Judge vs. Ohtani is a gift: How the universe converged to produce a dream World Series showdown
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Jeff Passan, ESPN
WHATEVER FINALLY BROUGHT Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge together, be it fate or kismet or financial might or a lucky draw or some combination therein, understands the power of delayed gratification. For the past seven years, Ohtani and Judge have existed in the same baseball universe, dominating their peers wholly and incontrovertibly — trains moving faster than everyone, only set on parallel tracks. Never, for anything meaningful, did their paths converge. Neither had reached the biggest stage, together or individually. They were monoliths. Their greatness lived in realms of their own.
What if, though? It was always the optimistic question. What if, at some point in this game that so often makes no sense, everything aligned with purpose? What if Ohtani joined a team worthy of his excellence, and what if Judge’s failures of Octobers past receded, and what if these two men who have bent a sport to their will finally met for something more meaningful than awards or records?
Each owns plenty of hardware. Judge has won one MVP award, is about to win another, made six All-Star teams, collected three Silver Sluggers and was Rookie of the Year. Ohtani’s résumé is nearly a carbon copy: two MVPs with a third on the way, four All-Star Games, two Silver Sluggers and a Rookie of the Year plaque. Ohtani and Judge have coexisted in the same way as light and darkness, silence and noise, truth and lies: They are here, undeniable, grand forces of nature, but never together.
Now they are united at last, a blessing of synchronicity. It feels almost miraculous to find a moment like this, when the two men who, more than any, have evolved the sport to a new place face off with one another for the only prize that matters.
We have no idea what kind of baseball is in store in the World Series that begins Friday between the Dodgers and Yankees, between Los Angeles and New York, between Ohtani and Judge. In no way should that diminish the excitement. The matchup takes something already special — the first time in 41 years that the Dodgers and Yankees, the two most famous franchises in the sport, battle for a championship — and infuses it with jet fuel. As much of a turn-off as the pairing of two financial behemoths that regularly carry payrolls in the $300 million range might be to all of the fans whose organizations refuse to spend half that, now is not the time to lament baseball’s inequity. This is a rare gift of two historically unique talents.
Until Judge arrived, no man who stood at least 6-foot-7 and weighed more than 280 pounds had taken a single major league at-bat. Until Ohtani came from Japan, no MLB player since Babe Ruth nearly a century earlier had attempted to pitch and hit full-time simultaneously, let alone done so with aplomb. These are imaginary beings manifested as men.
Because the ulnar collateral ligament in Ohtani’s right elbow failed for a second time, he will not stand 60 feet, 6 inches from Judge, ball in hand, specimen against specimen. But Ohtani and Judge will share the same field, breathe the same air, play in the same games, strive for the same goal, and for now, that is plenty.
This World Series will mark the first time ever that opposing players coming off 50-home run regular seasons face one another. The first time home run champions from the American and National League clashed since Mickey Mantle and Duke Snider in1956. The first time players with at least nine wins above replacement squared off in a World Series since Ted Williams and Stan Musial in 1946.
Opportunities like this come along only every so often for baseball. The how and the why can be left to the cosmic, the unknowable. All that matters, really, is that they are here.
OHTANI’S PATH BEGAN more than 5,000 miles away from Dodger Stadium. For years, he was Japan’s secret, its treasure. Maybe the best pitcher in the world — and he could hit. As Ohtani prepared to leave Nippon Professional Baseball after the 2017 season and join MLB, big league scouts weren’t convinced he could do both. They were wrong. From the right arm whirling around his 6-foot-4, 230-pound frame, Ohtani thrust balls with uncommon speed and spin. And not only could he hit, he did so like few others. The ball soared off his bat as if propelled by gunpowder. Before his arrival in MLB, only two players could generate batted balls like Ohtani. One was named Giancarlo Stanton, and he won the NL MVP award in 2017. The other was the AL Rookie of the Year that season: Aaron Judge.
When Ohtani signed with the Los Angeles Angels, the baseball industry cocked a collective eyebrow. The Angels were backbenchers in Southern California, terminally misrun. The skepticism was proven well-founded: Ohtani spent six seasons in Orange County and played for teams that went a combined 401-469, finished in fourth place in the AL West five times and never made the postseason. For a team to pair Ohtani with Mike Trout for more than half a decade and never muster a winning record takes festering institutional rot.
Relevance awaited 30 miles north. When Ohtani reached free agency last winter, the Dodgers pulled out every stop to convince him to abscond Anaheim for L.A., including a video the late Kobe Bryant had recorded when the Dodgers tried to sign Ohtani in December 2017.
