Orioles catcher Adley Rutschman hit .189/.279/.280 from June 29 until the end of the season a year ago, covering 290 plate appearances. How he would bounce back in 2025 was an offseason topic of conversation.
Rutschman answered those questions in a big way on Opening Day, going 3-for-5 with two home runs in Toronto to lead the Orioles to a 12-2 win against the Blue Jays. The 6-foot-2, 230-pound catcher hit just one home run in his team’s final 34 regular-season games in 2024.
Former Orioles catcher Caleb Joseph, now a Jays analyst for Sportsnet, said just before Opening Day that the second half of the 2024 season is not representative of who Rutschman is as a player.
“I believe it’s a blip on the radar. I just believe in his ability so much,” Joseph said on Glenn Clark Radio March 27. “I remember doing his [first game] here in Toronto. I think I was doing radio. Quite honestly, I was at that point not 100 percent sure that the bat would be as good as it was the following year. He really kind of took a huge step. I thought his movements and his work behind the plate was major league-ready, no question. I saw him interacting with pitchers. I thought, ‘This guy is well ahead and he’s going to buy himself some time to figure out the bat.'”
Rutschman may have been playing through injuries in the second half a year ago. A foul tip hit his right hand on June 27 and lower back discomfort forced him to be a late scratch on Aug. 16. However, Joseph suggested that the season might have worn on Rutschman mentally.
Joseph knows a little bit about that, having caught in the major leagues from 2014-2020. He started 371 games behind the plate.
“Catching is hard. It is really, really difficult,” Joseph said. “When you are on a team that is expected to win and you are learning new pitchers and you’re having some struggles here and there with the pitching staff — especially with younger pitchers — you are mentally drained. You look at the staffs that they had outside of Corbin Burnes over the last couple of years, it’s been a lot of younger guys with that veteran sprinkled in here and there.”
Last year, Rutschman worked with a handful of starters who weren’t long on major league experience in Cade Povich and Albert Suárez and to a lesser extent Kyle Bradish, Cole Irvin and Dean Kremer. This year, Rutschman will work with big league veterans Zach Eflin and Charlie Morton and longtime Nippon Professional Baseball standout Tomoyuki Sugano.
Eflin and Morton enter this season with a combined 26 years of big league experience. Joseph believes that will help.
“It’s going to allow him to just relax and let them call their game,” Joseph said. “You just catch the ball and throw it back, buddy, which will then allow him to really, truly focus on his offense and be less stressed. That mental stress wears you out more than physical stress.”
Rutschman entered the 2025 season as a career .261/.351/.421 hitter with 52 home runs, performing like one of the top catchers in the sport since his 2022 debut. Joseph says to bet on the body of work instead of a three-month sample where everything went sideways.
“Imagine playing a game of chess for three hours. You’re going to be exhausted,” Joseph said. “I would rather play a 14-inning baseball game brainless and just be physically exhausted than be mentally exhausted. I think when you look at last year, a lot of it probably in my opinion just mental exhaustion. I feel like he’s going to bounce back, I really do.”
For more from Joseph, listen to the full interview here:
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