Catcher Jonah Heim is entering his third season with the Texas Rangers and has shown steady improvement at the plate in the past two seasons. Finishing his 2022 season with a .697 OPS, this showed major progress from his .597 OPS in 2021. In this article, we’ll explore what improvements were made and what we can expect from Heim this season.
If you prefer video walkthroughs, check out this video:
Power Improvement:
The first thing that jumped off the page when I was looking at Heim was his raw power. His max exit velocity was 112-mph in 2022, which is improved from 109-mph in 2021.
Digging deeper, he also made strides in terms of his batted ball profile:
Heim improved his fly ball rate by 7% in 2022, and reduced his pop up rate by 4%.
With very little changes to his hard-hit rate and barrel rate, this extra exit velocity and higher fly ball rate contributed to Heim’s 16 home run season last year.
How did Heim improve his batted ball profile? He made some adjustments to his swing. This quote from an article in The Athletic details the adjustments Heim made:
“He generally just simplified how he sets up; the line he moves on; Which is just trying to move through a line that’s to the pull-side gap. So when he’s hitting left-handed, he’s trying to move through right-center field. When he’s hitting right-handed, just trying to move through left-center field and then let his barrel follow that, (then) just increasing his vertical bat angle, giving him a higher hit probability, making him a more complete hitter. … It keeps his stride as neutral as possible, rather than maybe closing himself off.”
Rangers’ Offensive Coordinator Donnie Ecker to The Athletic
But one area of improvement remains: hitting fastballs. In the past two seasons, Heim has poor results against fastballs.
Average run value is 0. Ideally, you’d want to see a player with a positive run value against as many pitches as possible, but especially fastballs since that is the pitch they will likely see most often.
Bat to Ball Skills
Based on his zone contact rate and his strikeout rate, Heim has slightly better bat to ball skills than average. His zone contact rate is 2% better than average and his strikeout rate is 3% better than average.
Plate Discipline
Heim showed a more aggressive approach in 2022 than in years prior. His first pitch swing rate increased by 7%. While he was swinging more earlier in the count, his overall swing rate did not change, nor did his whiff rate.
Aggressiveness is not necessarily a bad thing, especially since it has not caused Heim’s other stats any harm. For example, the more aggressive approach did not cause an increase in Heim’s strikeout rate or decrease in Heim’s walk rate. In fact, Heim’s walk rate in 2022 was at a career high of 9%, slightly better than MLB average.
Major Splits as a Switch Hitter
Heim is a switch hitter, but is much better when facing left-handed pitchers.
Looking at his career splits, we can see a huge discrepancy in OPS, ISO, and strikeout rate when facing both hands:
With injuries to other Rangers’ catcher Mitch Garver, it sounds like Jonah Heim is going to see the majority of playing time this season in the starting catcher role. Therefore, he will not get the opportunity to be used as a platoon. For this reason, I would expect Heim to be a fringe average offensive contributor this season.
Based on the career stats above, I think he would be more successful offensively in the platoon role. Heim can potentially be a platoon candidate for an opposing team who could use a catcher who starts against left-handed pitchers.
Catching Ability
There is something that Heim provides that overcomes his offensive shortcomings, and that is his framing ability.
Heim placed in the 98th percentile of framing in 2022. And why is framing so important? Framing impacts every pitch of the game, so it is so important to have a catcher who can frame well.
Based on the table below, we can see that Heim has posted elite framing numbers the past two seasons in terms of catcher framing runs and strike rate. Both of these stats can be found on Baseball Savant.
12 catcher framing runs and a strikeout rate of 52% puts Heim second in all of Major League Baseball in 2022 behind Jose Trevino.
What do you think of Jonah Heim?