The Dodgers, admired by players for their generous payrolls, made a pitch to Ohtani that went beyond money (though they were fully amenable to his request: 10 years, $700 million, with $680 million of it deferred, 65% more guaranteed dollars than baseball’s previous record deal, the $426.5 million extension Trout signed in 2019). The organization shares Ohtani’s obsessiveness with the game. The Dodgers promised he would be surrounded by like-minded people on the hitting and pitching sides, ones who spend as much time thinking about baseball as Ohtani does.
They welcomed his curiosity and whetted his appetite for knowledge. He could take batting practice off the Trajekt pitching machine that can replicate every major league pitch thrown this season. He could hone his swing with HitTrax, another piece of tech that measures batted-ball profiles. He could work with a medical staff that mapped out a plan for him to rehabilitate his elbow while chasing history.
Beyond that, the Dodgers planned to tap into something the Angels never fully could: the power of Ohtani in Japan. He is baseball’s biggest star in at least a generation, maybe longer. His reach extends across oceans. If in his time with the Angels he managed to establish himself as inimitable in the same way as Ronaldo and Messi, LeBron and Steph, Brady and Mahomes, continuing with the Dodgers would exponentially increase the size of his stage.
More than that, they were winners, something Ohtani had been starved for in Anaheim. The Dodgers had captured the NL West title 10 of the past 11 years. Their success is a foundational element of the franchise, which will make its 22nd World Series appearance this week.
Ohtani chose the Dodgers on Dec. 9, spent spring training weathering all of the attention that came with the marriage of iconic player and organization and navigated the delicate dance of integrating into a clubhouse full of set-in-their-ways veterans while bringing with him the eyeballs of a country of 125 million people.
“You would never guess he’s Japanese Justin Bieber,” Dodgers pitcher Tyler Glasnow said. “He’s got a very young soul. He seems very innocent.”
Following Ohtani’s first game as a Dodger, everything changed. After inquiries from an ESPN reporter about a multimillion-dollar gambling debt, Ohtani’s interpreter and closest friend, Ippei Mizuhara, stood in front of the team and said he had an addiction. Based on information provided by Mizuhara, Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman told the team Ohtani had helped cover the losses.
The story didn’t add up to Ohtani, who speaks and understands English but not fluently. Hours later, the Dodgers fired Mizuhara, who later would admit in court to stealing nearly $17 million from a bank account of Ohtani’s to which he had access. Questions about Ohtani’s involvement — which were answered in a federal complaint that point-by-point laid out the case against Mizuhara — nonetheless hung over the Dodgers. Mizuhara’s guilty plea to bank fraud and tax fraud in June, carrying a sentence of up to 33 years, did little to satisfy the conspiracy theorists convinced he was protecting Ohtani.
All the while, Ohtani kept hitting. He entered June with 14 home runs and an OPS of nearly 1.000, and he proceeded to hit a dozen home runs that month. He added 12 stolen bases in July, then followed by homering another 12 times and swiping 15 more bags in August. When September arrived, the specter of Ohtani becoming the first player ever to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in a season looked possible. He reached both marks Sept. 18 in arguably the greatest individual game in baseball history: 6-for-6 with three home runs, 10 RBIs and two stolen bases. The 50th home run ball sold at auction for $4.392 million on Wednesday.
Ohtani didn’t stop at 50/50. A day later, he hit his 51st homer, and two days after that, out went No. 52, a colossal shot on a 92-mph fastball from Colorado starter Kyle Freeland that was above the strike zone and on the inner third of the plate — a seemingly impossible pitch to hit where he did (slightly to the left of center field) and how hard he did (110 mph).
“Going backside in Dodger Stadium is not easy,” Dodgers Game 1 starter Jack Flaherty said. “Left-center off a lefty? Really not easy. Do it on that pitch, up and in, and hit it as far as he did on a pitch that’s a ball? Damn.”
Ohtani ended his age-30 season with 54 home runs and 59 stolen bases for the team with the best record in baseball — the essential validation for his free agency decision. What the Dodgers sold him on — that they would help make Ohtani the best version of himself — came true.
“What was so surprising for me is no matter how he’s doing, good or bad, he’s the same,” Glasnow said. “Every single person I’ve played with has ups and downs. You can tell when things are going well. It helped that he was having a dominant season, but he never seems too overwhelmed.
“People who get too consumed with it — it adds more stress. He doesn’t seem to carry it with him. It doesn’t seem like he’s overly stressed out ever.”
October offered the potential for that. And just like in April, when Ohtani answered questions about his ability to withstand scrutiny, he displayed rare imperviousness. Ohtani homered in his second playoff at-bat. He reached base 17 times in the NLCS, a Dodgers postseason-series record. He continued a laughable jag dating back to the regular season in which he hit safely in 18 of his last 23 at-bats with runners on base.
