J.T. Realmuto is Hurt? But J.T. Realmuto Never Gets Hurt!

J.T. Realmuto can no longer outrun the brutality of his chosen profession. The Phillies catcher, having battled knee discomfort all spring, is having right knee surgery. While Realmuto has dealt with knee pain for weeks, this is nevertheless startling news. Realmuto’s durability is the thing that makes him special; in 11 major league seasons, this is only his fourth stint on the IL (including a COVID quarantine period in 2021), and none of his previous trips have lasted longer than 22 days.

Moreover, Phillies Doomerism, as a mental health condition, is frequently comorbid with Sixers Doomerism. People who suffer from the latter probably heard the word “meniscus” flashed back to Joel Embiid collapsing in a heap and taking the Sixers’ season with him.

It’s not quite that bad. Realmuto is headed for the longest injury absence of his career, but absent some bizarre complication, he’ll be back well before the end of the regular season. Even if that weren’t the case, no baseball player is as important to his team as Embiid is to his. Nevertheless, the Phillies were built under the assumption that Realmuto would always be available. So even a brief absence is going to be problematic.

Since his initial callup in 2014, Realmuto has caught 9,377 innings, over 1,000 more than anyone else in baseball in that time; 5,130 2/3 of those innings have come since he was traded to the Phillies after the 2018 season, 14% more than anyone else. Realmuto’s 588 starts at catcher since 2019 are also the most in baseball during that time, and only Martín Maldonado is within 100 games of catching (ha ha ha) him. This is on top of occasional appearances at first base and DH, though those opportunities have largely dried up since Nick Castellanos and Kyle Schwarber joined the team in 2022.

Good two-way catchers are so rare that it’s basically unheard of for a team to carry a quality backup on anything more than a temporary basis. You’ll see platoons, or a pairing that trades off offense and defense, or a team that brings through a prospect for a temporary time share with an incumbent. But no team in baseball can lose a starting catcher like Realmuto and plug in a like-for-like replacement. Not since, like, the 1950s Yankees teams that had Yogi Berra and Elston Howard.

Even so, the Phillies, who have started Realmuto behind the plate in 76.1% of their games in the past six seasons, are not well suited to adjust to having the remaining 23.9% balloon to 100%.

The Phillies have basically punted the backup catcher position since Realmuto came north. For two years, they had Andrew Knapp, a career .209/.310/.313 hitter, before replacing him with Garrett Stubbs in 2022. Stubbs is most famous for being one of the best hangs in the National League. He curates the famous postgame celebration playlist, and attends such celebrations wearing overalls and an empty case of Bud Heavy. And he’s as comfortable in a reserve role as anyone can be. During the 2022 playoffs he told Emma Baccellieri of Sports Illustrated that backing up Realmuto is “the best job in the entire world.”

But as valuable as Stubbs is in the clubhouse, he is, unfortunately, hideously overexposed as a starter. In the past two seasons he’s hitting .194/.273/.255, and he has just one extra-base hit, a double, in 59 plate appearances this year. Stubbs can take a walk, and he’s one of the best in baseball at bunting for a hit, but the idiom “damning with faint praise” was invented for situations like this. In an ideal world, you don’t want your J.T. Realmuto replacement to have “great bunter” this close to the top of his CV.

So the Phillies are bringing in a reinforcement in the shape of Rafael Marchán, a 25-year-old from Venezuela who was one of the organization’s top prospects a few years ago thanks to a plus hit tool. Since then, he was supplanted by Logan O’Hoppe — though Realmuto quickly turned both into trade fodder — and suffered a series of injuries that severely limited his playing time. In contrast to Realmuto, Marchán has had IL stints of 60 days or longer in each of the past three seasons, due to injuries to three different parts of his body. That includes a back problem that limited him to just 13 minor league games this season.

The other issue with Marchán is that even when his hit tool was meriting a 60 from scouts, his power was getting 20s and 30s. Marchán’s first major league home run, which he hit in 2020, was also his first professional home run at any level; it wasn’t until 2022, his seventh professional season, that he put a ball over the fence in the minors.

So in contrast to the beefy Realmuto, the Phillies now have the smallest catching tandem in the game. Marchán is listed at 5-foot-9 and 170 pounds, Stubbs at 5-foot-10, 170. And having seen Stubbs up close, he must’ve been wearing ice skates and toting around about $100 in nickels when he got measured.

If the Phillies were in a close pennant race, or if Realmuto’s availability for the postseason were at all in doubt, I’d strongly recommend that they make a trade, rather than rely on these internal options.

Now for the good news.

Phillies baseball ops czar Dave Dombrowski told reporters on Tuesday that he expects Realmuto to miss only a month or so. Meniscuses are weird, so every case is idiosyncratic. To say nothing of the fact that based on his previous track record, I’d be inclined to believe that Realmuto’s bones are actually made of adamantium. So maybe that’s a realistic timeline.

But let’s be a little more pessimistic and say Realmuto is actually going to miss six weeks, or even two months. How much are the Phillies actually going to miss their franchise catcher?

Well, Stubbs might be nearly an automatic out at the plate, but he’s actually as close as you can get to Realmuto in terms of baserunning and pop time. His blocking and framing numbers haven’t been spectacular, but he’s a competent defender overall.

Realmuto’s defensive reputation is stellar, but his numbers have actually started to slip in recent years. He’s only been an average framer for about three years now, and in 2024 he’s actually been one of the worst blockers in baseball. Which I think is understandable. This is a physically demanding job at the best of times, but dropping to your knees to block a 58-foot curveball with a busted meniscus is probably about as comfortable as being stabbed with a leather punch.

So while the Phillies are going to have a huge hole in their lineup, the defensive dropoff from an injured Realmuto to Stubbs and Marchán is probably going to be close to nil. Removing a key right-handed bat from this heavily left-handed lineup (Schwarber, Bryce Harper, Bryson Stott, Brandon Marsh when he gets back from the IL himself) is also a little scary, but it’ll become less so once Trea Turner returns from his hamstring injury, which could be as soon as this week.

And Turner’s return brings up an important point. Realmuto could have played through this, but because the Phillies are 10 games up on the Braves and an additional three and a half games ahead of the cutoff line in the wild card race, he has the luxury of getting this condition fixed without imperiling his team’s first-place position. With Turner coming back, and the All-Star break coming up, this is the perfect opportunity to go under the arthroscope. The Phillies could put the Phanatic back behind home plate and they’d still be in first place at the break.

That’s the kind of luxury a hot start affords a team. You can’t win the division in April, but you can build a buffer that allows your 33-year-old catcher to get off his feet for a while and come back for the stretch run fully healthy and rested. Living through a month or two of Stubbs and Marchán is going to be tough, but it’s a small price to pay for getting the best out of such an important player in October.