It was about a week ago that our own Mark Brown observed:
There are few things as fun in baseball as when a player comes essentially out of nowhere to end up on your favorite team and makes a great first
impression by lighting the world on fire for weeks or months on end.
Every year, it seems, the Orioles have an out-of-nowhere hero emerge: names like Steve Pearce, Delmon Young, Yennier Cano, Stevie Wilkerson, and others you may have rattling around in a remote corner of your brain.
The trouble is, Mark also wrote, the magic is seldom repeated. Unfortunately, these out-of-nowhere heroes are more likely to end up flashes-in-the-pan than “the next great thing.”
This year, with so many freak injuries, the Orioles resorted to a team record number of replacements, including at catcher, where all of six backstops put on a uniform. Bad luck abounded: franchise backbone Adley Rutschman strained both obliques. No. 2 man Gary Sánchez played in just 29 games thanks to knee and wrist trouble. Maverick Handley, never a real option before this season, went down with both a concussion and sore wrist. Chadwick Tromp, the fourth backstop, had back tightness. The veteran Jacob Stallings hit .114 in 14 games and was let go.
There was exactly one bright spot at catcher this year, and it was the little-known Alex Jackson, whom the O’s acquired from the Yankees on July 6, after the failures of Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C. A 29-year-old former first-round pick for Seattle in 2014 (No. 6 overall), Jackson had long lost his prospect status when he found his way to Baltimore, having debuted in 2019 but played in just 124 games in five-plus seasons, hitting a combined .153/.239/.288/.527.
Usually this is not the way you unearth diamonds in the rough, but in 36 games for the Oriole the catcher Jackson was surprisingly valuable.
For one thing, he showed a lot of pop, with 13 extra-base hits in his short audition, including nine straight to start his Orioles career. (This factoid has been brought to you by the Ministry of Useless Information.) His defense was competent, with a pop time ranked in the 88th percentile and above-average skill at throwing out runners, too.
If you’re a fan of the composite stat WAR (wins above replacement), then Jackson’s short 2025 stint looks particularly good. Of the 44 position players who spent time with the Orioles this season, Jackson ranks tenth in terms of bWAR, at 0.7. That puts him behind only Gunnar Henderson, Ramón Laureano, Ryan O’Hearn, Adley, Jordan Westburg, Ramón Urías, Colton Cowser, Dylan Beavers and Jackson Holliday. And for comparison, the second baseman Holliday did it in five times more games (149).
It wasn’t all fun and games. As catchers came back off the IL, Jackson saw his playing time diminish down the stretch, and so did his offense. Here are his monthly splits, courtesy of Baseball Reference:
I mean, his two good months speak for themselves. What team wouldn’t take a .931 OPS from their catcher?
The question is, for the career .153 hitter, whether his September downturn speaks to deeper issues. The answer is: probably. Although Jackson kept walking at acceptable rates, it appears that pitchers were able to exploit a weakness against offspeed pitches, against which Jackson whiffed at prodigious rates in his final month (a worrisome 71% in September/October).
None of that should affect Jackson’s chances to make it with this team next season. The Orioles will go with two principal catchers in Samuel Basallo and Adley Rutschman, both of whom should also see time at 1B/DH. Though we don’t yet know the identify of next season’s manager, it’s not unlikely he’ll continue a team signature of mixing and matching positions to reduce player wear-and-tear and also play the offensive matchups, the way both Brandon Hyde and Tony Mansolino did, giving Jackson the opportunity to spell both of them.
Even after this season, the 29-year-old is still in such small sample size territory that his hitting this year means potentially nothing. That said, Jackson has shown talent and promise both on offense and defense, something that couldn’t quite be said of the other replacements the Orioles tried out behind the dish this year. It would be great if Alex Jackson is undergoing a mid-to-late career renaissance. Even if he isn’t, overall, he’s been an excellent pickup and will get a chance to play next year.