And somehow none of it seemed altogether absurd. Because this is who Ohtani is. Impossible is a goal, inconceivable an aspiration. It is the rarest quality in sports. And there’s only one other player in baseball right now who can come close to matching it.
JUDGE’S PATH BEGAN nearly 3,000 miles from Yankee Stadium. He was the 32nd pick in the first round of the 2013 draft, a Fresno State outfielder whose size and the lack of comparable players concerned most teams. New York considered this a feature, not a bug. No franchise understands the value of a star like the Yankees, and they gladly went big, appreciating the boom-or-bust nature of prospects with tools like Judge’s.
He arrived in the Bronx on Aug. 13, 2016, batting eighth for a Yankees team barely over .500. On the fourth major league pitch he saw, Judge hit a towering home run to center field, one of two hits that day. He homered the next day, followed that with two more hits and added another pair in his fifth game. For the previous 2½ seasons, Judge had tantalized the Yankees with his raw talent. What they saw in the first five games of his major league career went a long way to justifying their excitement.
That he followed the early slice of substantiation with the worst slump of his career — in Judge’s final 22 games that year, he hit .121/.213/.227 with 36 strikeouts in 66 at-bats — did not disillusion the Yankees. They believed in the person, the work, as much as they did the player.
Even so, what Judge did in his first full season — .284/.422/.627 with 52 home runs, 114 RBIs and a league-leading 128 runs, 127 walks and 208 strikeouts — dwarfed expectations. Greatness in baseball scarcely reveals itself so quickly. When it does, its trappings can ensnare even the most careful. Never did Judge find himself caught. He was big and moved in gorgeous fashion, his swing honed over thousands of hours, his twitchiness typically seen in men 6 inches shorter and 80 pounds lighter. When he played, he thrived. And though injuries ate at chunks of his next three seasons, Judge always produced when healthy, settling into a position held by few: a true, undeniable New York sports star.
“Judgy’s just such a consistent person,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “You can’t hide that or fake that. That’s what’s so impressive about him. You can’t tell if he is flying high, which he normally is, or if he’s 2-for-14, striking out for a few days.”
Judge understood the duties of serving as the heir to Derek Jeter, the longtime Yankees captain who retired in 2014: accountability above all. To the team. To the fans. To himself. Baseball is a cannibal of a sport, capable of eating at the psyches of even the most gifted players. Judge could not succumb to its vagaries, and he didn’t, and over time Boone’s awe morphed into admiration. He trusted Judge, still green by baseball standards, for wisdom and input.
“Over the years, I’ve brought him in more,” Boone said. “I’ll ask his opinion on something I’m thinking about with the team. But I love it when he stops by my office after a game. He’ll just pop in late, an hour after a game, and just check in. Maybe it was a big win or something. And he’ll say, ‘Good stuff, skip. Hey, how’s everyone doing? How are we looking?'”
When something goes wrong, on the field or otherwise, Judge will give Boone a knowing glance, ball up his fist and tap himself on the chest, as if to say: That’s on me. And as much as Judge understands his apologies won’t be accepted — “More often than not,” Boone said, “I’m just like: ‘Stop it’ ” — he still takes it upon himself to offer them. If things are really going sideways, Judge will forgo the sign language for verbal affirmation.
On July 24, 2022, about two months before he would hit his 62nd home run and break the single-season AL home run record Roger Maris had held for more than six decades, Judge struck out in his first at-bat against Baltimore right-hander Dean Kremer on a curveball that nearly hit the ground. He returned to the dugout, looked at Boone and said: “I got you.” In his next at-bat, Judge hit a Kremer curve 456 feet. As he rounded third, he extended his index finger and pointed at Boone in the dugout.
For all of Judge’s brilliance that season, he went 1-for-16 as the Houston Astros swept the Yankees in the ALCS. They had lost the previous year in the wild-card game to Boston. And in the 2020 division series to Tampa. And the season prior to the Astros in the ALCS. And before that to the Red Sox in the division series. And in his first postseason, his rookie year, when three home runs and seven RBIs weren’t enough to oust an Astros team later punished for sign-stealing that extended into October. As much credit as Judge is due for his regular-season radiance, the lack of a World Series appearance until now was an indelible dark spot.
“It eats at me every time we don’t finish the job,” Judge said. “I take a lot of responsibility for that, being on the team, and if we don’t win it all, I feel like it’s my fault.”
The Yankees re-signed Judge to a nine-year, $360 million contract in December 2022, thwarting the San Francisco Giants‘ attempt to lure him back to California. New York proceeded to miss the postseason in Judge’s first year of the deal, and the organization, keenly aware of the need to surround him with better players, acquired star right fielder Juan Soto in a trade. Fourteen consecutive seasons without a World Series appearance conferred a particular sense of urgency on the Yankees, as did the acknowledgement that at 32 years old, Judge’s best years might be behind him.
