Phillies All-Star Could Bounce Back At Plate This Season

This Philadelphia Phillies veteran All-Star is being touted as a player that could see his play return to form in 2024.

The Philadelphia Phillies have one of the most potent lineups in all of baseball. When you can lead off with Kyle Schwarber and then hand the offense over to Trea Turner and Bryce Harper, it’s a lineup you can lean on all season.

That said, there were a couple of players that didn’t quite pull their weight offensively last season. Or, at least didn’t hit the ball to their standard.

Recently, MLB.com highlighted 10 players that it believes could be in for a bounce-back season in 2024.

That Phillies is catcher J.T. Realmuto.

Last season he slashed .252/.310/.452/.762 with 20 home runs and 63 RBI. Those are solid numbers for Realmuto, who can hit 22 home runs and drive in 82 runs per his 162-game average at baseball-reference.com.

But those numbers were down from 2022, when he slashed .276/.342/.478/.820 with 22 home runs and 84 RBI. That season, Realmuto won a Gold Glove, claimed a Silver Slugger behind the plate and was seventh in National League MVP voting.

It’s the difference in his last slash number, his OPS, that MLB.com points to as a sign of a decline last season. His OPS was down nearly 60 points from 2022 to 2023, in spite of the fact that he had a similar “barrel rate” — 11.2% in 2023 and 11.3% in 2022.

So what was the problem? Strikeouts. Realmuto struck out 25% of the time, which was a career high. He struck out 138 times in 2023, compared to 119 times in 2022, which drove the increase.

MLB.com also pointed to Realmuto’s 22% caught stealing rate in 2023, which was well below his 44% in 2022. That could be due to increased base stealing. But other defensive metrics put him among the Top 5 in the game, including blocks above average and pop time.

MLB.com believes that Realmuto’s defensive metrics, along with his consistent offensive numbers prior to 2023, mean he’s in for a bigger year in 2024, something the Phillies would welcome.