Adley’s other elite defensive skill

Sometimes, we think so much about the other things catchers are expected to do—like throwing out baserunners, and framing pitches, and calling a game—that we forget to talk about the term that gives the position its name. You know, catching. Which is another thing that Rutschman is good at—the best, actually according to the newest Statcast metric, Blocks Above Average, which is now available on Baseball Savant dating back to 2020.

Look at the 2022 leaderboard. There Rutschman is, just ahead of a few other catchers widely perceived to be some of the best backstops in the game.

We’ll explain how this works further and get into those other catchers in a follow-up piece. For Rutschman, the short version is this: Based on the opportunities he was presented with, an average catcher would have been expected to allow 43 passed balls or wild pitches, the third-most of any catcher. (More on that, and the staff he had to catch, below.)

Yet Rutschman allowed a mere 25, not 43. The difference of +18 is what you see on the leaderboard. Compare that to Colorado’s Elías Díaz, who also saw pitches that would have been estimated to become 43 passed balls or wild pitches. He allowed 42, or +1. It’s a big gap.