April stoked such fears. Batting just .179 with two home runs 21 games into the season, Judge was booed at Yankee Stadium. Judge didn’t begrudge them. With his contract came the Yankees’ captaincy and its responsibilities. Even the most productive hitter in the world can slump, and New York offers no mercy.
“There’s been a lot of legends that played here that have been booed,” Judge said. “It’s just part of it. You can’t focus on that. You’ve got to go out there. They want to see you win. They want to see you do well. You’ve just got to focus on what you can control. What I can control is what I do in the box and what I do on the field.”
When Judge talks about his process or taking things one at-bat at a time or creating a plan and needing to execute on it or controlling what he can control, the words are neither idle nor trite. He homered 14 times in May. He hit .409 and drove in 37 runs in June. He added another dozen home runs in August. He fell off slightly in September and still managed an OPS over 1.000 for the month. Though Judge’s 58 home runs this season fell short of his record, his best all-around season yet helped the Yankees improve by a dozen games over 2023. New York captured the top seed in the AL, toppled Kansas City in the division series, bounced Cleveland in the ALCS and booked the ticket to their 41st World Series and Judge’s first.
All of it came with Judge still not performing like himself in the postseason. He finished the division series 2-for-13 and the ALCS 3-for-18, far from the sort of production expected of Judge by his team and himself. But as when his cold spring gave way to a blistering summer, Judge heats up fast. And if the Yankees can make it to the World Series without him hitting, imagine what they’ll look like if he does.
NOW THEY MEET, the superstars who weren’t supposed to be what they are because how could anybody be that, at the intersection of unspeakable talent and fanatical work? If Ohtani and Judge were on expansion teams, it would be a championship bout compelling enough to watch. Add in the backdrop — the 11 previous World Series between the franchises, the two biggest cities in America, the two best records in MLB — and it’s challenging to envision a World Series that appeals more to the masses.
MLB’s expanded postseason has reduced even further the likelihood that the best team in each league would play in the World Series, which is why this feels so special. These aren’t wild cards that got hot at the right time. They’re very good baseball teams with truly great players. The parade of stars beyond Ohtani and Judge — Juan Soto, Mookie Betts, Giancarlo Stanton, Freddie Freeman, Gerrit Cole — bolsters the argument in favor of this being a World Series for the most casual of fans.
If you love baseball — hell, if you just like it — this series is a privilege in the same way it was the last time we saw Ohtani playing meaningful baseball. That was March 2023, when the Japanese national team he captained opposed Team USA in the finals of the World Baseball Classic. (Judge declined joining Team USA to focus on his goals in New York.) With Japan leading by one run, Ohtani came on to pitch the ninth. He secured two outs, and up stepped Trout, the only other person who understood on his level what it meant to play for the Angels. To be that best version of himself, Ohtani needed these sorts of moments, challenges, stakes. On a 3-2 pitch, he threw a vicious sweeper that crossed all 18 inches of the plate and more. Trout swung through it. Ohtani exulted.
No one in the United States had seen that side of him. At 21, he won the Japan Series with the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, and it left him hungry. By the end of last season, Ohtani was famished. If baseball is a game he’s trying to solve bit-by-bit, a championship run in the world’s best league might as well be the final boss. And it’s the one area in which Ohtani allows himself leeway for the moment to penetrate his rhinoceros skin. This, to Ohtani, isn’t simply important. It’s everything.
“Playing a regular-season game and playing a playoff game is different,” Ohtani said. “And I think a lot of players end up showing their emotions. So I feel like I’m part of that.”
Judge is not, though he sees the stakes as no less do-or-die than Ohtani does. Stoicism is Judge’s superpower, and to change that now, because he is four wins from his first ring, would be a betrayal of self. Discipline got Judge here, and he refuses to cave to the notion that October contrasts with September or August or July in any meaningful way.
“All I’m doing is trying to treat it just like the regular season,” Judge said, “go out there and whatever the situation calls for, go out there and do it and help the team win a game.”
At the end of this series, one of baseball’s two titans is going to win four games and his first championship, gilding his legacy. The other will skulk away, heartbroken, wondering where it went wrong, lamenting what he could have done. It doesn’t matter that their pitching staffs are both stretched thin, that the grind of a 162-game season is compounded by an October where every pitch matters. The way Ohtani and Judge’s minds work, they could bat 1.000, and if they lose, they still won’t have done enough.
And that’s what makes this all so damn good. At 8:08 p.m. ET on Friday, inside a packed Dodger Stadium, seven years in the making arrives. The delay ends. The gratification beckons. Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge, each one of one yet still in so many ways the same, ushering in something only they can. An epic for a new epoch.
