Adley Rutschman and Catchers Who Hit a Lot of Doubles
As a rookie this year, the Orioles catcher has 18 doubles in his first 50 games. In that way he is similar to the great Johnny Bench.
Issue #11
Orioles rookie Adley Rutschman is hitting a lot of doubles. After playing 20 minor league games to start the year, the 24-year old catcher was called up. Since then, in 50 games and 174 at-bats, he has posted a modest .236/.327/.437 slash line, with 5 HR and 17 RBI. But he has a 115 OPS+, largely because he has hit 18 doubles during that brief period.
I started noticing when he hit his 10th double. I've been wondering: What is the record for most doubles in a season while catching? The answer: Jonathan Lucroy in 2015 with 46.
Now it should be noted that Rutschman's 18 doubles have not all come while in the lineup as a catcher. Like many teams with good hitting catchers, on days he is not behind the plate he gets into the game in other ways—mostly as a DH. So of his 18 doubles this year, only 13 came while in the game as a catcher. More on that in a minute.
Here is the top 10 list of doubles in a season while catching:
46 Jonathan Lucroy, 2014
45 Ivan Rodriguez, 1996
44 Yadier Molina, 2013
41 Mickey Cochrane, 1930
40 Johnny Bench, 1968
40 Terry Kennedy, 1982
40 Brian McCann, 2008
40 Jorge Posada, 2007
40 Jorge Posada, 2002
40 Jarrod Saltalamacchia, 2013
The first thing that I notice about this list is Johnny Bench's 40 in 1968, his NL Rookie of the Year season. He had played briefly in 1967, but then took over as the full-time catcher for the Reds in 1968. He batted .275, but had a very similar OPS+ (117) to what Adley has so far. So I guess I'm hereby making a Rutschman / Bench comp of sorts! (Yes, I realize there are lots of differences—like Bench was only 20 years old in his rookie season, and immediately was throwing out base-stealers at a 47% clip, nearly twice Adley's rate so far—though the league average in that category was much higher then too.)
The other thing I noticed is Posada appearing twice on this top-10 list. He wasn't a double-hitting machine really, as he only had two other seasons with 30 or more. Speaking of which, several of the above seasons were outliers really. Besides the ones listed above, Saltalamacchia's highest was only 23, Lucroy's was 25, and Kennedy's was 27.
Jonathan Lucroy's 2014 season is an even bigger outlier relative to the rest of his career than the 46 doubles above makes it seem. He actually had a total of 53 doubles that year, since besides catching he also played 19 games at 1B. So that is more than twice the doubles than his second highest season total.
That 53 is not surprisingly also the record for the most doubles in a season by a player who played 50% or more of his games at catcher—guys we would consider to be "catchers" in those seasons. Here is that top 10 list:
53 Jonathan Lucroy, 2014
47 Ivan Rodriguez, 1996
44 Yadier Molina, 2013
43 Joe Mauer, 2010
42 Mickey Cochrane, 1930
42 Terry Kennedy, 1982
42 Brian Harper, 1990
42 Brian McCann, 2008
42 Lance Parrish, 1983
42 Jorge Posada, 2007
Compared with the earlier list there are two changes here. Joe Mauer of course hit a lot of doubles, with eight seasons of 30+. Lance Parrish was more of a HR hitter, with seven seasons of 20+ HR, but only two seasons of 30+ doubles.
Rutschman might do the same, as his minor league numbers had him only hitting 0.21 doubles per game, instead of 0.36 doubles per game that he has in the majors so far. He also hit HR at a stronger rate in the minors than so far this year, hitting 0.16 HR per game vs. 0.10 HR per game in the majors. Like many young players his power might just be maturing such that some of his many doubles will in the future be HRs.
Or maybe he'll develop like a certain 1968 NL Rookie of the Year and legend of the Big Red Machine, by both developing major-league HR power and continuing to hit a lot of doubles too.
All data is from Baseball-Reference.com, and also their subscription service Stathead.com. If you are a big sports fan, be sure to check out the latest features at Stathead and the Sports Reference family of sites.