Catching Up With Catchers Who DH
Last August, I noticed that Major League Baseball teams were using catchers as designated hitters more often than in previous years, so I attempted to quantify and contextualize the trend. Through Saturday’s games, most teams were just shy of the halfway mark in the season, so I counted again.
The topline takeaway: Teams are starting catchers at DH at higher rates than they have in recent years, and at a higher rate than any other season for which I’ve checked the numbers.
Through June 20, 2026, MLB teams had started a DH who had also played catcher this season in 18% of their games. The highest percentage for a full season I had been able to find, previously, was in 2025 and 2012 (see note), when teams gave just more than 15% of DH starts to catchers. The 2012 season appears to be an outlier because the Mariners used a rookie catcher, Jesus Montero, as their primary DH and gave a significant number of DH starts to two other catchers, while the Twins also chose to both Joe Mauer and Ryan Doumit significant starts at DH and catcher.
(Note) Coincidentally, using my count of “catchers as DH”, the percentage of DH starts for those two seasons is exactly the same. 2025: 735 starts in 4,860 games is 15.1234579%. 2012: 343 starts in 2,268 games is 15.1234579%.
In 2026, just short of the halfway mark for the season, MLB teams have given more than 18% of their DH starts to catchers. Breaking that down a bit further, thus far 11 teams have not given a DH start to a catcher: SFG, SDP, CIN, PIT, PHI, WSN, LAA, CHW, NYY, TBR, TOR. Furthermore, 5 more teams have given only a single-digit number of DH starts to a catcher: LAD, NYM, HOU, TEX, and MIN. Some of those teams have a primary DH who has taken all but a few of the DH starts this season, while others have simply chosen to prioritize other hitters in that spot. Taken together, it suggests that about half of teams are the ones radically increasing their share of catchers at DH.
The Royals have given the most DH starts to catchers, with Salvador Perez and Carter Jensen leading the team in DH starts, taking up about 76% of them. This is probably the end of the line for Perez, since he’s been a terrible hitter this year, with a 65 OPS+, and even though he’s a franchise icon, every day the Royals keep trotting him out there at DH, catcher, or first base is a game where they’re not testing or developing a player that will help them get back to the playoffs. For his part, Jensen is more than holding his own as a rookie with a 101 OPS+.
The Cardinals are next, having given about 73% of their DH starts to Ivan Herrera, Yohel Pozo, and Jimmy Crooks. Pozo and Crooks have been terrible (and Pozo is now back in the minors), but Herrera has a 133 OPS+, so while his lineup spot is all but assured, the better question might be whether the Cardinals should continue to put him behind the dish given his poor defensive results.
The Cubs had given 62% of their DH starts to catchers, but that’s certain to go down now that Moises Ballesteros, who had started 42 games at DH, has been sent down.
Other teams giving a lot of DH starts to catchers are the Marlins (45%), Orioles (43%), Diamondbacks (38%), Rockies (34%), Brewers (28%), and Athletics (24%).
As with the last time I looked into this, I think the main driving force behind the trend is that catchers, as a group, are much better hitters than they used to be. For a stat check on that, in 2025, MLB teams averaged -5.3 batting runs from their catchers for the season, per Baseball Reference. In 2016, they averaged -9.9 batting runs, with all but six teams in the negative. In 2006, they averaged -8.2 batting runs, and all but eight teams were in the negative. Moreover, in 2006 and 2016, the very worst teams had abysmal offensive performances from their catchers, with 12 teams across those two seasons with fewer batting runs than the worst team in 2025. (Here's how batting runs are calculated.)
Previously, I wrote that I think teams are doing this in part because they view rest differently than previous generations did. I’m still pretty sure that’s true, but I have more doubt now that it’s significantly affecting how often teams use catchers at DH because I looked at another position that, historically, is one of the weaker-hitting spots, and I don’t see the same kind of widespread increase.
Specifically, only a little more than 3% of DH starts in 2026 have gone to players who could be categorized as shortstops. And even that number is inflated a lot by Casey Schmitt of the Giants, who has made 5 appearances at shortstop over 2025-26, and has by far the most DH starts among shortstops/"shortstops", with 23. Only two other teams are in double digits for shortstop starts at DH: the Diamondbacks with 14 by Jose Fernandez, and the Red Sox with 11 by Andrew Monasterio and Trevor Story.
Much of this difference might be explained by how every team carries at least two catchers and not every team carries two shortstops at all times. However, given that teams mostly carry four position players on their bench — a catcher, an infielder, an outfielder, and perhaps someone who does both — that various starters around the majors play multiple positions, and that I thought teams would spread their DH at-bats more evenly, I expected the percentages of shortstops-as-DH and catchers-as-DH would be closer. For example, among the 12 teams with at least 1 batting run produced by shortstops in 2026, they have given 26 DH starts to their shortstops, and 14 of those went to the Diamondbacks’ Fernandez. These are, ostensibly, the players who would most likely be kept in the game for their bats, and yet, Bobby Witt, Jr. has not DHed at all this season, CJ Abrams has DHed once, and Elly De La Cruz twice.
Instead, six teams have catchers as their lead DH and 14 in all give more than 10% of their DH starts to catchers, which would have been on the aggressive end in most years I’ve looked up. For example, in 2015, I believe only two teams even reached double-digit starts for catchers at DH, and MLB-wide only about 4% of DH starts went to catchers, in line with how shortstops are used at the position today.
I remain reticent to make any strong conclusions beyond a core reframing: for a majority of teams, catchers are seen as key offensive contributors who are expected to take on a good chunk of the DH load. As a corollary, while defense-only catchers won’t ever go away, I suspect fewer of them will be significant contributors to teams in the same way that all-glove no-bat middle infielders and center fielders used to be ubiquitous but now are either quickly shuffled off stage for players who do hit or deployed by teams trying to spend limited resources judiciously.
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Thanks for reading, you crazy kids. Let’s do this again, sometime.
(Photo: "Buster Posey" by Ian D'Andrea. Used under CC BY-SA 2.0 license. Photo taken in 2018. During his 12 seasons, Posey was an excellent hitter, and he started at DH 31 times, topping out with 7 in the 2017 season. The Phillies' catcher in the photo, Jorge Alfaro, appeared in a few MLB games in 2025, but none so far in 2026. He started at DH 18 times over the course of his career.)