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Dan Hajducky
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — It’s the top of the 11th inning of an early March baseball game at North Carolina. With a runner on first and two outs, a Coastal Carolina batter laces a single through the right side of the infield. The Tar Heels’ right fielder bobbles the ball, then slips. The runner barrels around third toward home, where catcher Luke Stevenson awaits.
The relay throw naturally takes Stevenson to the third base side of home plate, into the path of the runner diving headfirst. Stevenson slaps a tag between his shoulder blades, shows the umpire the mitted ball and erupts into a fist pump. The game remains tied. In the bottom half of the inning, UNC wins on a sacrifice fly.
The Tar Heels went on to claim an ACC title, where Stevenson was named MVP. They hosted and won an NCAA tournament regional, rose to No. 1 in Division I, then fell at home to Arizona in a super regional and missed returning to the Men’s College World Series for the second consecutive year. Days later, Stevenson, a draft-eligible sophomore, reported to Phoenix for the MLB combine. Depending on who you ask, Stevenson is the first or second-best pure catcher and a consensus mock top-35 pick for the 2025 MLB draft, which begins July 13 (6 p.m. ET on ESPN).
Stevenson and other catchers with MLB potential have long been evaluated on how well they manage pitchers, frame pitches and lead a team’s defense — including directing positioning and keeping runners from stealing and scoring. But MLB general managers and player personnel say dual-threat backstops such as Seattle’s Cal Raleigh, an AL MVP favorite, now rank as the standard bearers for players in the pipeline to baseball’s major leagues. The gap between a catcher with All-Star potential and one who could hold down the position at a replacement level is glaringly obvious.
What might not be so obvious, however, is just how much MLB’s 2023 rules changes are now influencing how the position is being taught, played, coached and scouted at all levels of the game — and just how much of a premium is being placed on the offensive abilities of catchers such as Stevenson or Coastal Carolina’s Caden Bodine, another likely early draft pick.
From high school and youth ball to college and the minor leagues, a shift has already begun. In fundamental ways, the value of the position itself is being reframed — and Stevenson is a fitting avatar for catchers joining the professional ranks at a time when their livelihoods are in flux, their success most likely dictated by their capacity to adapt to this new reality.
“I don’t want to say it’s a dying position, [but] the bar for a being a good catcher offensively is so low,” said one MLB director of amateur scouting. “You could be an everyday catcher if you hit .210 with 10 home runs. [But] if you hit .210 with 30 home runs and a Platinum Glove? You’re a superstar.”
Jim Koerner, USA Baseball’s director of player development, said it’s still imperative for catchers to wield “middle-infield hands” and a strong arm to be an MLB starter.
“[But] in five years,” he said, “once they institute robo umps, I think it’s going to be completely an offensive position.”
AHEAD OF THE 2023 MLB season, at the behest of on-field consultant and former Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox president Theo Epstein, the league instituted a slew of rule changes intended to energize a purportedly staling sport. Baseball banned defensive shifts, instituted a pitch clock, limited mound disengagements to two per plate appearance and widened the bases from 15 inches to 18 inches — all changes first tested in the minor leagues.
The dividends were immediate. In 2023, runners stole 3,503 bases and upped it to 3,617 last season, the most in 109 years and the third most in any MLB season. The average game time fell to 2 hours, 36 minutes in 2024, the quickest in 40 years. Attendance and television engagement records were set in 2023 and broken in 2024.
Just as quickly, it became harder for catchers to stop runners from stealing. Catchers faced an increase of nearly 12 and 14 more stolen base attempts a season in 2023 and 2024, respectively, than in 2022. Exchange times and pop times increased exponentially to compensate, as did the speed at which catchers throw on steal attempts. But runners are faster and — owed to new limited disengagements rules for pitchers — closer to their would-be stolen bases than ever.
From 2016 to 2022, the lowest average caught stealing percentage for a single season among qualified catchers was 22.28% in 2021. In 2023 it was 17.43% and, last season, it was 18.78%. Through July 7, MLB runners have stolen 1,947 bases, on pace to eclipse 2024’s total. The Minnesota Twins stole an MLB-low 65 bases in 2024; 14 teams already have more in 2025.
Jerry Weinstein, a Chicago Cubs catching consultant, said pitchers get the ball to the plate in the 1.3-second range, and catchers’ pop times are between 1.8 and 2.0 seconds.
“There’s nothing we can do to improve that, that’s a staple,” Weinstein said. “The average runner runs 3.35, one-tenth of a second for the tag … it’s a math problem. If the baserunner is perfect, and the catcher and pitcher are perfect based on those parameters, the guy’s going to be safe most of the time. Which is exactly what we’re seeing.”
But one MLB director of player development said even with the rise in stolen bases’ effect on strategy, the best batteries still control how efficiently they get outs.
