We Seem to Be in a Golden Age of Catchers Starting at Designated Hitter
Hello, again. Recently, I’ve been writing and publishing posts on a monthly basis, with multiple subjects per post, but I felt this piece was worth putting out there on its own. It’s about a trend in Major League Baseball that I noticed recently and decided to quantify. LFG.
I recall that years ago, there was a strong disinclination in Major League Baseball to use a catcher as a designated hitter. The thinking was that with most teams carrying only two catchers on the roster, it was a risky move because if the fielder got hurt, causing the DH to have to move to the field, you’d lose the DH for the rest of the game, forcing your pitchers to bat. Moreover, catchers generally hit worse than other positions, so why use a weaker hitter at DH if you had bench players who could hit just as well?
Of course, teams still did it on occasion. Consider a team that should have had very little reason to DH their catcher, the 1989 Oakland Athletics. Dave Parker (110 OPS+) was the most-used DH, plus they had a slew of other regulars with track records of being solid hitters in Mark McGwire (129 OPS+), Jose Canseco (147 OPS+), Rickey Henderson (132 OPS+), Carney Lansford (131 OPS+), and Dave Henderson (98 OPS+) among others. Still, Tony La Russa gave regular catcher Terry Steinbach (92 OPS+) four starts at DH that year and backup catcher Ron Hassey (77 OPS+) two starts at DH.
In recent years, I felt the taboo against starting a catcher at DH crumbling. I think it was Gary Sánchez’s stint with the Twins in 2022 that first made me perk up at possibly-changing attitudes. That year, Sánchez started 80 games at catcher for Minnesota and 32 as DH. At times to that point in his career, Sánchez had been a very good hitter, but he was coming off two seasons with the Yankees in which he had slashed .147/.253/.365 (pandemic season) and then .204/.307/.423. So I was intrigued that the Twins decided to give him that many DH starts, even as he scuffled to a final season line of .205/.282/.377 (88 OPS+).
To put that in further context, Joe Mauer was probably the best hitting catcher in MLB from 2004 to 2013, and the most he ever started at DH in a season was 42 times in 2012, a season he also started 30 games at first base and was generally hobbled by injuries. (Remember 2012; we’ll come back to it.) Before that, in his prime catching seasons, the most games Mauer started at DH was 28, during his MVP campaign in 2009, when the team was clearly trying to get his hot bat into as many games as possible. He started 105 games at catcher that season.
On Bluesky, I asked a few times if catchers were DHing more often today than ever before, but despite the responses I got, my curiosity remained unsated. I don’t have the time (or, perhaps, proper subscriptions) to do a comprehensive dive into the subject, but I did have the time to look up at least some information about this.
I started by looking up how many catchers started games as DH in 2005, in 2015, and through July 31 in the 2025 season. Already, I know some of you are raising questions, so you can go to the end of the post to read a bit more about my process.
Here’s the bottom line: From counting how many catchers have been starting games at DH, there is evidence MLB teams are far more comfortable using catchers as their DH than they were 10 years ago, let alone 20 years ago. Not only are teams generally giving catchers more starts at DH, but I believe that, in general, more teams are using catchers as a primary DH option than in previous years. Furthermore, there has been a small but steady increase in catchers starting at DH over the past three seasons.
It’s important to note that we’re dealing with small enough numbers that calling something a “trend” could be driven by only one or two organizations making a different choice from other teams, and so I’m hesitant to draw strong conclusions about why I believe teams are more comfortable with this, but I have a few main hypotheses.
First, I suspect teams are much more comfortable with quantifying risk than in previous eras. In turn, they might be more comfortable using a catcher as DH because the downside — losing the DH for the game due to injury or ejection — is seen as both/either not as bad as once thought and/or sufficiently remote that the advantages are worth pursuing.
Second, I suspect trends in player development are producing better-hitting catchers, as a class, than in previous eras. That is, few teams carry any players who are total zeroes at the plate, even catchers.
Third, combine all of that with notions about giving proper rest to players up and down the roster while also carrying 13 pitchers (instead of 11 or 12) and I think it makes sense to give more DH starts to catchers in an effort to keep everyone fresher.
Here are the numbers I found:
In 2005:
- Teams gave catchers 89 starts at DH out of 2,274 possible slots, or 3.9% of the time.
- The Baltimore Orioles had the most catcher-DH starts, with 28 for Sal Fasano (106 OPS+) and Javy Lopez (106 OPS+).
- The Pirates started Ryan Doumit (90 OPS+, historically-terrible glove) at DH for all six of their interleague DH games.
In 2015:
- Teams gave catchers 97 starts at DH out of 2,429 possible slots, or 4.0% of the time.
- The Baltimore Orioles, again, had the most catcher-DH starts, with 32 spread between Steve Clevenger (100 OPS+), Matt Wieters (101 OPS+), and Caleb Joseph (88 OPS+).
In 2025, through July 31:
- Teams gave catchers 449 starts out of 3,270 possible slots, or 13.7% of the time.
- The Marlins had the most catcher-DH starts, giving 55 to Agustin Ramirez and Liam Hicks, more than half their games.
- The Yankees gave 48 DH starts to Ben Rice.
- The Cardinals gave 42 DH starts to Ivan Herrera and Yohel Pozo.
- The Astros gave 40 DH starts to Victor Caratini and Yainer Diaz.
- The Mariners gave 37 DH starts to Mitch Garver and Cal Raleigh.
