J.T. Realmuto ‘never felt like a Plan B’ for Phillies while continuing fight to boost pay scale for catchers

CLEARWATER, Fla. — One of the best catchers in baseball history intercepted Dave Dombrowski during a break in the general managers’ meetings in November.

Buster Posey had an itch to scratch.

Posey made roughly $170 million over a 12-year playing career in which he was a seven-time All-Star and three-time World Series champion. But he also observed that catchers, on the whole, weren’t as well-compensated as similar players at other positions, even though they were tasked with calling a game and handling a pitching staff.

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So, Posey, now the San Francisco Giants’ president of baseball operations, approached his Phillies counterpart, who has led the front offices of five organizations over nearly four decades.

“He said, ‘Yeah, let me ask you a question: Why does the industry not put more dollar value on some of those things?’” Dombrowski recalled. “It’s hard, I think, the way it is. And we had a long conversation about it.”

Timely, too, as it turned out. Because the Phillies were entering a contract negotiation with free agent J.T. Realmuto, their catcher since 2019 and a foundational player in one of the winningest runs in the franchise’s 143-year history.

And it would soon be clear that there was a gulf between what the team and the veteran catcher’s camp believed he was worth.

It wasn’t the first time. In 2020, Realmuto went to an arbitration hearing against the Phillies over a $2.4 million difference in salary proposals because he was trying to move the goalposts for catchers. In 2021, his free agency dragged into January, when the Phillies finally bumped the annual value of a five-year contract to $23.1 million, a record for catchers but by only $100,000.

The Phillies prioritized re-signing Realmuto again this winter. They made an offer in December — but at a reduced salary after three consecutive seasons of declining production at the plate. Behind the plate, Realmuto, who turns 35 in March, is unassailable as a game-caller and leader. He felt those skills were worth a certain salary. The Phillies valued them differently.

“We had a number in our mind, and we knew what we were worth,” Realmuto said this week on Phillies Extra, The Inquirer’s baseball podcast. “And I wasn’t going to take anything less than that.”

It almost ended with the Phillies going in another direction.

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Most people have heard the story by now. As talks with Realmuto reached an impasse, the Phillies pivoted to free-agent infielder Bo Bichette, even agreeing to make his desired seven-year, $200 million offer, major league sources said. If the Mets hadn’t swooped in with a higher-salary ($42 million per year) three-year deal, Bichette would be a Phillie and Realmuto a … well, where exactly would he be?

“It got a little stressful there for a couple of days,” he said. “We started kind of thinking about our other options and putting the logistics together of what it might be like to go somewhere else.

“And thankfully it didn’t come to that because, as we’ve stated all along, this is where we wanted to be. We’re happy we didn’t have to up and move and go somewhere else.”

Indeed, Realmuto lives on Clearwater Beach. His wife and four children are with him throughout spring training. They’re comfortable in Philadelphia. Nobody wanted to leave.

But boosting the pay scale for catchers has long been Realmuto’s crusade. Five years after topping all catchers in annual salary, his record still stands — and is less than the mark for any position other than relief pitcher (Edwin Díaz: $23 million). It’s also less than the seven highest salaries for third basemen and nine outfielders, according to Spotrac.

It was important, then, to Realmuto to hold out. And after the foiled pursuit of Bichette, the Phillies raised their offer to Realmuto to three years, $45 million, with as much as $7 million per year in bonuses based on merit (top-10 MVP votes, All-Star elections/selections, Gold Glove, Silver Slugger).

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“If you ask any pitcher, any pitching coach, any manager, the most important thing a catcher can do is call a game and know his pitching staff and give them confidence when they’re on the mound,” Realmuto said. “If you can make your pitchers 5% better, 10% better, over the course of a year, that’s extremely, extremely valuable.”

Sure. But game-calling and handling a pitching staff are among the last largely unquantifiable skills in baseball’s analytics age.

“And because it’s not really quantifiable, then you don’t really get rewarded for it,” Realmuto said. “That’s the aspect that I just don’t agree with. It doesn’t sit well with me, so that’s kind of just why I enjoy fighting for it.”