“From an analytic standpoint, swinging the count in your favor is more valuable than defending the stolen base,” the player development director said. “Ninety feet matters in certain situations, [but] some teams don’t even care. They’d rather have a guy execute his stuff: High leg kick, deliver the stuff, go for the punch out.”
Behind the plate, he said, there’s a different catching archetype than there was 25 years ago. They’re now bigger, taller and can get under the ball with a one-knee-down stance behind the plate. But, unlike the days when an offensive juggernaut catcher was a rarity — Mike Piazza and Carlton Fisk, or dual-threats like Johnny Bench, Ivan Rodriguez and Yogi Berra — now an adept offensive catcher can separate himself from a logjam.
“If you can’t hit,” he said, “you’re going to have a hard time sticking around.”
From both 1991-1998 and 1999-2007, there were eight MLB catchers (at least 50% of games at catcher) with three or more .800 OPS, 10-home run, 50-RBI seasons. From 2008-2015, that number fell to five. From 2016 through 2024, there were three.
“The offensive product is incredibly low, the physical demands very high, and what we value in catching has changed so much and is on the precipice of changing again,” said a director of amateur scouting. “We put so much value on catchers being able to frame pitches and get extra strikes … and the minute that goes away, that drastically changes how we evaluate amateur and professional catchers.”
When organizations find offensive-minded catchers who are capable behind the plate, they tend to hold onto them.
“It’s getting harder and harder to find those guys that are really offensive, they’re few and far between,” a director of amateur scouting said. “You name one, then I’ll name one. I guarantee it’s going to be a short list.”
Another director of amateur scouting said part of what makes some catchers in this year’s draft so valuable is that they can catch and potentially be a standout offensive performer.
“You don’t want [a catcher you draft in the first round] to have a position change a year and a half down the road,” the scout said. “You’re going to move him to first base or left field, and now the offensive bar is so much higher there.”
Which is why some MLB scouts are high on Stevenson and think he can handle the adjustments the position now requires. He was steady behind home plate for North Carolina, a great blocker but below-average receiver. But it’s what the 6-foot-1, 210-pound, left-handed hitting All-America catcher did with his bat that has drawn the attention of MLB scouts: Among Division I catchers who have caught 90 games since 2024, Stevenson ranked second in home runs (33), third in runs (104) and sixth in OPS (.960). He drew 29 more walks (107) than any other catcher while having the second-best chase rate (17.2%) and second-most pitches per plate appearance (4.09).
Although some MLB scouts and player development personnel have raised questions about Stevenson’s glove and whether he could thrive behind the plate at the sport’s top level, others say his power and discerning eye come at such a premium that defensive concerns are secondary and correctable. One director of amateur scouting said Stevenson’s floor is backup catcher at the MLB level.
One executive of a team with a top-10 draft pick said Stevenson is in the mix that high because his defensive technique is easily adjustable, but an eye and bat like that at a position such as catcher is too rare to pass up.
“You could be an outstanding defensive catcher, but if you can’t hit a lick, it’s hard to make a roster as an everyday player,” he said.
“Hardest position to evaluate,” another director of amateur scouting said, “amateur catcher.”
He compared the predraft evaluation to college quarterbacks trying to play in the NFL: “Can you transition? With edge rushers, you have less than three seconds to get rid of the ball — same for a catcher, you want him to be better than two and to be able to throw it on the bag. Guys that are 1.78, 1.83, 1.85? They can get away with a higher throw, but the 2.0 guys have to be perfect. It takes a special human being to do it and do it for many years.”
Steve Rodriguez, Stanford University’s catching coach, was Trevor Bauer and Gerritt Cole’s catcher at UCLA before spending six seasons in the Atlanta Braves and Arizona Diamondbacks organizations. He lauded Stevenson’s prowess with a bat and said he is underrated behind the plate.
“[With] his ability and size to be light on his feet and his knees … I watch him and he can scrape the dirt with that knee down so easily: That means his balance and flexibility is at a high level,” Rodriguez said. “When you’re able to do that with the skill set he has with his hands, you have a pretty phenomenal player.”
Stevenson said UNC catching coach Jesse Wierzbicki, a former UNC starting catcher who played in the Houston Astros minor league system, hammered receiving and blocking drills all season — footwork, transfers to second base, stealing strikes. He also had inspiration at home.
“You’ve got eight guys staring at you, being a leader on that field, directing traffic,” Stevenson said. “I was probably 8 years old — my mom caught, so I was always wearing the gear — when I fell in love with it. It’s what I wanted to do.”
