Are Veteran MLB Catchers Actually Getting Better At Throwing With Age?

Image credit: Will Smith (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about five ways in which MLB players are better than ever. One of the findings that fascinated me was discovering that pop times on catcher’s throws to second base have gotten significantly faster over the past decade.

I wanted to dig a little deeper into this to ask the question: Is this unusual?

The answer appears to be yes. We looked at catchers who caught in the majors in 2015 and 2019 and compared them to catchers who caught in the majors both 2019 and 2025. The two groups both saw their arm strengths decrease over those years. Both saw their exchanges get faster (although the more recent group saw a much larger increase), but only the 2019 to 2025 group saw their pop times improve.

Correlation is not causation. This does not guarantee that one-knee catching leads to faster exchanges, which leads to better pop times. But we can say that throwing is improving significantly during the time where MLB catchers almost universally switched from conventional crouching setups to one-knee down setups.

And we can also say that this type of improvement was not seen for a similar cohort over a previous time frame. It seems to provide at least some support for something we have heard from multiple catching coaches: Throwing from a one-knee setup is better than from a conventional setup.

Ideally, we would have used two identical different timeframes, but in this case, we didn’t for a couple of reasons. The shortened 2020 season is something we wanted to avoid. By doing so, we can compare catchers over a full 162-game season rather than having the data muddied by a shortened 60-game schedule.

We also wanted to compare 2019 to 2025 because 2019 is the last year before one-knee catching started to really take off across the major leagues. It’s safe to say—and a visual check confirmed—that the vast majority of catchers in 2019 were using a conventional crouching setup with runners on base. In 2025, they are almost universally using a one-knee down setup.

Here’s a look at how those catchers who played in the majors in both 2019 and 2025 improved (or got worse) as throwers over that timeframe:

catchers	2025 ARM	2019 ARM	Diff.	2025 Exch.	2019 EXCH.	DIff.	2025 pop	2019 POP	Diff.
Narváez, Omar	77.8	79.2	-1.4	0.58	0.74	-0.16	1.99	2.07	-0.08
Wynns, Austin	77.5	78.9	-1.4	0.60	0.72	-0.12	1.96	2.02	-0.06
Smith, Will	82.5	83.6	-1.1	0.63	0.72	-0.09	1.94	1.99	-0.05
Jansen, Danny	78.8	80.3	-1.5	0.63	0.77	-0.14	2.00	2.05	-0.05
Vázquez, Christian	80.2	81.5	-1.3	0.59	0.71	-0.12	1.94	1.98	-0.04
Murphy, Sean	84.7	87.4	-2.7	0.70	0.79	-0.09	1.94	1.98	-0.04
McGuire, Reese	78.7	79.0	-0.3	0.70	0.63	0.07	1.93	1.97	-0.04
Trevino, Jose	77.7	76.3	1.4	0.64	0.69	-0.05	2.03	2.06	-0.03
Kelly, Carson	81.8	82.5	-0.7	0.64	0.74	-0.10	1.96	1.99	-0.03
Caratini, Victor	77.2	79.0	-1.8	0.65	0.75	-0.10	2.04	2.07	-0.03
Sánchez, Gary	87.2	87.9	-0.7	0.61	0.73	-0.12	1.91	1.93	-0.02
Díaz, Elias	83.2	85.3	-2.1	0.62	0.71	-0.09	1.91	1.93	-0.02
Realmuto, J.T.	84.9	88.4	-3.5	0.59	0.68	-0.09	1.87	1.88	-0.01
d’Arnaud, Travis	80.5	83.4	-2.9	0.64	0.74	-0.10	1.99	1.99	0
Garver, Mitch	79.5	82.9	-3.4	0.67	0.77	-0.10	2.04	2.03	0.01
Barnes, Austin	73.2	76.8	-3.6	0.65	0.67	-0.02	2.11	2.09	0.02
Maldonado, Martín	85.7	87.3	-1.6	0.72	0.76	-0.04	1.99	1.96	0.03
Hedges, Austin	81.2	83.2	-2.0	0.63	0.68	-0.05	1.96	1.92	0.04
Rogers, Jake	79.5	79.2	0.3	0.62	0.65	-0.03	1.95	1.91	0.04
Higashioka, Kyle	76.1	82.5	-6.4	0.64	0.78	-0.14	2.04	1.94	0.1

To summarize, of the 20 catchers who caught in the majors semi-regularly in 2019 and 2025, most saw their arm strength decline over that time. The average decrease is 1.84 mph, and only two catchers avoided a drop in arm strength. Both of them (Jose Trevino and Jake Rogers) were among the lowest in arm strength in 2019. Almost half of the catchers studied saw a 2 mph or larger decrease. This isn’t surprising, as arm strength generally declines as a player ages.

Of those 20 catchers, 19 saw an improvement in their exchange, or the time it takes from receiving the pitch to throwing it. The average exchange improvement is .08 seconds, and 10 of the 20 saw a one-tenth of a second or larger improvement.

Because of that, these veteran catchers went from averaging a 1.988 pop time in 2019 to a 1.975 pop time in 2025. They saw a -0.013 second improvement in pop times to second, which means, on average, they took slightly less time to throw from home to second on a stolen base attempt. Now, that is well below the overall improvement in pop times seen across the majors from 2019 to 2025, but these are all veteran catchers fighting against father time.

Of these 20 veterans, there were 13 catchers who saw their pop times improve. Six saw their pop times get slower while one saw identical pop times in 2019 and 2025.

