Article: Alejandro Kirk Is Catching Fire

[Leo Morgenstern]

Alejandro Kirk went 2-for-5 on Wednesday. It was his 19th multi-hit game of the year. Yet, considering how well he's been playing lately, his performance in the series finale against the Cardinals was actually something of a disappointment. It marked the first time in two weeks that Kirk appeared in a game without either scoring or driving in a run.

Through the first four weeks of the 2025 season, Kirk slashed a mediocre .211/.250/.282, good for a 49 wRC+. In 36 games and 142 plate appearances since then, he has a .388/.430/.527 slash line with a 172 wRC+. Those numbers are so ridiculously good that his two-hit performance on Wednesday somehow brought his OPS and wRC+ in that period down a few ticks. 

On April 25, Kirk went 2-for-4 with a double and two RBIs. Since that day, he leads all qualified players in batting average. He has reached base in 32 of the 36 games he's played. Only two AL batters have struck out at a lower rate, and only five have a higher wRC+: Aaron Judge, Cal Raleigh, Rafael Devers, Jacob Wilson, and José Ramírez. Even more impressive, his .435 xwOBA ranks second only to Judge's.

We aren't seeing the same level of production from Kirk that we saw in May and June of 2022 – he was just that phenomenal over those two months – but this is certainly the best he has looked at any point since the second half of the 2022 campaign:

via FanGraphs

All told, Kirk is now hitting .325 on the season, with a 129 wRC+ and an OPS above .800. He's walking less and swinging more, but how can you blame him when he's making such strong contact on those swings? Kirk has always been among the game's best at avoiding swing-and-miss, but what he's doing right now is so much more than that. He hasn't just been good at making contact, he's been good at making good contact.

While he doesn't swing the bat particularly hard, Kirk is getting the most out of his swings, as reflected by his elite squared-up rate. Per MLB.com, squared-up rate measures how much of the highest possible exit velocity (calculated using bat and pitch speed) a batter obtains on his swings. An excellent squared-up rate is the missing link between Kirk's middling bat speed and elite hard-hit rate. With that said, he has also been swinging harder this season than in 2023 and '24. That's only further reason for optimism, especially considering he is still making contact at elite rates.

In particular, Kirk has been using his faster swing to demolish offspeed pitches. He's hitting fastballs quite well, while breaking balls have given him some trouble as usual. As for offspeed stuff? His average exit velocity against offspeed pitches is 98.2 mph, while more than three-quarters of offspeed pitches he's put into play have registered as hard-hit. His wOBA on offspeed pitches is .503, while his xwOBA is nearly as impressive at .490. The sample size is small – offspeed offerings only represent 8.0% of all pitches he's seen this year – but the results are undeniable. No AL hitter (min. 50 offspeed pitches seen) has a higher Statcast RV/100 (run value per 100 pitches) against offspeed stuff than Kirk. 

Funnily enough, or perhaps exactly as you'd expect, it was an offspeed pitch that helped Kirk bust out of his early-season slump. And it wasn't just any offspeed pitch, but a changeup from arguably the best changeup pitcher in the game. On April 25, Kirk crushed a Devin Williams changeup to deep center field for a go-ahead double in the ninth. He’s been on fire ever since:

It's also important to keep in mind that Kirk is so much more than his bat. He's one of the league's best defenders at the most essential defensive position. According to the numbers at Baseball Savant, he has been an elite framer, blocker, and thrower this season, and accordingly, he leads all catchers in Statcast Fielding Run Value (FRV). In addition, he leads AL catchers in Defensive Runs Above Average (Def) according to FanGraphs, and ranks among the top five in Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) and Baseball Prospectus's Deserved Runs Prevented (DRP). Long story short? Every source agrees that Kirk is a major asset behind the plate. Everything he does at the plate is just gravy – and right now, that gravy is gourmet. 

The pressure was high for Kirk entering 2025. Without Danny Jansen to share the workload, he was going to be expected to catch significantly more often. Indeed, he's currently on pace to catch more than 1,000 innings this season. His career high is 775. On top of that, he signed a five-year, $58 million extension just days before Opening Day. The deal begins in 2026 and will keep him in Toronto through 2030. I argued at the time that his contract was extremely team-friendly, but even so, I can understand why it might have put more pressure on him to perform. The last thing he would have wanted was for fans to be calling him a bust before his new contract had even officially kicked in. 

At first, it seemed like Kirk might be crumbling under that pressure. Yet, instead of letting his slow start get to him, he's been able to turn things around in a remarkable way. Alejandro Kirk is playing like one of the best catchers in baseball right now. And still a youthful 26 years old, he might be just entering his prime.

Stats and rankings updated prior to games on June 12.

View full article

[Spanky__99]

Alejandro Kirk has a wRC+ of 130 and the best FRV defensively in baseball, he's an all star.