TOM VERDUCCI

Tom Verducci delivers a mix of expert commentary, inside angles and thoughtful perspectives on baseball’s biggest storylines every week.

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The job requirement for a catcher keeps getting harder. The flood of information added more game-planning preparation to pregame work. The increase in pitchers used added more homework in learning a staff. The pitch clock reduced recovery time within and between innings. The limits on pickoff throws increased the importance of defending the running game. And now the catcher must be a strategic wizard and strike zone Zen master with the introduction of the ABS challenge system. Medieval kings on feast days had less on their plate.

Given what the game asks from catchers in preparation and responsibility, it should not be a surprise that their offense is suffering. How bad is offense from catchers this year? This bad:

Maybe we should lower our expectations for what a catcher can do offensively. Look at the Guardians, who are thrilled with Patrick Bailey, a career .222 hitter, and Austin Hedges, a career .188 hitter, because they provide so much defensive value. Yankees manager Aaron Boone, whose catchers are hitting .161, well below the previous franchise low of .199 in 2021, isn’t ready to concede lower expectations.

“Without question it’s demanding,” Boone says. “And it’s critically important that you have a guy back there or a tandem that know what they’re doing. But I don’t think it means you can’t hit. Cal Raleigh just threw up a pretty good campaign with a lot on his plate. So, I don’t think it’s out of the realm.

“I actually think the physical demand is less today than it was back when Brad Ausmus was back there. Honestly, the knee down thing has taken a lot of the physical demand away from these guys. I don’t think it’s more physically demanding. In fact, it may be less physically demanding than ever. But they have a massive amount of information that they’ve got to be on top of and have a good feel for.”

Guardians manager Steven Vogt, a former catcher, agreed with Boone that teams should not settle for lower offensive expectations just by the nature of the job.

“My personal opinion is no,” he says. “We do ask a lot out of our catchers. This is my unhinged opinion. You have a kid who can hit? You don’t want them catching. You have a good player on your team, whether it’s in college or the minor leagues, if you have a catcher who can really hit, what do we do? We move them to another position because we know the workload and the magnitude in our game today. There’s what, five or six really good two-way catchers?

“I think it’s industry wide. Bryce Harper came up as a catcher. There was no way Scott Boras or anybody else was going to let him catch. We’ve done that to ourselves in the industry. But I still think there’s an expectation that catchers can hit. I don’t think we’re asking too much of them.”

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One day last week, as the eight starting position players for the first-place Cleveland Guardians took the field, something odd stood out. Six of the eight players were 5'11" or shorter. The exceptions were 6'3" right fielder Chase DeLauter and 6' catcher Austin Hedges.

The Cardinals (13), Guardians and Braves (11) have used the most position players under six feet. All three have winning records. The Brewers are masters of small ball no matter how you define it. The Red Sox, who tried to build a Brewers East team, have flopped with smaller players.

Something is going on here. As changes to baseball rules in recent years encourage a more varied, athletic style of play (no defensive shifts, limits on pickoffs, automatic runner at second base in extra innings), the population of smaller players is growing. Since 2008, qualified hitters under six feet have jumped 87%. Looking at this timeline, you can see the spike in shorter players as rules have changed in the past handful of years:

Here’s another look at how baseball has welcomed a stylistic change from the analytics-heavy three-true-outcome game. It shows that bunt attempts (for hits and sacrifices) are up 25% from last year and 44% from three years ago.

Bunt Attempts Since Adoption of Universal DH 

The Marlins do things a little differently. They have the third hardest throwing staff in MLB with an average fastball velocity of 95.7. Only the Pirates and Brewers throw harder. And yet the Marlins, with pitches called from the dugout, throw more breaking pitches than any other team (39%). Over the past 19 seasons, only the 2020 Twins and 2025 Cardinals threw a higher percentage of spin than Miami. In sweeping Arizona last week, the Marlins threw a whopping 44.5% breaking pitches, holding the D-Backs to a .196 average on spin.

History tells us teams such as the Pirates, White Sox, Diamondbacks, Cubs, Athletics and Nationals need to improve their pitching if they want to reach the postseason. Since 2019, only three teams have qualified for the postseason with an ERA worse than the MLB average ... The Marlins push the envelope on the bases. They grade out as the best running team in MLB, along with the Cardinals, even though the Marlins have made more outs on the bases than every team but Washington. The worst-rated baserunning team? The Giants ... Of the top eight hitters in MLB when it comes to bat speed, all of them are between 22 and 27 except one: 33-year-old Kyle Schwarber. The Phillies’ DH set a career high in slugging last year (.563) and is even better this year (.575) ... Tarik Skubal may be back, but the Detroit Tigers ace showed some expected rust Saturday. He came out firing 99.9 mph fastballs and averaged 97.9, more than a tick above his season average—a good indication of health. But he neither held his stuff nor located well, a sign of his layoff and abbreviated ramp-up of one minor league rehab start. Skubal’s four-seam velocity dipped from 98.0 mph in the first and second innings to 96.6 in the fifth. Bottom line: it’s rather remarkable how quickly he made it back to full strength after surgery to remove loose bodies in his elbow.

Schuemann (Max) and Schneemann (Daniel) met last week when the Yankees played the Guardians. They have more in common than the last five letters of their surname.

Jacob Misiorowski is the hardest-throwing starting pitcher in recorded history. His fastball averages 100.1 mph. But because the 6'7" Misiorowski releases the ball 7 ½ feet in front of the rubber, the gap between him and every other hard-throwing starter is even bigger than you think. It’s found in a measurement called perceived velocity—how fast the pitch appears to be to the hitter because the ball is traveling a shorter distance.

Hunter Greene of the Reds in 2025 was the speed king of recorded history with an average four-seam velocity of 99.5. But Greene was not an especially long strider, so his fastball had a perceived velocity to the hitter of “only” 99.8.

The real speed king was Jacob deGrom in 2021 with the Mets. His fastball averaged 99.2 mph but appeared to the hitter to be 100.3 because of his extension.

Misiorowski blows them all away. His radar gun reading is 100.1 mph but his perceived velocity is 102.4. That makes him 2.1 mph faster than the previous hardest throwing starter, which is a Bob Beamon/Secretariat gap between Miz and everybody else who ever climbed a mound.

Distance equals time. The distance between the mound and home plate was set at 60 feet, six inches in 1893. In the 133 years since, it has never been shorter than when Misiorowski throws his fastball.

As you can see in this breakdown, the mechanics of Misiorowski and deGrom are remarkably similar. But the gap between them when it comes to velocity is even bigger than you think.

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