ON A FRIGID Tuesday morning in March, more than 50 high school boys in full uniform took the field at the USA Baseball Complex in Cary, North Carolina, with Jim Koerner in the stands. Koerner develops on-field programming and curriculum for USA Baseball’s 13- to 17-year-old teams and is one of amateur American baseball’s most important barometers. His son, Sam, 18, catches for Pro5 Academy’s Premier team, an elite developmental academy.
Scattered around the diamond were players committed to Old Dominion and NC State, Virginia Tech and UNC, Ohio State and Tulane. Haven Fielder, the San Diego State-bound son of Prince Fielder, is Pro5’s designated hitter. Sam committed to Division I Radford University in Virginia. Almost all of them take remote classes and rarely, if ever, attend high school in-person.
The elder Koerner said it’s a moment of extreme change, both for the beloved sport that has long been his livelihood and the position his son fell in love with. From a young age, Sam showed a natural lean toward catching, but Jim said he urged Sam toward the position he thought would provide the best chance of a prosperous baseball life.
Now he’s not so sure.
Twenty years ago, Jim Koerner said, catchers were as still as possible; now, framing and throwing are more important than blocking, and passed balls are skyrocketing.
His son, like Stevenson, is a left-hitting catcher. Sam is just shy of 6 feet and defensively gifted with a plus-arm. He also hits well for contact. He situationally adapts his catching stance: one knee down if the bases are empty, traditional with runners on. Sam said, even with the position under siege, it’s easier to throw out of that. Anything to tip the scales.
“[Sam] has aspirations, like a lot of young kids,” Jim Koerner said. “It’s hard to tell young kids, ‘Hey, man, you’re a really good receiver … but in five years, that might not matter. Just focus on your arm and hitting.'”
Sammy Serrano, Sam’s catching coach and a second-round draft pick in the 1998 MLB draft, said he isn’t worried about Sam or how he’ll adapt to rule changes. Serrano said Sam has an extremely high baseball IQ and he “just happens to be the catcher.”
During a game this spring, Sam Koerner took a relay from right field, swiped his mitt across the plate and waited: Runner out. Seconds later, he was in the dugout asking Serrano, what he could do to improve his timing and technique. It was a good play, but Sam isn’t interested in only good.
“He always wanted to [be a catcher],” his father said. “Two or three years old, he’d squat down in front of the TV and I’d be like, ‘Hey Sam … whatcha doin’?’
“He’d just point at the catcher on TV.”
DAVID ROSS’S WARM laugh spilled through a cellphone speaker when asked how well he would fare as a catcher in today’s MLB.
“I probably wouldn’t have a job,” he said. “I hit .180 my last year in Boston and I laughed: I got a two-year deal. I had a couple of deals on the table. That would’ve never happened early in my career when framing wasn’t a thing.”
Ross’s career was extended by his proclivity in the margins.
“When I was coming up, you had holds, hold pick, pitchouts, slide steps, four or five different signs from coaches that would help you manage the running game,” he said. “Well, that turned into nobody wanted to run anymore because the percentages didn’t match up. Now you see all these teams building with legit base stealers and athletes.”
After retiring following their 2016 World Series victory, Ross became a special assistant with the Cubs, then worked as an ESPN analyst before becoming the Cubs’ manager from 2020 to 2023, the first season under the rule changes. He is torn on some elements of the changes and changes that still might come, such as the Automated Ball-Strike system already implemented in MiLB that MLB tested this spring training.
“As a player, it’s a hard job, mistakes cost games, so, I love the challenge system because you’re going to keep the beauty of the game,” Ross said. “I don’t think we’ll get away from — you’re still going to be teaching kids about receiving, blocking, throwing, calling the game, the little intricacies of baseball. I don’t think that’s going to go away. Even with all the analytics, you still need a sense of feel back there.
“But offense has won out.”
Two-time All-Star catcher Jonathan Lucroy was an offense-first catcher out of college who became an analytic darling of the mid-2010s for his ability to frame pitches.
A mid-2000s ESPN feature on Lucroy pointed to then-Cubs general manager Epstein’s savvy in being an early adopter to the framing movement, which included the signing of Ross. Ironically, it’s the same aspect of the game Epstein might undo if an ABS system is implemented.
“Framing will be so devalued because of the advent of the ABS system and they’ll be prioritizing the offensive side of the position even more,” Lucroy said. “I’m biased, but I’ve experienced it firsthand.”
Lucroy predicted that the bedrocks of the position will remain.
“The most important part of the position is the game management and leadership,” he said. “There’s a lot of psychology that goes into it: How different guys communicate, how they receive information, take it in, apply [it]. You can’t take a paint brush and swipe it across and everyone does it the same way.”
Lucroy got to know his pitchers, learn about their families, how they respond to constructive criticism.
