After two awful seasons as the Nationals starting catcher, Keibert Ruiz had many fans wondering if he was yet another bust under Mike Rizzo and considering how he performed from 2023-2024, it's hard to blame them. Now, after going 3-for-4 with two doubles against the Orioles on Tuesday night, Keibert Ruiz is hitting .329 with four doubles, two home runs, an .829 OPS, and 136 wRC+, as he has gotten off to quite a surprising start this season. It's nice to see Ruiz finally able to produce at the plate (even if his defense is still lackluster), but whether or not it's sustainable is a different story. A look at his numbers so far this season and the underlying metrics behind them will paint a better picture of the situation.
From 2023 to 2024, Keibert Ruiz was arguably the worst catcher in baseball. Among catchers with 600 plate appearances across those two seasons, Ruiz had an 83 wRC+ (26th of 30 qualified), -0.8 fWAR (30th), a .291 wOBA (26th), and a .672 OPS (25th). Catcher is not an offense-first position and it is very possible to be a great catcher with a slightly below-average bat (or even a terrible bat), but somehow, Ruiz's defense was even worse than his offense. According to Baseball Savant, Ruiz ranked 61st out of 63 qualified catchers in framing runs with -13 in 2023, although he improved significantly in 2024, with just -1 framing runs (32nd of 58). In catcher blocking, Ruiz ranked 57th of 66 catchers with -11 blocks above average from 2023 to 2024. His worst area defensively was throwing out base stealers. From 2023 to 2024, Ruiz allowed 208 stolen bases and threw out just 43 would-be base stealers, which was by far the most in baseball and he had the worst caught stealing percentage in that time frame, too. His average pop time to second base was 2.06 seconds, which ranked 78th in 2023 and 81st in 2024.
There are no two ways about it, Keibert Ruiz was the worst defensive catcher in baseball the past two seasons and when combined with his below average bat, it made him the worst catcher in baseball. But in 2025, Ruiz has totally flipped the script, at least on paper. This season, from Opening Day to Tuesday night's game against the Orioles, Ruiz has a slashline of .329/.378/.461 which is good for an .839 OPS and 136 wRC+. It's not like he's getting super lucky either; his xBA is .327 and his xSLG is .415.
His biggest improvement at the plate has come with hitting fastballs. His xwOBA against fastballs is up nearly .70 and his slugging percentage against them is up by .155. Ruiz has also increased his BB% by 1.6% up to 4.9%, which still isn't great, but it's an improvement. He has also recorded 0.4 fWAR in 2025, which is much more than his past two seasons when he put up a total of -0.8 fWAR. It's a bit too early to tell if he's made any big strides defensively, but his CS% is up significantly thus far from the past two seasons and his average pop time is down to 2.0 seconds.
Ruiz has undoubtedly had an excellent start to his season at the plate and made significant improvements, but some of the underlying issues that have plagued him in the past are still there. The biggest issue that Ruiz still has is his exit velocity and lack of power. Ruiz is in the 3rd percentile when it comes to average exit velocity at just 84.2 MPH and in the 8th percentile for both barrel% and hard-hit% (1.5% and 27.9%, respectively). He is also still chasing pitches at an extremely high rate (36.7%), which, when combined with his great ability to make contact (76.6 contact% on chase pitches), causes more weak contact and limits his production at the plate. His ground ball% is up 13.4% and flyball% down 15.1%, which is not a good sign for continued production, nor is his average launch angle of 9.3 degrees (down more than 10 degrees from 2024).
So is it possible that Ruiz has made real improvements that will stick around in the long run? Absolutely, and every Nationals fan is hoping that that is the case. However, the underlying numbers are somewhat concerning and could be a sign that Ruiz's numbers may fall back to Earth somewhat. Regardless, the fact that Ruiz has been productive this year is refreshing, especially after he signed an 8 year, $50M extension before the 2023 season. We're all rooting for Ruiz to keep up his excellent performance and if he keeps it up, it'll make that extension look like a bargain.