As the offseason gets underway, there’s rightly a lot of talk about building up the pitching staff, as well as the crucial mission of finding some right-handed thump for the lineup. The catcher situation isn’t foremost in anyone’s mind, but the Detroit Tigers options at that key position are probably getting plenty of thought from Scott Harris and his front office group.
Jake Rogers is pretty well established as the starting catcher. While we may not love his offensive output, few things are perfect in this game. AJ Hinch and Chris Fetter are very particular about who catches for their pitching staff, and Rogers has rightly earned their trust. His blocking, framing, and throwing are all near the best in the league, and he’s learned Fetter’s approach to breaking down opposing hitters and helping his pitchers exploit their weaknesses over the last few years. All those elements of his game have improved as he’s moved into the established veteran phase of his career, and there’s nothing to suggest that the Tigers will go another direction in 2025.
The question at catcher is about their depth.
Right now, they have an unproven backup catcher in Dillon Dingler slated to be Rogers’ understudy in 2025. Beyond him at the Triple-A level they don’t really have another strong defensive option. Minor league veteran Stephen Scott is decent and could handle a short call-up, but he may not be back. Catching prospect Liam Hicks, acquired in the Carson Kelly deal with the Texas Rangers, will presumably start the 2025 season at Triple-A Toledo, but he needs work to be major league ready behind the plate.
So as things stand, the options are to roll with Rogers and Dingler, likely augmenting them by signing a minor league catcher with better defensive chops and some major league experience, or signing a veteran major league catcher on a short free agent deal and having them compete with Dingler in spring camp. That would come with the possibility that Dingler spends at least part of the year as the depth catcher at the Triple-A level, using his first option.
The pitching staff and the infield will get most of the attention in the weeks ahead, but the decision they make about the catcher position should not be one of the smaller concerns.
The case for Dillon Dingler
We’ve remained pretty positive in our prospect coverage of Dillon Dingler, but we’ve also been consistent in pegging him as more of a defensive minded backup at the major league level. With those expectations, he’s always been a good prospect, just not a top 100, future everyday starting catcher, type prospect. A few modest years of progress with his hitting after he was drafted in 2020 dimmed the top level projections for him. It’s hard to say things have changed after a short look down the stretch with only 87 plate appearances. Notably, Dingler did not appear in the postseason.
However, after a rough intro to the Triple-A level in 2023, Dingler did have something of a breakout season with the Mud Hens in 2024. He improved his approach quite a bit, showing a better understanding of how to manage his weaknesses and find pitches to drive. After punching out about 30 percent of the time at Double-A and in his first look at Triple-A, Dingler cut his strikeout rate down to 20 percent with the Mud Hens, and walked 10 percent of the time. He also launched 17 homers in just 71 games.
Dingler is a good defensive catching prospect and gets great grades for his work ethic and leadership ability. Like Rogers, his skills still need a little sharpening at the major league level, but with Dingler’s athleticism and studious nature it’s easy to project him to develop into a top defensive catcher in the years ahead. Hinch and his coaches were no doubt already pretty comfortable with Dingler’s ability to handle the pitching staff. He should fulfill their requirements behind the plate with a little more time. The question is whether he’s going to get much better as a hitter at age 26.
We’re not going to hold his rough major league start against him too much. There was a lot to adapt to at the major league level. A 34.5 percent strikeout rate isn’t easy to ignore, even in a small sample of 27 games, but like Jake Rogers and so many other non-elite catchers, it’s pretty likely that Dingler will find his way to decent production with more reps. He has power and in time he’ll start to figure out the pitching and get to more power production than we saw in August and September. It’s just that, like Rogers, Dingler is probably going to produce most of his value behind the plate.
On this line of thought, Dingler is the successor to Rogers as a potential everyday catcher for the Tigers, but another who just isn’t a significant contributor in the lineup. Under the nose of Hinch and catching coach Ryan Sienko, it’s a fair bet that Dingler develops into one of the better defensive catchers in the league and hits enough to start 100-120 games. We just don’t know whether the Tigers have enough conviction in his overall game continuing to develop to put his name down in ink already on the 2025 active roster, or if they’d like to keep their options open, at least for one more year.
The case for signing, idk Carson Kelly or something
In no way are we complaining about the Tigers trading Carson Kelly away at the trade deadline. There was no hint that the Tigers were going to go on one of the greatest 40 game runs in franchise history. They needed to see Dingler and how he’d react and make adjustments working with pitchers and the coaching staff at the major league level. Four full years after he was drafted as a potential catcher of the future out of Ohio State, it was time to see what he had to offer.
