Six pitches into his start, Pirates left-hander Steven Brault saw catcher Jacob Stallings spring from his crouch behind home plate and start toward the pitcher’s mound. It was Sept. 21, 2020, and Brault — coming off the best outing of his career, a two-hit complete game in which he didn’t shake off Stallings once — had walked Cubs leadoff hitter Ian Happ and then threw a first-pitch ball to Willson Contreras. He was nibbling, at best, but mostly missing.
So, Stallings came out to chat. (He’d do all the talking.)
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“Listen,” he said, dropping the baseball into Brault’s glove, “you’re not doing what we talked about before the game. You’re not coming after them. You’re being a wuss out here, and you can’t do that.”
With that, Stallings punched Brault lightly in the chest and jogged back to the plate. Brault took a deep breath. He attacked Contreras and Anthony Rizzo, striking out both, and Stallings caught Happ stealing to end the inning. The battery was synched again. That night, steered back on track by Stallings and his timely mound visit, Brault turned in seven scoreless innings.
“When Stalls comes out and gives you something to do, you do it,” Brault said Sunday. “It’s always right. He’s not coming out to give you a breather. He’s coming out to tell you what you’re doing wrong — and fix it.”
Through two seasons as the Pirates’ everyday catcher, Stallings is a two-time Gold Glove finalist and, as of Sunday night, a first-time winner. After losing to Tucker Barnhart in 2020, Stallings returned in 2021 to finish ahead of Yadier Molina (a future Hall of Famer) and JT Realmuto (the highest-paid catcher in baseball). “I don’t know that I feel totally worthy to be in the same sentence as those guys,” Stallings said Sunday, but now he is, and it’s written in gold.
Stallings, 31, has had his sights on a Gold Glove since he was a kid.
“To be honest, it’s kind of the highest individual achievement that I ever felt like I could probably win,” said Stallings, who was drafted in the 42nd round by the Reds in 2011 and the seventh round by the Pirates in 2012. “Growing up, I wondered if I could win the Gold Glove. I didn’t really think I could get to the big leagues. I thought that maybe, if somebody would hit for me or something (and they) just let me play defense, I could maybe win the Gold Glove.”
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Being an elite defensive catcher always felt more attainable than being a big-league hitter. Now, he’s both — winning a Gold Glove and authoring the top highlight of the Pirates’ season.
A year ago, Stallings swore he wouldn’t let himself look at the list of Gold Glove catchers until he was one of them. So, in the past few days, he finally looked. He saw Johnny Bench and Gary Carter and Iván Rodríguez. He discovered Charles Johnson won four in a row. He saw Mike Matheny and the man who replaced him: Molina. (Matheny was Stallings’ childhood favorite player. “When Yadi came up and took the job from him, I hated Yadi,” he said. “Now I just have so much respect for him.)
“It was crazy looking at the list and knowing that I’ll be on there for the rest of time,” Stallings said.
Stallings is the third Pirates catcher in 34 years to earn a Gold Glove, and the third all time, joining Tony Peña (1983-85) and Mike LaValliere (1987). At 6-foot-5, Stallings also tied Joe Mauer and Matt Wieters as the tallest catchers to receive Gold Glove recognition.
For Stallings, the Gold Glove dream began coming into focus in 2019 when Pirates bullpen catcher Jordan Comadena introduced him to catcher framing metrics. Stallings blocked pitches well and had a good arm, but he was a below-average framer. He was backing up Elias Díaz, had already been designated for assignment once, and was trying to save his spot in the majors. Comadena had ideas, and Stallings listened. “We just kind of hooked horns,” Stallings said. They adjusted Stallings’ pre-pitch glove positioning to create more room to work — allowing him to meet the ball and move it slightly, sweetening borderline pitches. They relaxed his stance, dropping to a knee with the bases empty. They studied other catchers around the league; Comadena asked every catcher and coach he could about the art of receiving.
“(Stallings) would play a game, then he’d have a few days off, so we had some time to go work and tinker and do drills,” Comadena said Sunday night. “Then he’d play with some things in the next game. As the season went on, he really became more comfortable with a lot of the stuff we did. He picked it up very quickly, and it became really evident to the pitchers at the time: Hey, Jacob is really getting good back there.”
Stallings was stealing strikes left and right (and high and low).
“Sometimes, you throw a pitch and are like, ‘That’s a ball,’ but you get a strike,” Brault said. “You go look at (replay) afterward and you’re like, ‘Oh my God. Good for Stalls.’ I think he’s the best in the league at it.”
This season, Stallings tied for the NL lead in framing runs (8.8), defensive runs saved (21) and defensive runs above average (16.4). By whatever metric, he was brilliant behind the plate. He committed just five errors across 892 innings, a .995 fielding percentage, and was the only catcher in the majors without a passed ball. His back-to-back Gold Glove candidacy is no fluke.
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Every day at the ballpark, Stallings stages a little game within the game: He wants to finish with a better framing score than the catcher on the other side. The other catcher is not aware of this competition. It stays between Stallings and Comadena. After the game, Comadena will cut up video of close ball/strike calls. The next morning, once MLB has finalized its data from the previous day’s game, Comadena sends Stallings his score. Well, most mornings he does.
“He usually wouldn’t tell me what the bad scores were,” Stallings said, laughing.
Depending on how the numbers look, they might work on pitches in a specific location during pregame warm-ups that day.
Before he fell for framing, Stallings always was adept at blocking pitches. Despite standing 6-foot-5, Stallings is extremely flexible. “He’s blessed with God-given hyper-mobility in his hips, ankles and knees,” Comadena explained. “I’m almost a foot shorter than him, and I can’t even come remotely close to doing some of the things he can do.” Stallings sets up low, is surehanded, and quickly diagnoses pitches in the dirt. Blocking is “kind of a thankless statistic,” Stallings admitted, but it’s one he’s spent countless hours honing over the years with coaches Tom Prince and Glenn Sherlock. But, in this Gold Glove case, that stat didn’t go unnoticed.
“I hear broadcasters talk about this all the time: You’ve got a runner on third, two-strike count, so you bounce a slider,” Brault said. “They always say, ‘Well, you really have to have confidence in your catcher.’ I’ll be honest, I haven’t even had that thought in my head since I started throwing to Stalls. He blocks everything, all the time.
“If Stalls calls a slider, we’re gonna throw it in the dirt, and it doesn’t matter at all. … Sometimes, you’ll throw a pitch that out of your hand is like, ‘Oh shit.’ And then, of course, he blocks it and keeps it right in front of him like it’s nothing.”
One part of a catcher’s job that’s harder to quantify is the value he adds shepherding a pitching staff. It’s an area of Stallings’ game that pitchers rave about, particularly now that he’s working with an inexperienced and ever-changing staff. Stallings gets to know each pitcher’s pitches — studying their strengths so he can identify immediately when something’s off — and their personalities — so he can tell from their body language whether they, like Brault, could use a tongue-lashing six pitches into the game. He doesn’t live and die by the scouting report; he follows the signals he’s seeing from the pitcher on the mound.
Where many catchers watch a starter’s pregame bullpen and jump in only for the final few pitches, Stallings catches the whole thing. It’s extra practice for him, he said, and it’s an extension of the start for the pitcher-catcher battery. Once the game begins, the starting pitcher is at center stage, but Stallings is right there, too, standing just outside the spotlight. “He really takes it personally if the pitcher gives up runs,” Brault said. “He blames himself. It’s ridiculous.”
(Photo: Justin Berl / Getty Images)
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