- Three other teams — the Rockies, Royals, and Rangers — gave 29 DH starts to catchers.
Perhaps Agustin Ramirez and Hunter Goodman won’t remain at catcher much longer, and Ben Rice seemed to be headed for a position change until the Yankees apparently changed course this year, but everyone else on those teams are full-fledged catchers who are also being asked to DH much more than their positional brethren were expected to do in years past.
But what about recent history? I wanted to make sure this year wasn’t just a fluke, so I also looked up 2023 and 2024.
In 2023:
- Teams gave catchers 504 starts out of 4,860 possible slots, or 10.3% of the time.
- The MLB-champion Rangers had the most catcher-DH starts, giving 69 to Mitch Garver, Jonah Heim, and Sam Huff.
- The next-highest total was 52 catcher-DH starts for the Orioles (Adley Rutschman and James McCann). Remove the Rangers’ total, and it was 9.3%.
In 2024:
- Teams gave catchers 549 starts out of 4,858 possible slots, or 11.3% of the time.
- The Mariners had the most catcher-DH starts, giving 99 to Garver (hmmm) and Raleigh.
- The next-highest total was 75 for the Brewers (Gary Sánchez, William Contreras, and Eric Haase). Remove the Mariners’ total, and it was 9.6%.
Put everything together, and it sure looks like teams are gradually increasing the share of catchers receiving DH starts. Some teams are simply including catchers as they spread around DH starts to everyone on their roster. Others are comfortable giving large chunks of their DH starts to catchers because those catchers are good hitters.
However, I also discovered this is not the most catcher-as-DH-happy season. Remember what I wrote about Joe Mauer? It turns out that 2012 was a wild season for the catcher-DH strategy. That year, the Twins gave 91 DH starts to catchers, between Mauer, Doumit, and Chris Herrmann. But they weren’t even the most radical catcher-DH team in MLB that season.
In 2012, the Mariners gave 133 DH starts to catchers, spread between Jesus Montero, John Jaso, and Miguel Olivo. If that sounds wild, it made a certain sort of sense. Montero (77 DH starts) was an offense-first rookie, and while he started 55 games behind the plate, the team needed to see his bat more than anything else. Jaso (44 DH starts) had a career year, slashing .276/.394/.456 (142 OPS+), so while he got 39 catcher starts, he certainly deserved more opportunity to play. The logic falls apart with Olivo, who had the best defensive reputation in the group, which is probably why he got 68 starts behind the plate, but he had no business making 12 starts at DH, given his slash line of .222/.239/.381 (73 OPS+). There were plenty of bad hitters on that team, but Olivo was 33 and at least the younger guys could’ve gotten some experience.
In any event, those two outlier strategies meant that, overall, in 2012, catchers started at DH 15.1% of the time in MLB. After the Mariners and Twins, the Red Sox had the next-most catcher-DH starts (28, Ryan Lavarnaway and Jared Saltalamacchia). Remove those top two teams, and catchers started at DH 6.0% of the time in 2012. That’s more than in the earlier years I examined, but much closer to what I would have expected just from looking at 2005 and 2015.
I imagine the percentage will not increase much, if at all, because it seems that if every team pursued a spread-out-DH-starts strategy, then splitting DH evenly between eight different positions would yield somewhere around 12.5% of DH starts for catchers. Some teams will have a Ben Rice or Agustin Ramirez who plays some catcher while DHing a lot, and other teams will see little point in DHing their catcher since Patrick Bailey is a poor hitter and Rafael Devers can hit every day, so it won’t ever break out that cleanly. But I do think these figures strongly suggest teams have dramatically changed their strategy regarding catchers as DH.
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NOTE ABOUT PROCESS: I made judgment calls on who is or was a “catcher”. If a guy played catcher in MLB that season because his team planned to use him as a catcher — I.E.: it wasn’t a fluky one-inning thing — I counted him as a catcher. If a guy was a catcher in the minors that season and got called up to DH a few times because they needed his bat, I probably counted him as a catcher even if he wasn’t used as a catcher in MLB (see: Luis Campusano). However, when Chris Shelton was called up in 2005, he was very clearly not considered a catcher even though he’d caught a few games in the minors that season (and he would never catch professionally again), so I didn’t count him. David Fry was a catcher who DHed in 2024. The Guardians do not intend to use him at catcher in 2025, so he is not a catcher who is DHing this season.
There are several of these guys, but I think the most notable ones that might affect the final analysis are:
Matt Lecroy — Played 1 inning at catcher in 2005, which looks like a one-off emergency deal. He’d play catcher afterward, but notoriously was pulled mid-inning while with the Nationals the next season. Ruling: NOT a catcher.
Evan Gattis — Played a lot of catcher in 2014 and 2016, but the 2015 Astros did not use him behind the plate. Ruling: NOT a catcher.
Victor Martinez — Was basically done as a catcher after 2011. Caught 2 games in 2014, but none in 2015. Ruling: NOT a catcher.
Ben Rice — Caught a lot in the minors in 2024, but only 1 inning in MLB, so it looked like the Yankees didn’t believe he was a major league catcher. But then, in 2025, he’s made double-digit appearances behind the plate, including a handful of starts. Ruling: IS a catcher.
Here is the rudimentary spreadsheet I made to lay out all the info I gathered from Baseball-Reference.
(Photo: "Joe Mauer" by Ryan Claussen. Used under CC BY-SA 2.0 license.)