And while the return for Kelly from the Texas Rangers wasn’t terribly exciting, they did land a solid relief prospect in Tyler Owens, and a depth catcher who could potentially make it to the majors as a backup in Hicks. More importantly, they got themselves time to evaluate the organization’s top catching prospect over the last few years. As it turned out, their success in August and September meant that Dingler’s development ended up on the back burner to a degree, and he only got 87 plate appearances along the way.
So while it’s water under the bridge, one does have to consider that the Tigers would have been a bit better served by Kelly in the postseason. And perhaps they would be better with Kelly or another veteran catcher with a more proven bat backing up Rogers in 2025 as well.
Despite their obvious needs, finding great fits for the Tigers in free agency still isn’t that simple. The options are third base are pretty thin, though there are a better crop of slugging first baseman and some slightly awkward fits in terms of slugging outfielders available on the market. Certainly there are opportunities to add offense, and perhaps more possibilities on the trade market than is obvious right now, but this is still the Tigers in the post-Mike Ilitch era. Signing Pete Alonso and Alex Bregman would be pretty shocking. They’re unlikely to make multiple big moves. We’ll probably get one if we’re lucky, in terms of bats. So they’re still going to have a real need for strength on the depth chart at all positions.
One of the simplest ways to boost the roster would be to make sure that Rogers has a more contact oriented backup who can hit and play plus defense. Sign Carson Kelly, and you know with much greater certainty that you have a solid second catcher who can fully split the duties with Rogers, allowing them to be available to pinch-hit against left-handed pitching late in games. Then you also have a good catching prospect whose bat is still the question mark at the Triple-A level in Dillon Dingler. That’s an overall stronger position group at catcher, and likely for minimal expense. Even after a good year, Kelly isn’t likely to command more than $5-6M, perhaps with an option for 2026 included.
It’s true that Kelly’s production faded some with the Rangers, but he still posted a 99 wRC+ on the year. He cut his strikeouts by about eight percent with the Tigers, and largely carried that through with the Rangers in August and September, while walking at roughly a league average clip. He’s 30 years old, and maybe he hasn’t fully recaptured the offensive game he had in his mid-20’s with the Diamondbacks, but there were tangible improvements this season, and he also graded out much better defensively under Tigers coaching. The switch to knee down coincided with improved framing grades, and his blocking and throwing remained solid. The duo of Rogers and Kelly was pretty good for the first four months of the season.
There are certainly some other interesting free agent catchers out there besides Kelly. Kyle Higashioka and Travis D’Arnaud will probably be on very short deals, but they should do well in terms of AAV. Danny Jansen could start for a lot of teams and he’ll be available at the head of a group that includes Kelly, Gary Sanchez, Yasmani Grandal, and Austin Hedges, who put up league average value most seasons.
My point ultimately is that the Tigers need to leave no stone unturned to improve their lineup. It’s difficult to believe Scott Harris and Jeff Greenberg are up for multiple major signings and/or trades, which I’ll roughly define as a nine figure free agent contract or trading one of their top five prospects for an established good hitter at a position of relative need, until we see it. Yes they need to be aggressive somewhere, but they’re not going to overwhelm opponents with free agent dollars and shocking trades. They’re still going to need to win around the margins as well as add serious and obvious talent to the lineup and pitching staff.
However they manage it, they need one good right-handed bat somewhere with particular strength against left-handed pitching. Taking advantage of a fairly deep group of free agent catchers that doesn’t really have a standout talent to sign Kelly or one of the others to a one-year deal, might be a smart way to improve the roster around the margins and additionally address the strong left-handed bias of the “everyday” lineup.
At very least it has to be seriously considered.
If the Tigers go into next season with Rogers and Kelly, or Rogers and Danny Jansen for that matter, you’re going to feel pretty good about it. Maybe the Atlanta Braves are aggressive about trading Sean Murphy for just part of his remaining four year deal and the Tigers believe 2024 was a fluke. That could even be an opportunity to shore up the position for several years to come with performance beyond what Dingler might produce. Long enough for someone like top catching prospect Thayron Liranzo to arrive, perhaps. Long enough to potentially move on from Rogers, who turns 30 in April and has been in decline with the bat over the past two seasons since returning from his 2022 Tommy John surgery.
If they decide to stick with Dingler, it’s because they believe he’s the next everyday catcher for a coaching staff that heavily emphasizes handling of the pitching staff. I think there’s a pretty good chance they’d be proven correct in time, but they have to ask themselves how confident in Dingler they are right now, with 2025 looming and a real need to boost the offense across the board.
Finding someone to pair with Rogers who is more certain to contribute on both sides of the ball right from the jump next spring could be worth an extra win, and that might make all the difference in what should be a tightly contested division at the top.
The catcher position isn’t on the top of people’s minds as we all scheme for bats and pitching help. But even if the Tigers chose not to make a change, they still have made a choice at a position where there are opportunities in the market, and uncertainties on the roster.