Major League Baseball

Catcher's interference: The most bizarre rule in baseball

Published Feb. 1, 2022 4:54 p.m. ET

By Jake Mintz & Jordan Shusterman
FOX Sports MLB Writers

Jorge Soler had the most memorable swing of the 2021 season.

His titanic blast in Game 6 of the World Series was the defining moment of Atlanta’s first title since 1995. The instant the ball left his bat and rocketed toward left field, downtown Houston, the moon and corners of space yet discovered, everyone in the universe knew the Fall Classic was done and dusted.

That smash, along with the mountainous Cuban outfielder’s two other late October big flies, earned him a World Series MVP and a permanent place in Atlanta sports lore.

After a lackluster start to the 2021 season, Soler had been dealt to the Braves at the deadline, and he then reinvigorated his season to the tune of an .882 OPS in 55 games. Now he’s one of the more interesting outfielders left on the free-agent market … whenever the wintery lockout finally thaws.

But while everyone knows all about Soler’s colossal power, he has an overlooked, under-the-radar skill that not many people are talking about. Sure, he can hit a baseball into infinity and beyond, but nobody in the big leagues last season was better than Soler at hitting the catcher’s mitt.

That’s right, friends: Jorge Soler was the 2021 Catcher's Interference Champion.

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The logistics of catcher's interference

Before we delve into Soler, Jacoby Ellsbury, Gary Sánchez, Christian Vazquez, Jake Cronenworth, James McCann, Jurickson Profar and the rest of the Catcher's Interference All-Stars, let’s talk about the play itself.

The official MLB rulebook defines defensive interference more broadly as "an act by a fielder which hinders or prevents a batter from hitting a pitch." Now because all the other defenders are out in the field, this really applies to only the catcher.

As someone who has caught a few games in his life, I can tell you from experience that catcher's interference sucks. It’s not rocket science; getting your glove hand bashed at full speed by a firm, wooden pole is not exactly a deep-tissue massage. What’s worse, the batter gets first base, and your pitcher is steamed because it’s your fault.

That’s the hilarious contradiction of catcher's interference: The party at fault — the catcher — often emerges from the situation writhing in pain, while the hitter gets to trot on down to first. In the bigs, this leads to the entertaining juxtaposition of a catcher dismayed and uncomfortable, with the umpire in the background nonchalantly pointing at the plate to signify catcher's interference.

(As an aside, umpires as a whole love country music, sunflower seeds and pointing at stuff. Whether it’s a batter who doesn’t sufficiently try to avoid a hit by pitch ["STAY RIGHT HERE"] or a balk ["THAT’S A BALK"] or any of the myriad other funky baseball happenings, umps love to point. Catcher's interference is just another example of this.)

Now, when you picture catcher’s interference in your mind, it probably features a batter taking a full hack off the glove. That might be the "sexy" version, but it’s not the most common.

In reality, a huge portion of catcher’s interferences in MLB happen on check swings. Usually, this involves a hitter facing a same-side pitcher (right vs. right or left vs. left) and getting an inside fastball with arm-side run that tails toward them off the plate for a ball.

The closer a pitched ball is to the batter, the closer the catcher’s glove is to the bat path, and, therefore, the more likely the catcher is to get thwacked by a swing. Here’s what we mean.

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Chasing Ellsbury

We simply can’t talk about catcher's interference without mentioning the undisputed king of the craft: Jacoby Ellsbury.

The speedy center fielder was a lot of things over the course of his baseball career: a Red Sox, a Yankee, a Gold Glover, an MVP finalist. Most notably (at least for the purposes of this goofy article), though, Ellsbury drew an MLB-record 31 catcher's interferences, including a mind-blowing 12 mitt-whackings in 2016 alone.

Also, that 31 doesn’t count the two interferences Ellsbury had in the postseason or this exceptionally bizarre one from 2014 that was declined by Joe Girardi:

Pete Rose is second on the career list with 29, but he’s also the guy with the most plate appearances in MLB history, and he had more than 10,000 more than Ellsbury. Ellsbury is in a league of his own.

Could anyone catch him? Or are 31 catcher's interferences as unbreakable a record as Rose’s 4,256 hits or Cy Young’s 511 wins or Barry Bonds’ 688 intentional walks?

Well, if Soler can maintain his incredible pace displayed in 2021 moving forward, he could certainly challenge Ellsbury. The record still seems ambitious, though. Soler's eight in ‘21 brought him to 13 for his career, which means he has plenty of work to do. His 2022 will tell us a lot about his chances.

Third on the all-time CI list is Josh Reddick, but he’s way down at 19, and it’s unclear how much longer he is going to play.

Behind Reddick on the active list is the player with the best chance to catch Ellsbury: Tommy La Stella. Although he hit only two mitts in 2021, La Stella has an excellent track record of garnering interference. His career total of 16 is bolstered by a breakout performance of six CIs in 2019 that really put him on the map.