In modern baseball, there’s a metric for everything.

Almost everything.

Who’s the fastest runner? Statcast tracks feet-per-second sprint speeds. The best outfield jump? There’s data for that, too. A hitter’s average exit velocity, launch angle, and bat speed. A pitcher’s spin rate and vertical/horizontal movement.

The metrics for catchers include blocking, throwing, and framing. There’s also pop time, which measures how fast a catcher releases the ball on steal attempts.

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But there isn’t a reliable gauge for calling a game. Phillies manager Rob Thomson, a former minor-league catcher, suggested catcher’s ERA and OPS as decent barometers.

In that case, opponents have a .682 OPS and Phillies pitchers have a 3.75 ERA with Realmuto behind the plate since 2023. The major-league averages during that time: .722 and 4.18.

A catcher’s ability to handle a pitching staff is almost entirely anecdotal.

Zack Wheeler swears by Realmuto. In rising to one of the best pitchers in the sport over the last half-dozen seasons, he has thrown almost exclusively to Realmuto and rarely shakes him off.

Cristopher Sánchez, who emerged as the Cy Young runner-up in the National League last year, cited Realmuto’s diligence in putting together a game plan, a process that begins even before the starter arrives at the ballpark. And Jesús Luzardo describes Realmuto as “a no-B.S. guy” behind the plate.

“You show up to the field, he’s already there, doing homework, going over scouting reports, watching video,” Luzardo said. “So, when he goes up back there [behind the plate] and he tells us, ‘This is the plan that we’re going to do throughout the game,’ you have confidence that he knows what he’s talking about and that it’s not [him] just winging it.”

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Surely, that’s worth something. But how much?

It’s a question that gets to the heart of Dombrowski’s GM meetings chat with Posey, who, incidentally, was represented as a player by CAA Sports, the agency enlisted by Realmuto.

“J.T. is outstanding, right?” Dombrowski said. “He handles the staff well. He does all those other things. But let’s say you had a catcher that, let’s say they hit .150. And they did all that [other stuff]. What would you pay that person?

“I don’t have that exact answer. But it’s one of those where it’s a combination of the value, the defensive performance, and all that — and the hitting aspect of our game.

“The game has rewarded offense [more than anything] throughout the years.”

Realmuto is coming off his worst offensive season since his rookie year in Miami. But he wasn’t a .150 hitter, either. He batted .257 with 12 homers and a .700 OPS. Based on OPS-plus, he was 9% less productive than league average.

But even at Realmuto’s offensive peak, his agents believed he was paid less simply because he’s a catcher.

After the 2019 season, Realmuto filed for $12.4 million in arbitration because his numbers were comparable at the same point in his career to then-Nationals third baseman Anthony Rendon, who made $12.3 million in 2018. But a three-person panel ruled in favor of the Phillies’ $10 million offer, still an arbitration record for catchers.

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And although the judges didn’t provide an explanation, Jeff Berry, Realmuto’s agent at the time, believed it was because they compared Realmuto only to fellow catchers, notably Baltimore’s Matt Wieters, who made $8.3 million in his third year of arbitration in 2015.

“I don’t think anybody on the Phillies’ side would argue anything other than, ‘Well, that’s how arbitration does it,’ which is a really poor excuse,” Berry told The Inquirer at the time. “They will say that he was paid like [the best catcher in baseball] because he set a record. But that’s not the point. The point is, you shouldn’t get paid less to squat for a living.”

Which doesn’t mean Realmuto gets paid squat. He has made approximately $135 million since 2016. When his new contract expires, he will have made at least $180 million.

It’s little wonder, then, that Realmuto said he doesn’t have any hard feelings toward the Phillies after they nearly broke up with him last month. He insisted he doesn’t feel like a consolation prize for not landing Bichette.

“To be honest, I never felt like Plan B because I could have signed with the Phillies a month and a half earlier,” he said. “They just valued me differently than I valued myself.”

So, Realmuto stood on principle, just like he always has.