So how does that compare to the group who were catching in the majors in 2015 and 2019? Let’s take a look:

Catchers	2019 ARM	2015 ARM	Diff.	2019 Exch.	2015 Exch.	Diff	2019 POP	2015 POP	DIFF
Martin, Russell	83.6	86.2	-2.6	0.75	0.74	0.01	2.04	1.97	-0.07
Casali, Curt	79.2	82.2	-3.0	0.75	0.74	0.01	2.07	2.00	-0.07
Vogt, Stephen	73.4	78.4	-5.0	0.7	0.75	-0.05	2.14	2.08	-0.06
Wieters, Matt	79.3	81	-1.7	0.71	0.71	0.00	2.02	1.96	-0.06
Wilson, Bobby	76.3	79.6	-3.3	0.76	0.74	0.02	2.08	2.03	-0.05
Joseph, Caleb	79.3	81.5	-2.2	0.78	0.76	0.02	2.08	2.03	-0.05
Mathis, Jeff	76.5	78.5	-2.0	0.77	0.74	0.03	2.12	2.07	-0.05
Grandal, Yasmani	78.5	84.3	-5.8	0.72	0.78	-0.06	2.07	2.02	-0.05
Sucre, Jesús	80.7	84.2	-3.5	0.78	0.82	-0.04	2.05	2.01	-0.04
Maldonado, Martín	87.3	88.1	-0.8	0.76	0.75	0.01	1.96	1.92	-0.04
Iannetta, Chris	80.2	82.9	-2.7	0.75	0.8	-0.05	2.08	2.05	-0.03
McCann, Brian	77.2	79	-1.8	0.78	0.75	0.03	2.08	2.05	-0.03
Plawecki, Kevin	77.1	79.7	-2.6	0.72	0.77	-0.05	2.10	2.08	-0.02
Barnhart, Tucker	79.6	82.1	-2.5	0.71	0.7	0.01	2.01	1.99	-0.02
Phegley, Josh	80	82.7	-2.7	0.66	0.72	-0.06	1.99	1.98	-0.01
Molina, Yadier	84.1	83.7	0.4	0.69	0.74	-0.05	1.98	1.97	-0.01
Gomes, Yan	80.5	81.3	-0.8	0.66	0.66	0.00	1.96	1.95	-0.01
Holaday, Bryan	78.1	82.5	-4.4	0.69	0.77	-0.08	2.03	2.02	-0.01
McCann, James	81.1	83.4	-2.3	0.75	0.78	-0.03	2.05	2.04	91
Chirinos, Robinson	80.8	81.6	-0.8	0.72	0.81	-0.09	2.03	2.03	0
León, Sandy	78.7	82.4	-3.7	0.67	0.72	-0.05	2.02	2.02	0
Flowers, Tyler	75.9	77.5	-1.6	0.74	0.78	-0.04	2.12	2.12	0
Lucroy, Jonathan	80.1	80.9	-0.8	0.69	0.72	-0.03	2.01	2.01	0
Hicks, John	82.8	85	-2.2	0.72	0.74	-0.02	2.00	2	0
Ramos, Wilson	81.6	83.5	-1.9	0.71	0.75	-0.04	2.00	2.01	0.01
Hedges, Austin	83.2	87.3	-4.1	0.68	0.75	-0.07	1.92	1.93	0.01
Pérez, Roberto	82.6	84.2	-1.6	0.73	0.77	-0.04	1.96	1.97	0.01
Castro, Jason	81.2	83.3	-2.1	0.74	0.79	-0.05	2.01	2.02	0.01
Cervelli, Francisco	80.2	81.2	-1.0	0.68	0.74	-0.06	1.99	2.01	0.02
d’Arnaud, Travis	83.4	84.1	-0.7	0.74	0.78	-0.04	1.99	2.01	0.02
Garneau, Dustin	78.1	79.5	-1.4	0.68	0.78	-0.10	1.97	1.99	0.02
Castillo, Welington	79.9	84.1	-4.2	0.65	0.74	-0.09	1.96	1.98	0.02
Hundley, Nick	80.5	81.6	-1.1	0.71	0.75	-0.04	2.01	2.03	0.02
Suzuki, Kurt	81.1	81.8	-0.7	0.79	0.84	-0.05	2.06	2.09	0.03
Realmuto, J.T.	88.4	88.5	-0.1	0.68	0.75	-0.07	1.88	1.91	0.03
Posey, Buster	83	82.1	0.9	0.73	0.75	-0.02	2.00	2.05	0.05
Avila, Alex	81.5	79.6	1.9	0.74	0.75	-0.01	2.01	2.06	0.05
Zunino, Mike	81.6	83.6	-2.0	0.69	0.78	-0.09	1.97	2.04	0.07

We should note that are more catchers in this category (38), probably in part because we are studying years that are five seasons apart rather than seven seasons apart.

Of this group, arm strength generally decreased. The average decrease this time was 2.01 mph. In this group, 35 of the 38 catchers saw a decrease in arm strength. As we said before, arm strength generally is on an aging curve.

This group also saw their exchange times improve. There were 28 catchers who improved their exchange time, two who remained neutral and eight who saw an increase. But the improvement was not nearly as significant as it was in the catchers from 2019 to 2025. The average improvement in our most recent group was .08 seconds, and 10 saw a one-tenth of a second or better improvement. This time, the average improvement was .035 seconds, and only one of the 38 saw a one-tenth of a second improvement.

So, when it came to pop times to second base, this group saw a slight worsening in pop times. They averaged 2.013 in 2015 and 2.021 in 2019 for an increase of .008 seconds, as opposed to the 0.13-second improvement in the 2019-2025 group. For the 2015-2019 study, 19 catchers improved their pop time, five remained identical in their pop times and 14 saw their pop times get worse.