“How do you go out and speak to them properly to reel them in? Get them to change stuff up, change their thought process?” Lucroy said. “Are they a hand-hold guy? Do you have to tell them everything’s good, breathe, slow it down? The majority of guys are like that. On the flip side, a guy like Max Scherzer you can go out and yell at him, insult him a bit, and he responds positively.”
Lucroy said Jason Kendall once told him that the best catchers were also the best communicators, that their job is to make the pitcher look as good as possible.
‘”Make them more important than you,'” Lucroy recalled. “You want them to trust you and believe in you, like any other relationship. ‘Cause 99% of the time, guys don’t feel the best when they go out and play.”
Lucroy said catchers will adapt to the rule changes, because they always do. Lucroy said he thinks once an ABS system is instituted, catchers will go back into a more traditional stance, which means they’ll block balls better and throw out more runners.
But having experienced an analytics revolution himself, he worries about coming into an MLB transitioning between eras.
“The game is always shifting, always evolving,” Lucroy said. “If you go back and look at 2016, remember how the Cubs had Willson Contreras back there? And they put in David Ross. Why? Because David Ross is a veteran who ended up being a future manager who knows what the heck he’s doing and how to handle guys in big situations.”
Lucroy said he doesn’t think that’s an accident.
“Framing is important, to a certain extent,” he said, “but the best framers in the world aren’t catching in the World Series — the better offensive guys are. Even the years when I was one of the top framers in the league, I think I made the playoffs once.”
SAM KOERNER’S PRO5 TEAM took on a Canadian baseball academy at a minor league stadium in Holly Springs, North Carolina. The bases were wider — Sam called them “pizza boxes” — than those at the USA Baseball complex, so they stole more often here.
Sam was one of three catchers on the roster that day, and the only one committed to a college. He didn’t play until the eighth inning, and when he finally got to bat, he cranked the first pitch over the right field wall. It nearly hit a car on the adjacent NC 55 roadway.
His dad rushed to pull the video — it was Sam’s third in-game home run ever — but the camera was off.
In the press box afterward, Sam said he’s taking a gap year. He’ll enroll at Radford in the fall of 2026 and play with Pro5 until then, maximizing his growth literally and technically.
Sam doesn’t have to contend with new MLB-type rules yet, but if aspiration meets opportunity, he soon will.
“It’s already a challenge trying to hold runners on [even] though the rule changes aren’t affecting me,” Sam said. “I don’t know what else [catchers] could do. I’m just tryin’ to be as fast as I can to second base, on the bag.”
In working with thousands of players and coaches across the U.S., Jim Koerner said MLB’s rules changes haven’t been adopted at the youth levels, which means they haven’t directly altered how youth ball is played — yet. But for Sam and his peers, and even younger players, making it to an NCAA baseball team and eventually to MLB are the goals.
“The way pro evaluators are going to look at the catching position is going to start to change now,” Koerner said. “But on the flip side, when you value the guy on the mound as much as he’s valued now at the professional level, they still need to trust the guy catching. There’s still a confidence, a comfort, a leadership aspect.”
It’s the aspect Sam prides himself on most and what Lucroy said was invaluable.
“Building good relationships with my pitchers, always having their back,” Sam said. “It makes them perform better knowing they have a guy behind the plate where they can, even as simple as 0-2, they can spike a brick in the dirt and know I’m going to pick ’em up and block it and throw the guy out at first.”
At lunch in between his game and a weightlifting session, Sam inhaled a Philly cheesesteak. He buzzed while breaking down the catching techniques of Cincinnati’s Jose Trevino and San Francisco’s Patrick Bailey. He also acknowledged that during a game earlier, his middle finger got caught asking for a curveball and he took a 90-mile-per-hour fastball in the chest plate.
Jim said it’s just how Sam is; there is no version of him absent of catching.
“When he was 7 or 8, he’d get back there and see these big guys come to hit and … he’d be excited but he’d look at me like…” Jim said, his eyes going wide.
“I was scared to death,” Sam said.
“But he eventually warmed up to it,” Jim said, smiling.
They fell into a cadence, starting and finishing each other’s anecdotes. They’ve chosen a baseball life, devoid of free time. Jim wishes he were home more often, and Sam might as well live in catching gear. Recently, they tried to game-plan on a rare, shared day off. They couldn’t decide what to do. Eventually, Jim pitched batting practice to Sam.
“[At a] concert the other day, one of the guys was tellin’ a story about fishing, being out there with his daughter and she’s thinking, ‘We’re going fishing?’ The guy says, ‘It’s not … just fishing,'” Jim said.
“When I ask Sam, ‘Hey, do you wanna hit? You wanna go lift?’ For him, it might be just baseball.”
Suddenly, a knock came on the press box door to vacate. Sam and Jim turned in their chairs and shared a glance.
“Well, for me,” Jim said, packing up, “it’s not just baseball.”
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