Rays backstops struggling offensively to start the 2025 season

The Rays' recent struggles have been pinned to a variety of scapegoats.

Taylor Walls' struggles with the bases loaded not to ground into double plays, Jose Caballero's baserunning, and even Brandon Lowe and Yandy Díaz not getting off to the starts anyone wanted or envisioned.

But the biggest culprit might be the Rays' catchers not only being less than valuable offensively, but being downright worthless on defense.

Danny Jansen's struggles to frame well have been well-established, as he's hovered around below-average to awful throughout his career, establishing a career-worst -3 in framing runs last season.

What's tough for Jansen is that he's gotten off to a rough start in the batter's box too, posting a .235 wOBA through his first 53 plate appearances.

Given, that's a super small sample, and things can easily turn around for him at the plate; he posted above-average wRC+ marks from 2021-2023 during his time in a Blue Jays uniform, but his under-the-hood marks aren't great.

All of his quality of contact metrics, or expected stats, are horrible, just as bad as you'd expect from someone with a .222 slugging %.

His chase rate and whiff % are both quite good, which are mostly on par for his career norms, although they're due for some regression back to where he's normally at in terms of plate discipline and contact.

Unfortunately his brutal framing rates are likely to continue barring some unforeseen shift in philosophy or talent level.

He could theoretically turn it around with the Rays, as they have that excellent player development system they're known for, but unfortunately the organization has had some rotten luck when it comes to catchers, speaking to a team that might just not quite have catching figured out like they do seemingly everywhere else.

Now to discuss his counterpart in the catcher room, Ben Rortvedt, and his not-quite-Jonny-Bench 6 wRC+ (no, that's not a typo).

Rort could very well be a carbon copy of Jansen in terms of his struggles with framing and to hit the ball meaningfully hard, but he still has fine plate discipline and contact marks.

Unfortunately for Rort, he lacks the background of being a serviceable power guy, with a career total of 8 homers and a .084 ISO, so his lack of thump seems bound to stay where it's at if not get worse.

Similarly to Jansen, he has struggled to get strikes at the edges of the zone, something he was meh at in 2024 but has taken a sharp decline so far in a limited role this season.

Will that also get better? Unlikely; Rort's pretty well-cooked as a player, especially having spent a whole year in the Rays' system.

So there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of hope for either catcher; should the Rays bring up reinforcements who could at least theoretically be defensive upgrades, even if they struggle at the plate?

Maybe, but they're paying Jansen an awful lot of money, and there's still a chance that he's able to turn things around in the batter's box, which would be a welcome sight for the Rays' bottom of the lineup, which has struggled to do anything productive at the plate.

Either way, the Rays' catchers' struggles will be a storyline to monitor moving forward, especially if the season doesn't turn around soon.