Or, All the Reasons He has Already Re-signed
Hedgey started his 2025 campaign with a home run in his first at bat of the season, something we all expected. Austin Hedges’ wRC+ of 51 was higher than his last
two seasons combined as he somehow put up his best offensive campaign since 2018 where he hit to a 90 wRC+. Hedges walked at a 10% which is not only the highest of his career, it is also more than double his 4.3% BB% in 2024. The catching savant also cut his strikeout rate by 10% from last season. Hedges capped off this impressive offensive showing by hitting to a 132 wRC+ during the Guardians magical September. I just want everyone to take a second and think about Austin Hedges hitting for an .820 OPS over the span of an entire month… not an easy thing to imagine but it happened. The cherry on top of it all was a career defining 2 walk postseason performance against All-World Ace Tarik Skubal.
I did my best to hype up Hedges’ year on the offensive side, now lets take a look at the real bread and butter of Hog’s game: Catching.
Austin Hedges played in 70 games and caught 480 innings, which is a little less than half of a starting catchers typical workload. Among all MLB players Hedges ranked 9th in Statcast Fielding Run Value, 12th in Fangraphs Defensive Value, and 4th among catchers in Statcast Framing Runs. Those are all cumulative statistics, the rate based statistics are even more impressive. Hedges had the highest called strike% on pitches in the shadow of the zone among all catchers. Hedges framing ability is not limited to certain areas of the plate as he ranks top ten in called strike% in all 4 shadow zones (up, down, inside, and outside). Pitchers love Austin Hedges because he gets all their perfect pitches called correctly; on pitches within 0-1 inches inside the zone Guardians pitchers enjoyed a strike% of 72%. The league average strike% on those pitches is 58%. There is an argument that Hedges is the best pitch framer of all time as he ranks 10th in Fangraphs framing value all time and has the least amount of innings caught in that top 10.
It is well known how much of a clubhouse leader Austin Hedges is and there should be no doubt at this point that Hedges is an integral part of this team. The front office extended him the same contract as the two prior years and Hedges accepted despite actually being worth more than double his 4M dollar contract. According to Fangraphs his 2024 was worth 9.5M. You may be surprised to hear that Hedges was actually underpaid in 2025, that’s just how good his defense was. Not to mention the truly incalculable value that catchers bring to the table with their management of a pitching staff.
Austin Hedges is a special player and an example of why baseball is the most diverse sport in terms of skill sets. I hope all of you see the beauty in Austin Hedges’ game as I do. Watching him behind the dish is a captivating experience and I’m very happy to see his return in 2026. I mean really, what are the Guardians without Austin Hedges holding the pieces together under the hood?
