With an All-Star nod and a Silver Slugger, everything came up Adley in 2023. Can the best backstop in baseball continue that success in 2024 or will he take a step back?
The career progression of Adley Rutschman up until now has been almost too good to be true. He’s gone from No. 1 overall draft pick to the face of a of the 2022 team that signaled the end of the Orioles rebuild. After finishing as the runner-up in Rookie of the Year voting, Adley came back in his second season and collected an All-Star selection, a Silver Slugger award and a top-10 finish in the MVP voting. The Orioles knew they were getting a special talent when they selected Rutschman with the first pick of the Mike Elias Era. I’m not sure even the biggest Orioles optimist could have predicted that, by Year 3, he’d be the best catcher in baseball.
Even with all the success we’ve seen from Adley in his first two seasons, it’s hard to predict what exactly we’ll get from him in 2024. As a rookie, Rutschman had splits that you often see from switch hitters. He put up great numbers against righties, slashing .280/.386/.503 while hitting 12 of his 13 home runs against RHPs. Southpaws were the rookie catcher’s kryptonite, however. In 2022, Adley put up a measly triple slash of .174/.287/.265 and 26.5% strikeout rate against LHPs.
In his sophomore campaign, the Orioles’ backstop completely flipped those splits on their head. Rutschman destroyed lefties in 2023, putting up a .304 average and .895 when he was hitting from the right side. With a wRC+ against lefties of 154, Adley was the 16th best hitter in the MLB against LHPs and put up similar numbers vs. southpaws as NL MVP Ronald Acuña Jr..
Against right-handers, his numbers dropped off but he still posted above average numbers when in the left-handed batter’s box. Among qualified catchers, Adley was fourth in wRC+ at 117, trailing only Willson Contreras, Will Smith and Cal Raleigh. Where Rutschman’s “struggles”against righties really showed up was against pitches that broke in on his hands from righties. As a rookie, Adley hit .250 against sliders, cutters and sweepers from right handers. Last year, his average dropped to .171 against those three pitches.
At this point, we all have a good idea of the approach we’re going to see from the catcher that MLB Network named the 19th best player in all of baseball. Rutschman is as elite as they come when it comes to taking pitches, drawing walks and getting on base. His walk percentage last year ranked in the 91st percentile in the whole major league. While his chase rate wasn’t as elite—checking in at the 81st percentile—he made up for that with a whiff rate that ranked in 94th percentile. Adley’s eye is so advanced that even if you get him to swing at a pitch outside the zone, odds are he’s still making contact.
Those elite on-base skills saw him lead all catchers in hits and walks, but also finish in the top 10 in MLB for walks and top 30 in hits. Where Rutschman still has questions to answer is his power output. In Adley and Gunnar Henderson the Orioles have two budding superstars who are almost polar opposites in how they hit the ball. Gunnar’s average exit velocity and hard hit percentage were truly elite in his rookie season—both ranking above the 90th percentile. Generating upper echelon exit velocity is the one area where Rutschman is distinctly not elite.
As a rookie his average exit velocity was 87.9 mph, falling only in 31st percentile of MLB exit velocities. The Orioles catcher bumped that number up to 88.4 mph last year, which only saw his rank creep up to the 32nd percentile. Adley has plenty of strength and power in his bat, as he showed in his Home Run Derby appearance last season. The 2024 season should help prove one way or another whether that power starts to translate more outside of BP.
His dip in slugging percentage—from .445 as a rookie to .435 last season—may be a function of Rutschman adjusting his approach to get the most out of what pitchers are throwing him. Not many hitters have the batting eye or hitting ability to dominate the outer third of plate the way Adley did in 2023. However, to hit .300+ on pitches thrown away from you usually requires a lot of flicking singles into the opposite field and not driving the ball into the gap. As Rutschman continues to adjust and grow as a hitter, it’s possible his approach adjusts as well and instead of slapping singles into left field, he’s looking for more pitches he can drive into the gap.
Alternatively, Adley’s low exit velocities and hard hit percentage may just signal that he’ll always be a contact over power hitter, which is not an indictment on the All-Star catcher’s profile as a hitter in any way. After all, the Iron Man himself, Cal Ripken Jr., had only a .447 career slugging percentage and averaged 23 HRs per 162 games. Rutschman may be destined for that level of power output his whole career, and another season of soft but productive contact would go a long way in confirming that.
ZiPS Projections
FanGraphs has spent much of the offseason betting the metaphorical “under” when it comes to their Orioles projections. WIth Adley, they’re basically expecting him to stay status quo with minimal regression. Yes, they’re projecting his average to dip 12 points and for him to hit two less HRs and collect 11 less RBIs. But their OPS projection is identical to last season, and his wRC+ and WAR projections are also nearly the same as his 2023 numbers.
The case for the over:
There’s a lot of ways Rutschman could seemingly outpace the expectations FanGraphs set for him. If he taps into more of his power this year while maintaining his elite on-base abilities, he should easily clear all of these numbers. If he gets a better handle against cutters, sliders and sweepers from righties, we could see him threaten a .300+ batting average.
Perhaps the “easiest” way for Adley to hit the over on his projections is just to get a little more lucky. Last year his xBA was 12 points higher (.292) than his actual batting average (.280). MLB.com even went so far to say that with slightly better batted ball luck, he could be a dark horse contender to challenge for a batting title.
The simple answer, though, is that Rutschman has proven over the last two season that he continually gets better the more baseball he plays. Expecting him to essentially plateau in his third year is not something I, or most of Birdland, would be willing to bet on.
The case for the under:
The biggest question mark I have about Adley heading into Year 3 is whether he can continue to hit lefties at the same rate he did in 2023. The gap between his Year 1 and Year 2 numbers against southpaws is about as big as David Rubenstein’s bank account.
Whenever a player goes from so far below average to so far above average season-to-season, there’s always a fear that he’ll regress to some unknown mean the following season. Even if Rutschman drops from a .300+average/.900 OPS hitter against lefties to somewhere closer to a .270 average/.800 OPS, that could do enough damage to his overall numbers that he fails to meet the benchmarks FanGraphs set for him.
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Make your Adley-related opinions heard! Will he continue the upward offensive trajectory we saw last year or will things trend in the wrong direction?