Former Orioles catcher James McCann is confident that Adley Rutschman will bounce back with the bat, but he also noted that what Rutschman does behind the dish is more important than what he does at the dish.
McCann played for the Orioles from 2023-2024, and for most of that time, Rutschman was generally considered one of the best catchers in baseball. He hit .277/.374/.435 with 20 home runs in 687 plate appearances in 2023, then hit .300/.351/.479 with 15 homers in his first 348 plate appearances of 2024.
However, Rutschman hit .189/.279/.280 with four home runs in his final 290 plate appearances of 2024 while battling through hand and back issues. He then hit .220/.307/.366 with nine homers in 365 plate appearances around a pair of oblique strains.
Rutschman is now entering his age-28 season. McCann is confident Rutschman is ready to get back to the form he showed early in his big league career.
“At some point in time, the league is going to adjust to you and you have to make the adjustment back,” McCann said on Glenn Clark Radio March 12. “And I think that’s just kind of been where he [has been]. I think that he came up and had so much success early on. I think that you’re going to see an Adley Rutschman that has made some adjustments to how he’s being attacked. He’s a guy that works as hard as anyone, and he’s going to figure out a solution. I have confidence that he’s going to get back to who he is.”
Rutschman is far from the only Oriole in need of a bounce-back season; others include outfielders Colton Cowser and Tyler O’Neill and infielder Ryan Mountcastle. However, few Orioles have the influence on team-wide results that Rutschman appears to carry. When the 6-foot-1, 230-pound catcher plays well, the Orioles win. When he doesn’t, the team struggles.
McCann, 35, is now with Arizona and preparing for his 13th major league season. Having seen all manner of young stars since coming to the big leagues with Detroit in 2014, he cautioned that development isn’t always linear.
“When you have a young phenom prospect like an Adley Rutschman or a Gunnar Henderson — even Jackson Holliday — everyone expects them to come up and be Mike Trout and Bryce Harper and Ronald Acuña and be them for the next 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 years, right? That’s not how it always works,” McCann said. “There’s always going to be a chance that there’s a learning curve, there’s something that needs to happen for that player to get to that ability and that superstar level.”
McCann has been through less-than-great offensive seasons himself but has stuck around the game with a reputation as a solid catch-and-throw backstop and elite clubhouse guy. Rutschman has long known all that goes into the catcher position, and no matter how he’s producing with the bat, the other side of the game always takes precedence.
“There’s no algorithm that will ever point to this, there’s no stat on the back of a baseball card that will ever show this, but what a catcher can do behind the plate will always be more important than what he does at the plate,” McCann said. “No matter how many runs you drive in [during] a game, you’re going to have a bigger impact on the defensive side for nine innings than just those four or five at-bats you get in a game. I think he understands that. I think he understands where his true value on a 162-game basis is. I think the offense is just going to be the icing on the cake for him.”
For more from McCann, listen to the full interview here:
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