After a solid run of homegrown catchers from Alex Avila to James McCann, the Detroit Tigers have been waiting for their next backstop for over a decade now. In 2020, they drafted Ohio State catcher Dillon Dingler with the first pick in the second round of the MLB draft. After a strong start to his pro career, Dingler continued to impress with his ever improving defensive abilities and leadership, but his development as a hitter was pretty stagnant. In 2024 he’s finally broken out in a big way at the plate.
With the Tigers facing a trade deadline with one of their two quality catchers, Carson Kelly, bound for free agency and likely to be traded in the next week, everything is coming together for Dillon Dingler at just the right time.
On draft day, Dingler was really only a year into playing as a catcher full time, but the athleticism that made him a solid college center fielder translated to rapid development of his skills behind the plate. There was plenty of reason to expect he’d become a quality major league catcher, but the Tigers didn’t use the 38th overall pick on him just for his defense.
Dingler arrived in the farm system with average or better power potential, solid bat to ball skills, and a solid eye for the strike zone. He wasn’t projected to be the next J.T. Realmuto, but the possibility was there. More reasonably the Tigers hoped they’d get a good defensive catcher who hits 15-20 home runs with a solid on base percentage. Not great, but in an era of defensive specialization at the position, a better than average player overall.
Things started off well. Dingler was a bit raw as a catcher in his first pro season, but the tools to become a very good catcher were all present. And for the first few months of the 2021 season at the High-A level, Dingler was on fire. He launched eight home runs in 32 games at the High-A level before moving up to Double-A Erie. For a time, it was Riley Greene, Spencer Torkelson, and Dillon Dingler together and looking like an absolute future force for the franchise, but at the next level, Dingler crashed and burned at the plate. Still, for a first pro season, the fact that Dingler had dominated High-A was enough. Most expected he’d made the next step in 2022. And then it just didn’t happen.
Dingler’s 2022 season with the Erie SeaWolves wasn’t bad. He hit for power and was a solid middle of the order hitter. He drew his walks and showed a pretty good eye, but still had poor pitch recognition and mediocre batspeed that left him vulnerable to velocity and better breaking stuff. He struck out 31.9 percent of the time and it felt like a bit of a lost season after his early success at the High-A level.
In 2023, Dingler finally seem to master the Double-A level to a degree, hitting for more power and drawing of walks to counter his still very high strikeout rate. A run of 26 games late in the season at Triple-A Toledo confirmed that most of the old issues were still present. He struck out 31.2 percent of the time, his walks, his power numbers, and his batting average all collapsed.
Catchers often take a longer time to develop than other types of players. There’s way more to learn than playing any other position, and finding time to work on your own offensive game isn’t as simple as it is for the other hitters in a lineup. So there wasn’t much impatience with Dingler in the prospecting realm. We didn’t drop Dingler on our prospect lists much, and neither did the national sites like MLB Pipeline, FanGraphs, or Prospects Live. It was just that the upper ceiling of his potential seemed a lot less attainable than it did on draft day. A solid platoon catcher still seemed very attainable, because Dingler continued to sharpen his defensive abilities and was still getting to enough power to think he’d be able to contribute at the major league level as a low average hitter with some pop who was excellent behind the dish.
Current Tigers’ catching coach Ryan Sienko was the minor league catching coordinator in 2022-2023. Under he and the Erie SeaWolves coaching staff, Dingler was showing excellent pop times, a strong accurate arm, and rapidly improving framing and blocking. Those two are bound for a reunion pretty soon assuming Kelly is dealt.
However, after three years struggling to get through the Double-A level and then hitting the wall again immediately upon his promotion to Toledo, hopes for a real offensive breakout were waning this spring. And then, it finally all came together.
This season, Dingler has cut his strikeout rate way down to 20.6 percent, and boosted his walk rate back up to a very respectable 9.5 percent. He now has 17 home runs in 70 games and is currently on a massive heater that saw him hit five home runs in four games in the past week. They haven’t been cheap ones either, as Dingler has crushed multiple shots 420 feet or further. He can also go the opposite way with authority.
Dillon Dingler does it again. He hits a 2-run bomb 429 feet to dead center to put Toledo up 9-5. It’s his 16th home run of the year, and his 3rd in the last two games. pic.twitter.com/jXkorWziHY
— Tigers ML Report (@tigersMLreport) July 25, 2024
Even better, he’s specifically handling the stuff he’ll need to handle at the major league level.
Against fastballs this season, Dingler has a monstrous .438 wOBA. Against fastballs 95 mph or better? Still doing well, with a strong .357 wOBA. Breaking balls? A .366 mark. The only weakness is against offspeed pitches, where Dingler is still really struggling with a .237 mark. Triple-A league average is .334 overall against all pitch types.
So lefties with good offspeed stuff, or right-handers who aren’t afraid to throw right-on-right changeups and splits are going to be tough on him, but there aren’t so many of those compared with guys who throw hard and have good breaking stuff. If you’re going to have a weakness, being a right-handed hitter who struggles with offspeed stuff is probably the best one to have.
Dingler hits a lot of balls in the air, and will occasionally go into pop-up machine mode, but it’s always short lived. He pulls balls more than he goes to center or right field, but he’s adept and going to all fields with power and can take pitches away to right field and still be ready to turn on a hanging breaking ball. Unless you do a good job disguising your changeup like your fastball and can command it well, Dillon Dingler is a really tough out right now for Triple-A pitching.
So, Dillon Dingler looks pretty ready for his first shot at the major leagues. He’s already on the 40 man roster after getting protected from the Rule 5 draft last fall. He’s been red hot recently at the plate while having a fine season overall. The timing is all lining up well should the Tigers decide to trade Carson Kelly. If that happens, Dingler is going to partner with Jake Rogers and play a lot in the second half.
If they don’t trade Kelly? That’s harder to determine. Dingler will be 26 years old in September. If he’s not getting the call-up, it’s hard to know when he would. The Tigers seem quite happy with Jake Rogers even in a down year offensively, and they aren’t going to option Rogers down or cut him loose over a sluggish year at the plate so far.
Even with this breakout, it’s still likely Dingler will start out as a below average hitter at the major league level. There’s going to be even more to learn about strategy and game-calling, and A.J. Hinch, as he’s said himself, is really tough and demanding of his catchers. But Dingler’s is ready for the challenge. It may take time before we really know how well he’s going to hit at the game’s highest level, but he’s absolutely ready to catch for the Detroit Tigers. I expect we’ll see him very soon.