Phillies Backup Catcher Stubbs Is Having Breakout Success

While Philadelphia Phillies starting catcher J.T. Realmuto has struggled this season, backup catcher Garrett Stubbs has thrived.

Leo Morgenstern | May 28, 2022

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Philadelphia Phillies

Garrett Stubbs is off to a phenomenal start.

With his clutch three-run home run last night, the Philadelphia Phillies backup catcher raised his OPS to 1.162. That's tops among secondary backstops in the National League.

Only one catcher in all of baseball, Blue Jays backup Danny Jansen, is hitting better than Stubbs.

Thanks in large part to Stubbs and his hot start, Philadelphia has one of the best catching tandems in baseball. Phillies catchers rank fifth in MLB and third in the NL in catcher Wins Above Replacement (per FanGraphs).

While J.T. Realmuto has not lived up to expectations thus far, Stubbs has more than made up for Realmuto’s shortcomings. Philadelphia is one of just six teams whose catchers are hitting better than league average, according to the all-encompassing batting metric wRC+.

Stubbs has been a key contributor for the Phillies, and the gulf between what Stubbs has been able to do and what Andrew Knapp provided last year is enormous. The backup catcher position has gone from a weakness to a strength in Philadelphia.

That being said, no one is really expecting Stubbs to maintain his current numbers. His .379/.438/.724 slash line is reminiscent of peak Barry Bonds, not a 29-year-old backup catcher earning in the league minimum salary. But that’s not to say all this great hitting has been a fluke.

Stubbs is putting together good plate appearances and swinging the bat well. He won’t hit close to .400 all season, but he looks like he can continue to be one of the most valuable bench backstops in the sport.

All the extra-base hits have been exciting to watch, but the most promising sign is that Stubbs has been much more selective than usual at the plate this season. He has swung at just 39% of pitches this year, while in his first three seasons, he swung at 55.5%.

Has Stubbs developed a better eye for balls and strikes? It's not the simple, actually. He has reduced his swing rate on pitches inside and outside the strike zone, and his contact rate has only gone up a tad, from 79.6% to 83%.

However, with a more selective approach, it seems Stubbs had been better able to swing at the right pitches, and therefore make higher quality contact.

According to Baseball Savant, Stubbs has a Sweet Spot percentage of 41.7%–almost twice his career average heading into the season. This means he's hitting the ball at an optimal launch angle far more often than he used to.

Stubbs is also hitting the ball harder than ever before. His Hard Hit rate (per Statcast) is 37.5%, while he came into the season with a Hard Hit rate in the mid-twenties.

Hitting the ball harder and at the right angle is a recipe for good contact.

According to Statcast, Stubbs has an expected weighted on-base average on contact (xwOBACON) of .458. That's a complicated statistic, and it's still too early in the season to rely heavily on metrics like that, but in this case, all that's important is that this statistic is further proof of what great contact Stubbs has been making.

For context, Bryce Harper has a .472 xwOBACON in the Statcast era (2015-present). This does not mean Stubbs should be expected to hit like Bryce Harper going forward – years of scouting reports and data show that Stubbs is not an elite hitter, and a hot start to the season doesn't change that – but this is a really good sign that Stubbs is genuinely improving at the plate.

Although these numbers don't really suggest Stubbs is turning into an MVP candidate, they do show that he has earned his success thus far. His batted balls aren’t just dropping in for hits because of poorly aligned fielders or bad defense. He’s not just hitting bloop singles and bunting against the shift (although he can lay down a mean bunt).

No, Stubbs is hitting hard line drives—the kind of batted ball most likely to result in a hit. And it's working.

If Stubbs continues to see the ball this well and hit the ball this hard, he’s going to thrive. That’s very welcome news for a Phillies team whose All-Star catcher is struggling and could benefit from a little more time off.

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Published May 28, 2022

LEO MORGENSTERN

Leo Morgenstern is a writer and editor for Inside the Phillies. He also writes for FanGraphs and Just Baseball, and his work has appeared on Pitcher List and Baseball Prospectus. He previously covered the Phillies for SB Nation's The Good Phight. You can follow him on Twitter @morgensternmlb.