J.T. Realmuto Keeps Making Himself More Expensive

When Mookie Betts signed a 12-year, $365 million extension with the Los Angeles Dodgers at the beginning of the season, it meant that another player would be the top free agent available this winter. The battle for who takes that spot is a somewhat stiff one. Marcus Semien, Trevor Bauer, and George Springer could all be in the running for major long-term deals, with the possible exception of Bauer if he sticks to his plan to only sign one-year contracts. But the best of the entire bunch is likely J.T. Realmuto.

The 29-year-old Phillies catcher has seemed like a prime extension candidate after Philadelphia traded for him before the 2019 season in the midst of a free-agent spending spree. With only about seven weeks remaining in the 2020 regular season, however, Realmuto is still set to hit the open market this winter. And every day, he’s raising his price tag.

Realmuto has already amassed 1.0 WAR in 17 games this season, making him the most valuable catcher in baseball again. He was also the best catcher in baseball last year, as well as the year before that. It isn’t revelatory to say Realmuto is the best catcher in the sport — Jeff Sullivan made the case even before the Marlins sent him to Philadelphia. At this point it almost does Realmuto a disservice to talk about him solely in the context of his position.

You often hear people say things like “this guy hits well for a catcher,” or “this guy runs well for a catcher,” because catching requires a unique skill set that is rare to find in players who also excel at other things on a baseball field. Those qualifiers can often be useful in giving context to evaluating a catcher, because comparing a catcher’s offense to that of a right fielder, or his athleticism to that of a shortstop, doesn’t make any sense. Realmuto, however, transcends the expectations we have for those at his position. Here are the 20 most valuable players in baseball since the start of the 2017 season:

Just 10 hitters in the majors, regardless of position, have been more valuable than Realmuto since the start of 2017 (and yes, take a moment to gawk at Trout easily leading the list despite logging the second-fewest number of games). Behind him are several former MVPs, including Cody Bellinger, who won the award just last year. Springer is the only other player here set to reach free agency this winter, and he’s 18 months older than Realmuto. It was already likely the Phillies backstop was in line for the biggest payday of this winter aside from Betts before this season even started.

In the games that have been played in 2020, Realmuto has only raised his stock. In 71 plate appearances, he’s suddenly tapping into more power than at any point in his career.

Realmuto has hit eight homers in 17 games, which equates to 76 over a full season. You don’t need me to tell you there’s probably some small-sample funkiness inflating those power numbers a bit. His home run per fly ball rate is an astronomical 47.1%, a figure that might as well be impossible to maintain. And considering he has just two doubles this year, that slugging explosion is relying entirely upon that huge number of fly balls leaving the yard.

Does that mean Realmuto’s power surge is a mirage? Hardly. Here’s where his expected statistics fall, according to Statcast, compared to previous seasons.

Realmuto might be getting a bit lucky in being able to get a high number of homers to fall at once, but he’s legitimately scalding the ball in a way he never has before.

How he’s doing that is a tricky puzzle to solve. Looking at Realmuto’s batted ball behavior, the first thing that jumps out is that he’s pulling the ball a lot more — his 57.4% pull rate is the ninth-highest in the big leagues, and a huge uptick from his career average of 43.4%. That will certainly have an effect on how hard you hit the ball. In 2019, batted balls hit to the pull side had an average exit velocity of 90.2 mph. Balls hit to straightaway or opposite field, meanwhile, had an average exit velocity of just 87.8 mph. Pulling the ball more can certainly help a hitter pad his slugging rates, provided he’s hitting the ball in the air.

The problem is, Realmuto isn’t hitting that many balls in the air. His groundball rate has soared this season, up from 39.0% in 2019 to 52.3% this year. The similar increases in his groundball and pull rates make sense. Realmuto has always had mediocre launch angles on pulled balls throughout his career, and this season is no different.

In addition to the higher rate of grounders, you may have noticed another possibly troubling development in one of the above tables — a much higher strikeout rate. It wasn’t long ago that Realmuto was quite good at limiting Ks, with his career rate sitting at 18.8%. His 2020 strikeout rate, however, is eight points higher. Such an increase could be the result of a hitter developing some poor swing tendencies, but that isn’t the case for Realmuto. His chase rate is actually down 4.4% from his career average, while his zone swing rate is down just 1.2%. But despite a better discerning eye, Realmuto’s contact rate has dropped four points from 2019.

If his strikeouts aren’t an issue of plate discipline, they must be an issue of timing. Taking into account Realmuto’s declining contact rates and his major increases in pull rate and groundball percentage, a reasonable conclusion could be that Realmuto has started the season willing to sell out for fastballs. Doing so would allow him to square up harder pitches and put them in the seats, but it could come with the added consequence of rolling over on secondary stuff that he’s early on, or even missing entirely. Sounds smart to me! Now, let’s just mosey back to his Baseball Savant page to confirm I’m correct, and…

Ah! Well, nevertheless.

It’s tough to nail down the cause of Realmuto’s power surge, but don’t let that or the small sample convince you it’s not real, because this isn’t just a 2020 development. In the first half of 2019, Realmuto was a below-average hitter, owning a 97 wRC+ and just a .166 ISO. In the second half, that ISO ballooned to .287 and his wRC+ soared to 122. That’s why his rolling averages over the last two seasons portray less of a sudden, dramatic transformation, and more like a continuation of the promising trend he had already embarked on.

Realmuto didn’t need to improve at the plate in 2020 to command a major asking price for his services, whether it’s an extension from the Phillies or a free agent contract after the season’s over. He was already plenty valuable at the plate, even without the context of the position he plays. He also happens to be one of the best pitch framers behind the plate, is as capable as anyone of shutting down the running game, and, just for fun, runs faster than 85% of the league as well. He doesn’t also need to be one of the game’s best power bats.

But that’s what he’s been in 2020, and there’s only so much time for those numbers to deteriorate. Realmuto’s hot start to the year gives him one more potential skill to dangle in front of his current team, as well as 29 others if he actually hits the open market. It’s difficult to imagine a reason the Phillies wouldn’t do everything in their power to secure him for the long haul, but the clock is ticking. There are 42 games left on the schedule, and Realmuto’s price is only getting higher.