Realmuto's OPS went .820, .762, .751, .699, .614, and it's the lowest among catchers with 400 or more plate appearances. The club wants him catching fewer games. Does that fix a bat?
Methods note: every season line and monthly split is MLB StatsAPI, cross-checked against Baseball-Reference for OPS and OPS+ and caught stealing (including the league rate), and FanGraphs for wRC+ and WAR. The catcher and league OPS comparisons are our arithmetic from StatsAPI, using every hitter listed at catcher, so they are labeled "our math." The rank is limited to catchers with 400 or more plate appearances, and the sources count that group differently (FanGraphs 16, StatMuse and MLB 14). The verdict in the "My opinion" paragraph is our analysis. Monthly splits are small samples and are flagged where used.
Fan question: Are the Phillies counting on rest to fix a bat that has dropped four years in a row, with $30 million still owed to the catcher with the lowest OPS among those with 400 or more plate appearances?
Evidence: Realmuto hit .205/.283/.331 (.614 OPS) in 467 plate appearances in 2026, after .699 in 2025, .751 in 2024, .762 in 2023 and .820 in 2022 (MLB StatsAPI, Baseball-Reference). Among catchers with 400 or more plate appearances, his OPS is the lowest on every list we checked: FanGraphs' 2026 leaderboard counts 16 (including Salvador Perez, who played 44 games at catcher), StatMuse and MLB's position tags count 14. His 68 wRC+ is also the lowest on FanGraphs and StatMuse. FanGraphs lists him at $15 million in 2027 and in 2028 and says he may block all trades. His backup, Rafael Marchán, hit .099 with a .302 OPS in 95 plate appearances (MLB StatsAPI).
J.T. Realmuto's OPS has dropped four years in a row. It was .820 in 2022. Then .762, then .751, then .699. This year it was .614, on a .205/.283/.331 line with 11 homers and 100 strikeouts in 467 plate appearances (MLB StatsAPI).
The easy excuse is that catchers all got worse. They didn't. Catchers as a group hit .663 in 2022 and .688 this year (our math). In 2022 Realmuto was .157 above that. This year he's .074 below it. He was above the catcher average every year through 2025, and then he wasn't. Catcher offense didn't move. He did.
So is it the bat, or is it the workload? The Phillies are talking workload. NBC Sports Philadelphia's Cole Weintraub reported Oct. 15 that the club wants to cut the number of games Realmuto catches. In the same report, Realmuto acknowledged his offense has to improve, said he felt good physically, and said he's willing to play first base. Rest is reasonable. The record doesn't show it paying off.
He caught 133 games in 2022, 133 in 2023, 99 in 2024, 132 in 2025 and 123 this year (MLB StatsAPI). The workload goes up and down. The OPS only goes down. In 2024, the year he caught the fewest, his OPS still slid from .762 to .751.
And if he sits more, somebody has to catch. Rafael Marchán, the backup, hit .099/.137/.165 in 95 plate appearances this year, a .302 OPS (MLB StatsAPI). NBC reported the club liked Marchán's defense but didn't get enough offense when Realmuto sat. Dave Dombrowski, per the same report, left the door open to adding a catcher. So the club may be fixing two bats, not one.
Now the rank, and it needs fences. Among catchers with 400 or more plate appearances, Realmuto's .614 OPS is the lowest, but the sources don't agree on who is in that group. FanGraphs' 2026 leaderboard counts 16, including Salvador Perez, who played 44 games at catcher. StatMuse and MLB's position tags count 14. Realmuto is last either way. On FanGraphs the next lowest are Perez at .657, then Cal Raleigh at .664. On the MLB and StatMuse list it's Raleigh at .664, then Francisco Alvarez at .710. The best is Gabriel Moreno at .874. His 68 wRC+ is the lowest on FanGraphs, with Perez next at 77, and the lowest on StatMuse too. The sources use different catcher sets, so they are not one feed read twice, and they don't line up exactly. Baseball-Reference confirms his own .614 line, but it doesn't rank catchers. One note on fairness: Perez is lower than Realmuto on WAR (negative 1.1 to Realmuto's 0.7 on FanGraphs), so I'm not saying Realmuto is the worst catcher in baseball. He's the lowest on OPS and wRC+.
Before I leaned on his age, I checked for injuries. Realmuto went on the 10-day injured list once this year, April 22, with back spasms, and was activated May 2 (MLB transactions). There was no injured list stint in September. He did not appear in the Sept. 6, 10 or 17 games, and there's no injured list move for any of them. The records don't say why.
He was 34 when the Phillies agreed to the three-year, $45 million deal on Jan. 16, according to FanGraphs, and he turned 35 in March. His slide began in 2023, his age-32 season. Age is part of the picture. How much of it, the numbers don't say.
For the money: FanGraphs lists the deal at three years and $45 million, 2026 through 2028, which is $15 million in each of 2027 and 2028, and says he may block all trades (10-and-5 rights). Incentives aren't counted in the $30 million. For where that $30 million sits next to everything else the club owes, see our core-owed analysis. That math lives there.
Start with the glove, because that's where Realmuto's defenders will go. He still throws. Runners stole 65 of 86 against him, so 24.4 percent were caught, against 23.3 percent for the league (Baseball-Reference). He started 122 games and caught 1,058.2 innings. But "the catching held up" leaves out a drop: he threw out 29.7 percent in 2025, when the league was at 23.2 (Baseball-Reference). The wider defensive numbers split, too. FanGraphs has his defense at plus 8.3 runs, fourth of those 16 catchers. Baseball-Reference has him at minus 2 fielding runs and minus 5 Defensive Runs Saved. Baseball-Reference has his 2026 WAR at 0.0, FanGraphs at 0.7. Two sources, two answers, so I'm leaving the verdict at the throwing numbers.
Then there's July, when he hit .848 over 73 plate appearances. That's a real month for a hitter and a small sample for everything else, and so is every other month: March .350 in 15 PA, April .799 in 46, May .519 in 81, June .636 in 85, August .635 in 88, September .386 in 79 (.113/.203/.183). One hot month doesn't rescue a season that ends at .614, and one cold one doesn't bury it.
Catchers don't hit, and that's the usual out. As a group they hit .688 this year against .719 for all of MLB, which helps explain why a .699 hitter looked fine at the position last year. It doesn't get a .614 over the bar.
The club has a plan: fewer games behind the plate, Realmuto willing to play first base, and Dombrowski leaving the door open on adding a catcher, per NBC. A lighter load could help a catcher who is 35, and it's the cheapest thing to try.
Pick your stat and the story shifts a little. The OPS drop is four straight years, but his OPS+ at Baseball-Reference, which adjusts for league and park, went 130, 105, 107, 91 and 65. It ticked up in 2024 while league-wide OPS fell from .734 to .711 (our math). Against the league he held steady that year, then lost ground in 2025 and 2026.
My opinion, and it's opinion: the trend points to the bat, not the workload. The cleanest evidence is the year he caught the fewest games and still dropped. Rest is a cheap fix and it may help, but a 35-year-old catcher with a .614 OPS and a backup at .302 is a roster problem, not a verdict on one guy. The plan needs a bat in it.
If Realmuto catches around 100 games in 2027, cuts down on the load and gets back to the .700 OPS he had in 2025, the workload story wins and this piece reads as a year too early. If they add a real starting-caliber catcher and his number stays under .650 in a lighter role, the club solved a different problem than the one he has. If the OPS keeps sliding with fewer games, the bat story is the right one. Those are our thresholds, not the club's, and nothing here predicts 2027.
Tommy Vale writes about Philadelphia sports for Negadelphia.
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