J.T. Realmuto has long been one of the league’s most durable catchers, and that has continued into his mid-30s. He leads the Majors with 613 games started behind the plate since 2022. That includes 122 games started this year, which bests the Brewers’ William Contreras by one game for tops at the position. At the same time, Realmuto will turn 36 in Spring Training, and the Phillies may need to manage his workload more carefully after a down season in 2026. Speaking at the team’s year-end press conference on Thursday, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski told reporters, including Cole Weintraub of NBC Sports Philadelphia, that Realmuto will not be catching as frequently in 2027.
“I said, ‘I don’t know if I can accomplish this, but I don’t want you to hear about it from the press conference,” Dombrowski said of his conversation with Realmuto. “’My goal is to try to reduce the number of games you catch.’” Per Dombrowski, Realmuto physically feels fine but is open to having more days off behind the plate, perhaps by slotting in more at first base.
Realmuto re-signed with the Phillies on a three-year, $45MM guarantee back in January. The first year of that pact was a bit of a letdown. Over 467 plate appearances, Realmuto hit just .205/.283/.331 with 11 home runs and a 68 wRC+. The latter stands as a career-worst mark, and it’s well below-average even for catchers, who had a 91 wRC+ in 2026. Realmuto’s 21.4% strikeout rate and 7.9% walk rate were both improvements over his 2025 numbers, but that’s about all that went right for him at the plate. Aside from a 130 wRC+ in July, he was below average in every other month of the year.
Poor batted ball luck may have contributed to that downturn. Realmuto had never hit below .285 on balls in play in a single season, but he had a .239 BABIP this year. Accordingly, his .205 average and .331 SLG lagged far behind his expected figures (.249 xBA and .387 xSLG). Those still would have been below Realmuto’s career norms, but perhaps not as bad as the season he actually had. At the same time, the veteran’s contact quality slipped somewhat compared to 2025. His hard-hit rate fell from 45.4% to 40.0%, which rates just below average, and he also barreled the ball 3.2% less frequently.
Realmuto was still a solid defender behind the plate, if not at the same level as his late 20s/early 30s peak. Defensive Runs Saved valued him at -5, while Fielding Run Value put him at 0. In the eyes of Statcast, Realmuto remained elite at catching baserunners stealing and especially pop time, where he ranked in the 98th percentile. He wasn’t great at blocking, but he acclimated himself well to the ABS challenge system, successfully challenging 70 out of 86 calls – an 81.4% success rate.
Dombrowski’s plan of not having Realmuto catch as frequently is not an indictment of his defense, but rather a proactive move to keep him fresh and help him rebound at the plate. At the moment, Rafael Marchán and Garrett Stubbs are the other catchers on the 40-man roster. Marchán has only taken 334 plate appearances with a 58 wRC+ dating back to 2020. He’s a solid defender, but not enough to mitigate the lack of hitting. Stubbs has a 47 wRC+ in the Majors dating back to 2023. With their offensive limitations, Marchán and Stubbs would both be overmatched if they see more time behind the plate.
Should the Phillies want to upgrade over those two, they’d have limited financial wiggle room to accomplish it. MLBTR’s Payroll Tracker has them at $262.8MM in cash payroll for 2027. That will rise to $298.8MM when you factor in their $36MM arbitration class, as forecasted by MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz. Non-tenders could lower that amount somewhat, and obviously, a backup catcher is far from an expensive addition in free agency. Nonetheless, the Phillies will probably end up exceeding their 2026 cash payroll of $291.8MM when all is said and done.
Photo courtesy of Kyle Ross, Imagn Images
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