Newly acquired catcher Adley Rutschman’s view on the magnitude of his task?
“It’s a unique situation,” he acknowledged at Fenway Park on Tuesday, his first day with the Red Sox. “I’ve never been traded before.”
There’s a delicacy to the undertaking, contributing to a startling rarity: In baseball history, there’s been exactly one World Series game started by a catcher acquired via midseason trade by an eventual champion. That distinction belongs to old friend Christian Vázquez, who along the way navigated a four-pitcher no-hitter for the Astros in Game 4 of the 2022 World Series, three months after the Sox dealt him for Wilyer Abreu and Enmanuel Valdez.
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How did the Sox view the impact of the getting-to-know-you process of adding a catcher at the deadline?
“It’s not nothing, but also wouldn’t want to overstate it,” said chief baseball officer Craig Breslow. “These guys are professionals, and they’ve thrown to different catchers, whether that was because of injury or performance or whatever the case is. I think what it comes down to is building relationships and trust. And, like I said, everything that we’ve learned about Adley is he is fantastic at doing that.”
Even so, this is the first time in his career Rutschman has been traded. On the other hand, Jake Rogers — also acquired from the Orioles on Monday — has been dealt twice in a week, shipped from the Tigers to the Orioles on July 30.
Based on that recent experience, he’d already identified what the process looks like for a catcher to assimilate with a new team.
“It’s a little bit of a thrown-in-the-fire situation,” said Rogers. “But I’ve had a lot of meetings today about getting to know [the Sox pitchers] and watched a bunch of video on them last night, did my homework on the White Sox [lineup for the three-game series]. And, at the end of the day, we go out there and compete and hopefully these guys have a little trust in me and knowing these guys. But, at the end of the day, I think it’s just going to take me catching them a couple times to get to know them.”
What can Rogers learn from a couple of pairings with his new teammates?
“[Usage] percentages and stuff are all out there for everybody to see. That’s something that I can learn pretty quickly,” said Rogers. “But seeing their [pitch] shapes and kind of learning their go-to’s behind in counts and ahead in counts and two strikes, it takes two or three times to kind of get to know that. Once that happens, it makes the flow a little easier.”
While there can be some transitional challenges with the adaptation to a new pitching staff, the current state of the game has arguably accelerated the process. A’s catcher Jonah Heim, who was acquired from Atlanta in May, noted that the wireless PitchCom system has made the back-and-forth process with pitchers easier to navigate.
“It’s not the easiest thing [to learn a new staff]. As a catcher, that’s why you like spring training to get to know these guys in games that don’t matter,” he said. “[But] I feel like if I just catch a guy in a game one time, I can kind of feel it out that way, and after that, we get in a pretty good rhythm.”
Rutschman and Rogers did not have the luxury of spring training with their new teams. But by virtue of his place on the injured list for wrist inflammation, Rutschman hopes to gain some benefit. He’ll be free to catch bullpens from his new teammates and to have more time in the dugout to get to know them, something he hopes will accelerate his acclimation.
“I’m definitely going to try and utilize the time as much as possible to be able to get to know these guys and just really understand what works best, how I can best serve them,” he said.
Alex Speier can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @alexspeier.
