The Best Catcher in Baseball Is Dead. Long Live the (New) Best Catcher in Baseball.

To paraphrase an old adage about the weather, if you don’t like the ownership of the best catcher in baseball, just wait a year and you’ll have a new best catcher in baseball. It’s probably weird. Every year, there are two contenders for the best catcher in baseball. And every year, one of them falls by the wayside, to be replaced by a new person. It’s like clockwork:

Last year was an exception to the rule that Cal Raleigh was better than Alejandro Kirk, but for the most part, the top two catchers in the game have put up the same WAR. It’s hard to shine all the way in the catch, and it’s hard to stay near the top for long. In fact, that’s not the only surprise. Catching is incredibly hard on the body, and WAR is a number to count. The best anglers play hard, and they get tired. Before long, they either don’t play as often or play less efficiently.

With that background, you can expect one of Kirk or Raleigh to hold onto the top spot while a new contender emerges. But that hasn’t happened yet. Both were injured – Raleigh missed IL for a month, and Kirk missed more than two. And both haven’t played well when healthy – both have had very poor starts to their careers, although Kirk’s is in a small sample size. There’s still more than half the season to play, and it’s reasonable to think that the two might end up posting solid numbers the rest of the way, but they’ve combined for a combined 0.5 WAR so far this year. It’s safe to say there will be new faces at the top.

Shea Langeliers, who Jay Jaffe wrote about earlier this year, looks like the real deal. He’s putting together a second straight season with a wRC+ around 130, and while he’s a below-average frame, he’s improved greatly from that. But Jay has already written about him, so we won’t cover him today. Also, Langeliers’ 2.3 WAR through Tuesday’s games is second among catchers. Who is in first place? That would be Dillon Dingler, whose 3.8 WAR in the field has him tied for second among American League hitters regardless of position.

Dingler, like many pitchers before him at the top of the WAR board, did a little bit of everything to get to his number. He is first in the league in rebounding and in the top five in blocking. He has average control of the run game, making him a very good overall linebacker. There is nothing new in that; he won the Gold Glove last year. But maintaining that level of protection is not a given. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why the top of the participant leaderboard seems so chaotic.

JT Realmuto’s last defensive season was 2022, the last year he was at or near the top of the WAR leaderboards. Adley Rutschman’s two senior years were two of his best defensive seasons. William Contreras was a special draft catcher for two years, and contributed in WAR both of those seasons. Heck, you can throw Raleigh in that group. He is a great defensive catcher, but his defense dipped last year when he had more offensive responsibility, and he has started slowly behind the plate in 2026. It’s hard to be a great defender, and it’s even harder to continue doing so when you’re also carrying a heavy offensive load.

That brings us to the real site of Dingler being the best player in baseball this year: his offense. He’s hitting a solid .272/.339/.545 (again in Tuesday’s action), good for a 141 wRC+. He has already hit 18 homers, more than doubling his career total. Prior to this year, he had been average offensively, but still thankful for that great defense. Take a good defensive catcher and add a good DH offense, and you have a recipe for every name on that list above.

If “handling sin well” were easy, everyone would do it. But Dingler’s transformation is a good example of how small changes can lead to big improvements. In many important ways, he hasn’t changed much since last year. He doesn’t swing much. He’s chasing more often than last year, but he’s not turning as often on pitches in the strike zone. Still looking to lift and pull the ball; he still hasn’t scored a hit in the field against him as a senior player. But small improvements can go a long way.

If I had to describe Dingler’s greatest strength simply, I would say this: He makes as much contact with the person putting the ball in the air as he does. His zone contact rate of 90.7% is at the top of the league. That may not seem like much, but consider the context. Faster change often means less contact. A fly ball swing usually means less contact. Only one hitter in baseball has a higher strikeout rate, a faster average swing speed, and a lower ground-to-fly ball ratio: Yordan Alvarez. That’s good company to keep. Hitters with similar numbers to Juan Soto, Kevin McGonigle, José Ramírez, and Trent Grisham.

I wish I could tell you how Dingler did this impressive thing. But the truth is that sometimes, hitters just get better. Dingler makes more contact in-zone against fastballs and breaking balls. He struggles with transitions, and arguments in general, but that sounds more like a small sample issue than anything else. Dingler has been making a good deal of in-zone contact. He just called especially now.

There is one small detail, mostly outside of his control, that flatters his numbers at the moment. Pitchers like to target the shadow area, the corners of the plate and just the outside area. Generally, they come to the shadow area more often than they come to the shadow exit. In other words, they catch the corner of the hair more often than they miss. Last year, for example, Dingler saw 24% of areas in the shadow zone, and 18% in the shadow zone. Pitchers as a whole are hitting the shade-22% of the time this year, and the shade is striking out 19.6%. But Dingler has seen more pitches that have just missed than he has just hit. One of the reasons he makes contact with so many spots is that the pitches he sees in the strike zone are right on the corners a few times more than you would expect.

I mentioned above that the pitch is out of Dingler’s control. He’s at the mercy of where pitchers choose to throw him, of course, but that’s hardly the same as being no control. The most dangerous hitters in baseball all show this same pattern. Pitchers aren’t dummies – they’re much less hitters who do more damage on contact, resulting in more lines on the edges of the plate. Word is out about Dingler’s new power surge, in other words.

I don’t expect Dingler to continue to exude intense energy. Yes, he made some changes to make more connections. Yes, he is good at lifting and pulling the ball. No, his range of real talent isn’t the same as Kyle Schwarber’s career mark. Dingler has room to cool down a lot and is still very valuable offensively, though. Change his five homers to outs, and he’s still about 20% above average. This type of communication/energy integration has a very high floor.

Dingler’s newfound ability to leave the park has also changed his role with the Tigers. In the Positional Power Rankings this spring, we featured six different Tigers who will play time at DH, and Dingler was not one of them. But he was the best hitter on the team, period, so they made changes to include him in the lineup more often. He’s already hit 50 plate appearances as a DH, and I expect that to continue to climb, especially if the Tigers face lefties. They have a boatload of left-handed hitters they’d rather play, Jahmai Jones isn’t pressuring southpaws like he used to, and the team is desperate for offense as a whole. Plugging Dingler into DH allows him to play more often, and at this point, it’s not much of a sacrifice offensively to play backup catcher Jake Rogers instead of the other guys who will be on the roster if Dingler stays behind the plate.

That extended role may be part of why catchers never stay at the top for long, in fact. Holding is very hard on the body. These guys need regular rest days to meet the physical challenges of the job. But when a catcher hits like Dingler hit this year, the equation changes. DH days replace rest days. Realmuto was an elite steel man, but Rutschman, Contreras, and Raleigh all saw their hitting responsibilities increase significantly in their prime.

It’s hard to argue with the results. Contreras averaged 140 plate appearances per year at DH while hitting very well. Rutschman passed 200 plate games DH’ing in 2023. Raleigh played 38 games at DH last year en route to hitting 60 home runs. A bonus offense for a guy who would only play 500 or more plate appearances is too good to pass up.

For those other players, the other shoe finally dropped. They all saw that their guilt was going down. Throw in Sean Murphy and Will Smith if you will. A general rule of thumb is that carrying the full-time load of catching and DH’ing will eventually wear you down. But right now, Dingler is on a mission, and he’s the best thing the Tigers have going for them offensively. As long as they’re still in the hunt for the finals, though, I expect the same. The results are for tomorrow. Right now, the Tigers are playing the hot hand.