Want to Upgrade at Catcher? Too Bad!

The Cleveland Guardians are a pretty tightfisted organization. They spend infrequently, frugally, and deliberately. So I was amused when, some three weeks ago, they jumped to re-sign backup catcher Austin Hedges to a one-year, $4 million contract. That’s roughly 4% of what the Guardians spent on player payroll in total this past season — and on a backup catcher?

Now, Hedges is one of the league’s best defenders, at the position where defense is of the utmost performance. And by all accounts he’s the best clubhouse guy since Spanky from The Little Rascals. But he’s the worst hitter in the league. That’s not an exaggeration; Hedges hasn’t posted a wRC+ over 50 since 2018, and in his past two seasons he hasn’t broken 25.

Since 2019, Hedges is hitting .171/.234/.273. Of the 364 players who have taken 1,000 or more plate appearances over that time, Hedges is dead last in wRC+ by a huge margin. Jackie Bradley Jr. is in second-to-last place with a wRC+ of 67; Hedges is at 39. (Which speaks to how far you can get in baseball if you’re an elite defender and everyone likes you.)

It’s a testament to Hedges’ other skills that he’s managed to be an above-replacement-level player despite his offensive inadequacies. But it’s just not the Guardians’ style to fall over themselves to re-sign a position player — even a backup catcher — with an offensive track record like this. Surely Cleveland could’ve found another good hang with good framing numbers elsewhere on the market. Right?

Well, having examined the available options… no. Free agent catching talent is so scarce this year, bringing back Hedges for $4 million actually makes sense. The Rockies also elected to re-sign the devil they know, Jacob Stallings, who will turn 35 next month. My condolences to Stallings on having a birthday within a week of Christmas; I can only hope his new $2.5 million contract will allow him to buy the happiness he surely lost in a childhood of combined birthday-Christmas presents.

Stallings isn’t in Hedges’ class as a defender — few are — but after a career full of poor offense, he hit .263/.357/.453 in 281 plate appearances for Colorado. Even in Coors Field, that’s a 114 wRC+. Regression might be on the way (Stallings outperformed his xSLG by 69 points, to give one relevant point of information), but it’s better than what’s out there.

In fact, let’s look at what’s out there. Stallings and Hedges are spoken for, as is Travis d’Arnaud, a 35-year-old coming off half a season of hitting .238/.302/.436 with average defense behind the plate. That makes d’Arnaud the cream of this free agent crop.

How many free agent catchers do you think are still out there who produced at least 0.5 win in either 2023 or 2024, or are projected to do so in 2025? That’s not a high bar, right? Half a win in any one of three seasons, one of which isn’t even real yet? Yet only 10 players could meet it.

Sweet Jesus.

In a few of these cases, the offense isn’t that bad. The two youngest players on the list — Kelly and Jansen — are actually intriguing. Kelly, who’s changed teams midseason two years in a row, hit .302/.388/.419 against lefties and held his own against righties, with a wRC+ of 92. (Take platoon splits for a 313-plate appearance season for what they’re worth.) Both Kelly and Jansen struggled after midseason trades, but Jansen slugged .487 as a part-time player from 2021 to 2023, and probably represents the best remaining option for legitimate offense behind the plate.

Grandal’s overall numbers with Pittsburgh were better than I thought they’d be, and he — along with Sánchez and McCann — is an option for those GMs who place a premium on remembering guys who were good a few years ago.

You’ll notice that none of these catchers played a ton. None of these 10 players batted even 400 times in 2024; the 10 of them put together have only six seasons of 400 or more PA and only a single season of 500 or more PA since 2020.

I guess that’s not really a dealbreaker; it’s pretty common for teams to go with a platoon or some other kind of time share at catcher. In 2024, only nine catchers qualified for the batting title — and here I’m counting all plate appearances by players with catcher as their primary position, so this includes Salvador Perez playing first base and things of that nature — and only 16 had 400 or more plate appearances.

Perhaps catchers are going the way of the starting pitcher, where the physical and technical demands of the position are too great for one person to bear for a whole season. The modern catching platoon is the position player version of the de facto seven- or eight-man starting rotation.

Or maybe it only looks like a seller’s market for catchers because everyone who’s interested in buying already has one.

Here’s a list of 21 teams that either finished over .500 in 2024 or currently have a projected payroll in the top half of the league for 2025, according to RosterResource. These are the teams I’d describe as either contenders or contender-curious. I’ve included each team’s overall wRC+ and WAR totals at catcher in 2024, as well as the current projected starter for 2025.

What sticks out immediately is that almost all of these teams have perfectly good catchers already. It’s a combination of recent top prospects, highly paid free agent signings, and homegrown breakout stars. A few teams — and I’m speaking mostly about the Blue Jays and Rangers here — are probably disappointed with their production in 2024, but their incumbent starters were very good very recently and ought to have a chance to bounce back.

I count four teams on this list — the Tigers, Padres, Cubs, and Twins — that could stand to upgrade. And even that might be uncharitable. Twins backstop Ryan Jeffers hit 21 home runs last year. Jake Rogers can’t hit a lick, but he grades out as a superb defender, and maybe the Tigers are counting on the Age of Dillon Dingler dawning in the spring.

Still, let’s look at where the top two free agent catchers, by projected 2025 WAR, started this past season. Kelly was with the Tigers, and Higashioka was with the Padres. Just run it back — that’s what everyone else is doing.