his xSLG and xwOBA. Additionally, his taking more called strikes has aided more than just his power numbers: His strikeout and walk rates have actually improved with his new approach.

Remarkably, Duran legged out 34 doubles last year, 10 more two-baggers than he’s hit across 50 more trips to the plate this season. As we know, as many young players gain more experience, they learn how to turn those two-base hits into home runs — or as Kiri Oler dubbed this development, “summiting Doubles to Dingers Mountain” — so it’s not all that surprising that Duran is hitting fewer doubles as he’s added power. Except, well, he’s launching home runs at nearly the same pace as he did last year, in 2.4% of his plate appearances this season, up slightly from 2.2%. Instead, he’s managed to one-up his power production in a far less common way: He’s hitting way more triples. He’s still racking up plenty of doubles (24, tied for the fifth most in baseball), but he leads the majors with 10 triples, eight more than he hit last season. Altogether, he ranks fifth in the majors with 44 extra-base hits. He’s taking full advantage of the dimensions of his home stadium, as Fenway’s deep right-center field gap and the Green Monster in left make it the most doubles-friendly ballpark in the majors, especially for left-handed hitters, and the fifth-most triples-friendly park. This season, Duran has 18 doubles in just 133 balls in play at home. More specifically, Duran’s ability to smack balls off the Monster is absolutely unparalleled. I looked at spray charts of other prolific Red Sox hitters in recent memory – Rafael Devers, Xander Bogaerts, Mookie Betts – and none took advantage of their ballpark’s defining feature anywhere close to as frequently as Duran has in 2024.

Many of Duran’s 34 combined doubles and triples this year have resulted from his speed on the basepaths, fighting to take the extra bag at every opportunity. He’s always possessed plus-plus speed, and using Statcast’s new baserunning value leaderboard, we can see the run value of every single he’s stretched into a hustle double or base taken on a teammate’s hit. Duran ranks third in the league in such runs generated thanks to his aggression, and while a handful of speedsters have produced negative value from being overly cautious, Duran’s fearlessness has paid off. Aggressive baserunning has been an important part of Boston’s overall offensive improvements this year. The Red Sox have climbed to seventh in extra base taken rate compared to 25th a year ago. Statcast views them as the fourth-best baserunning team in baseball. When you combine this with Duran’s 21 steals on 24 attempts, the end result is one of the most valuable runners in the league; besides Duran, only Corbin Carroll and Elly De La Cruz are on pace to accrue 1 WAR from baserunning alone.

While Duran has solidified his approach at the plate and maintained his excellence on the basepaths, the area where he’s seen the most dramatic improvement this year is with his glove. Despite his 95th percentile sprint speed, Duran’s previous performance in the outfield, especially in center, left much to be desired; he totaled -5 FRV from 2021-23. Most of his poor plays occurred when he had to cover long distances on efficient routes; it was so bad that he made an appearance in a piece I wrote last year due to his awful route running. In that piece, I found there was a negative correlation between route efficiency and overall OAA, as an outfielder’s initial reaction and burst speed proved to be more important factors. Duran has been a key example of this: His routes are still rough, but the rest of his defensive game has improved tremendously. His +5 FRV ranks in the 89th percentile (though second to Ceddanne Rafaela in his own outfield), while only Daulton Varsho has more DRS than Duran’s 12 among outfielders.

Duran’s reactions and first steps have improved to the point where his routes haven’t impacted his ability to get to balls. Last year, he failed to make both of the difficult-but-possible plays that involved covering over 100 feet of ground to make the catch; this year he’s a perfect 4-for-4. However, the plays that have turned his defensive metrics from below average to excellent aren’t the long-distance runs but the line drives, where instincts and initial reactions are everything. In 2024, Duran has had 11 play opportunities on balls between 30 and 50 feet away from him with fewer than four seconds to make the catch. He’s converted 10 of them, contributing to half of his total OAA. While he was similarly successful at catching these hard liners in previous seasons, he had only a few such play opportunities. Duran isn’t doing anything different with his positioning this year, so it remains to be seen whether he’ll continue to get so many catch opportunities on these hard liners. Regardless, it’s safe to say that he’s made the most of the fielding chances he’s been given.

Nearing the All-Star break, the Red Sox have as close to coin-flip playoff odds as any other club, and the high stakes they’ve played under combined with their meteoric performance over the past few weeks have made them one of the most exciting teams in baseball to watch. And in the middle of it is the homegrown All-Star Duran, whose improvements have manifested in every single aspect of his game.

The Red Sox may never entirely live down the 2020 trade of Mookie Betts, but four years and change later, Boston’s last man standing from that deal is enjoying a breakout. Catcher Connor Wong just reeled off a 17-game hitting streak that spanned four weeks, and even made a case for a spot on the AL All-Star team, though he fell short on that front.

The 28-year-old Wong began his streak with a single off White Sox right-hander Jake Woodford on June 6, and added another single off Tim Hill later in the game. Despite taking a three-day paternity leave from June 24–27, he started 16 of Boston’s next 23 games, sprinkling in four other two-hit games.

With his single off Trevor Rogers last Tuesday, Wong extended his streak to 17 games, the longest by any Red Sox player this season and tied for the seventh-longest of any player this year; Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto is one of three other players who also had a 17-gamer. The longest hitting streak ever for a catcher is 34 games, set by the Padres’ Benito Santiago in 1987. The closest any catcher has come to approaching Santiago in the last decade was in 2019, when the Mets’ Wilson Ramos went 23 games; all of the other hitting streaks by catchers of at least 20 games happened in 2003 or earlier. Read the rest of this entry »