The Rangers have a real problem behind the plate, but the biggest name being floated as a fix might be the wrong swing.
With the trade deadline getting closer, catcher has become one of the clearest spots Texas needs to address if it wants to stay in the postseason mix. The production has been rough on both sides of the ball.
Danny Jansen, the club’s big offseason addition, has been sidelined for the last two months with a right forearm strain and hasn’t been much help when he’s been available. Kyle Higashioka is hitting .220/.299/.371 and ranks 69th out of 74 catchers with a -3 caught stealing above-average mark.
Elias Diaz hasn’t played enough to qualify.
That has naturally pushed Texas toward the market, where a few names have started to surface. The Dodgers’ backup, Dalton Rushing, is viewed as a long shot.
The one that keeps coming up most often is Orioles catcher Adley Rutschman. On paper, he looks like the kind of splashy pickup that can change a lineup.
But the recent numbers tell a different story.
Rutschman came out of the gate like a star. As a rookie in 2022, he hit 13 homers, drove in 42 runs in 398 at-bats, and posted a 5.4 single-season bWAR while finishing second in Rookie of the Year voting.
He followed that with an even bigger 2023, launching 20 home runs, knocking in 80 runs, and earning the first of three All-Star selections. From 2022 through 2024, he appeared in 309 games and logged 1,557 at-bats, an enormous workload for a catcher.
But the last year and a half has looked much different. Injuries have started to chip away at his availability, and he’s been limited to 563 at-bats over that stretch.
In 2025, he hit .220 and drove in only 29 runs. This season, he’s at .253/.327/.436, and since May 1 he’s been a .220/.303/.363 hitter.
At 28, Rutschman is still young enough to matter, but catchers take a beating. The position wears on players fast, and the decline can show up before anyone expects it.
His defensive value remains strong - he ranks second in caught stealing above average with a 41% success rate - but that alone wouldn’t make him worth the kind of package Baltimore would demand. Sebastian Walcott or Caden Scarborough would likely be the first names the Orioles ask about, and that’s a steep price for a player whose production now looks more like a 2.5 to 3.0 bWAR catcher than a franchise-changing one.
Rutschman was once being talked about like the next Ivan Rodriguez, but those comparisons have faded as he’s settled into more of a platoon-type profile. That kind of profile doesn’t carry the same trade value, even if the name still does. And there’s another reason this may never get serious: Baltimore is only 2.0 games back of the final AL wild card spot, so the Orioles would probably need to be overwhelmed to move him at all.
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