The rookie catcher quietly fueling Giants' playoff push

Here’s the setup: In May, a middling team abruptly installs a top catching prospect into a starting role and, seemingly overnight, its season is transformed. In fact, the club starts to look like a contender.

That sounds awfully familiar, but the script is a little different this time around. A year ago, we were talking about Adley Rutschman, harbinger of a new, much less miserable era of Orioles baseball. In 2023, the young backstop in question is Patrick Bailey, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the similarities between the two.

In 2022, the Orioles were 16-24 (.400) before promoting Rutschman and went 67-55 (.549) after. (A year later, they have the best record in the American League.) Before Bailey’s May 19 debut, the Giants were 20-23 (.465), already eight games out of first place in the NL West. They’ve since gone 44-34 (.564) and, if the season ended today, would be the National League's second Wild Card.

The Giants’ turnaround isn’t something we can credit entirely to Bailey, but his fingerprints are all over it. At the end of the day, he's made his pitchers better. Here are a few reasons why.

1) He's got pop (time)

As a rule, a catcher’s caught stealing percentage tends to be a poor measurement of their aptitude, but Bailey, who ranks fourth among catchers with at least 25 attempts (35.6%), is a bit of an exception.

For one, his average pop time to second base trails only that of perennial league leader J.T. Realmuto, and as of Wednesday, Bailey has the fastest pop time of the 2023 season thus far (1.71 seconds).

Fastest avg. pop time to 2B, 2023
1. J.T. Realmuto: 1.83 seconds
2. (tie) Patrick Bailey: 1.87 seconds
2. (tie) Garrett Stubbs: 1.87 seconds
4. Christian Bethancourt: 1.88 seconds
5. Sean Murphy: 1.89 seconds
MLB avg.: 2.00 seconds

There’s also his arm -- usually his highest-graded tool in the Minors -- which averages 84.4 mph on stolen base attempts, ranking 17th out of 73 catchers with at least five max-effort throws to second base.

Given both of those factors, it’s not too surprising that Statcast’s Caught Stealing Above Average, which removes the potential impact of a slow-working pitcher by taking measurements at the time a pitch crosses the plate, absolutely loves Bailey.

Most CS Above Average, 2023
1. Gabriel Moreno: 7
2. (tie) Connor Wong: 6
2. (tie) Patrick Bailey: 6
2. (tie) Elias Díaz: 6
2. (tie) Shea Langeliers: 6

Basically, Bailey isn't just making the plays he should make -- he's also getting outs he has no business converting. Opposing baserunners have yet to make the adjustment, and he appears to have caught on (no pun intended).

2) He's MLB's best at pitch framing

It would have been enough for Bailey to have command over the running game, but he's a gifted framer. In that way, he was made for the 2023 Giants, a group that ranks 30th in baseball in four-seam fastball rate (12.7%, less than half that of the Brewers, who rank 29th) and throws more sinkers than any other team in baseball (29.7%). Giants pitchers, broadly, are not built to challenge hitters in the zone, and success often depends on their ability to throw strikes without leaving the ball out over the plate.

Fortunately for them, Bailey converts more non-swings in the shadow zone into called strikes than any other qualifying catcher.

Highest strike rate, 2023
Among 60 qualifying catchers
1. Patrick Bailey: 53.1%
2. Austin Hedges: 52.0%
3. Cam Gallagher: 50.4%
4. (tie) Jonah Heim: 50.0%
4. (tie) Sean Murphy: 50.0%

Most catcher framing runs, 2023
1. Austin Hedges: 11
2. Patrick Bailey: 10
3. (tie) Jonah Heim: 8
3. (tie) Francisco Alvarez: 8
5. (tie) William Contreras: 7
5. (tie) Sean Murphy: 7

In measuring just how much of an impact framing can make, we can also look at Fielding Run Value, which combines all of Statcast’s defensive metrics to measure all fielders on the same scale. Bailey’s +13 fielding runs -- which includes that absurd +10 from framing -- have him tied for the Major League lead with Rockies outfielder Brenton Doyle, who ranks in the 98th percentile in both sprint speed and arm strength. To be clear, that's a catcher of similar defensive value to a natural center fielder.

Best Fielding Run Value, 2023
1. (tie) Brenton Doyle: +13
1. (tie) Patrick Bailey: +13 (+10 framing, +4 throwing, -1 blocking)
3. (tie) Joey Wiemer: +12
3. (tie) Austin Hedges: +12
3. (tie) Sean Murphy: +12

3) He's earned his pitchers' trust

Since Bailey’s debut, the Giants’ staff ERA has fallen by almost a run (4.40 through May 18, 3.63 since). While those two things could be unrelated, at the start of play Wednesday, the catcher ERA gap between Bailey (3.41) and backup Blake Sabol (5.10) was the largest between any club’s top two catchers.

Some of that is the product of the pitchers they're working with -- Bailey has caught twice as many of Logan Webb's starts, for one -- but for Webb and Alex Cobb, who have all but held the Giants rotation together, posting a combined 3.41 ERA and 4.60 strikeout-to-walk ratio, Bailey's ability to steal strikes has gone hand-in-hand with their success. Webb, who has an outside shot at taking home the NL Cy Young Award this year, leads all pitchers with a +36 run value on shadow zone pitches (Cobb, at +19, is tied for 34th of 300 qualifying pitchers) and, even so, has a negative run value on pitches in the heart of the zone (-3).

But even we can admit there’s a limit to what can be quantified. For everything else, we have the Giants pitchers themselves.

"It’s his maturity when things are getting to a breaking point in the game or seeing that certain pitches aren’t working,” the veteran Cobb said of Bailey. “Memorizing the scouting report, shifting from it when things aren’t going according to that plan. He just has a feel for the game that you can’t teach. I think we’ve all said it already, but he’s just so far beyond his years in his maturity behind the plate.”

According to Cobb, whatever Bailey achieves at the Major League level, “nobody’s really surprised anymore." Consider this us doing our part to spread the good word.