Sixteen is impressive on its own, but more importantly, La Stella really shines when it matters most: in October. There have been only 20 instances of catcher's interference in MLB postseason history, and La Stella accounts for three of them. Ellsbury and Reddick (two each) are the only other hitters with multiple playoff CIs.

La Stella whacked Matt Wieters’ glove in the 2017 NLDS, Drew Butera’s glove in the 2018 NL wild-card game and, most recently (and impactfully), Yasmani Grandal’s glove in Game 3 of the 2020 AL wild-card series vs. the White Sox. He ended up being the winning run for Oakland!

What's more, with 16 catcher's interferences in 1,738 career plate appearances (roughly one CI every 109 PA), La Stella has been interfered with much more frequently than Ellsbury was (roughly once every 173 PA). La Stella's biggest challenge has always been health, as he has never played more than 123 games in a season. But if he can stay on the field and get back to averaging about six CIs per season, he might have a shot at Ellsbury’s record, though we're not counting on it.

After La Stella comes Paul Goldschmidt with 12. He should be around for a good while longer, but he has never hit more than four catcher’s mitts in a season. Beyond Goldy, only George Springer (nine), Jesus Aguilar and Jason Heyward (eight) are sniffing double-digit CIs among active players.

One younger guy to watch down the road is Jake Cronenworth, who has already hit five mitts in his young career and should have plenty of opportunities to rack up more in the future.

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Speaking of catchers …

OK, enough about hitters who are bizarrely good at being interfered with. It is catcher's interference, after all. And even though we should all have sympathy for the bumps and bruises of the job, most big-league backstops should know the deal by now. Keep your paws out of the hitting zone! What are you doing!?

Fair or not, nobody in MLB gets more flack for his play behind the dish than Gary Sánchez. His defense is a lightning rod for irked Yanks fans across the tri-state area, and unfortunately for Gary defenders like us, he’s the active career leader in interferences, with 10.

Yasmani Grandal, Carson Kelly, Austin Barnes and James McCann are all tied for second, with seven. It should be like the summer of ‘98 all over again watching these gents chase down Gary.

But while those lads are busy getting their gloves in the way, Christian Vazquez is keeping his hands to himself. Among active backstops, the Red Sox catcher has the most career games caught and pitches seen without recording a single interference. That’s 573 games with no whacks of the leather, no hits to the mitt, no swings at the fings. He's a true hero.

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Intent vs. impact

The May 8, 2021, game between the Mets and Diamondbacks at Citi Field is and should forever be remembered as the Rat-Raccoon Game, in which Jeff McNeil and Francisco Lindor got into a fight and then lied about it and said they were arguing about an animal. Ah, the Mets!

But another momentous feat happened that evening, as Josh Rojas became just the fifth player in MLB history to reach on catcher's interference in back-to-back at-bats.

Both times Rojas got a piece of James McCann’s mitt and strolled down to first. After the second one, McCann pleaded his case to home plate ump Jeff Nelson, but it was out of Nelson’s hands. Even if Rojas was trying to nip McCann’s hand to reach first base on a 2-2 count, he still goes to first.

This is perhaps the oddest feature of catcher's interference: Intent doesn't matter. Only impact does.

Take another example from the 2021 season: a showdown between Jurickson Profar and Clayton Kershaw. In this one, Profar swings defensively on a two-strike count and makes contact with the glove after the ball has arrived.

This was particularly unusual, as almost all catcher's interferences involve the bat hitting the catcher’s glove before the ball is caught. That's likely what had Kershaw so angry, as he said after the game, "He basically swung straight down and backward. I’m not saying it was intentional, but that was not a big-league swing right there."

If anyone knows this play, it’s Kershaw. The legendary lefty is the active leader among pitchers in unluckily allowing base runners via catcher's interference. Including Profar’s controversial call, CI has happened to Kershaw nine times in his career, which is second ever to only Phil Niekro's tally of 14.

Kershaw had more to say after the Profar incident. "I asked the umpire if I could just hit the catcher’s glove every time [at bat] because I have a much better chance of doing that than hitting the ball," he said. "There’s some gray area within that rule that might need to be looked at, for sure."

Perhaps the rule will change some day. For now, though, the rulebook doesn’t give a hoot if the hitter was trying to lean back, take a heat-seeking whack and sneak his way to first base. Perhaps after a certain amount of time, the baseball world might catch on to a hitter whose only intention at the plate is to swing at the glove, but that has never happened in the bigs.

When I was a junior on my high school baseball team, a new kid who’d moved to town from a non-baseball country tried out for the team. The guy was a superb athlete — big, strong, could really, really run — but he’d clearly never swung a baseball bat before. We ended up starting him in center field and batting him ninth, both because he was that good of an athlete and because my high school wasn’t exactly IMG Academy.

The guy was helpless at the plate, so after a few games, I came up with an idea. I told him to stand at the back of the box and swing toward (but not at!) the catcher’s mitt. Sure, this wasn’t the most moral thing I’ve ever done, but as the captain of my tiny high school’s ballclub, I did whatever I had to do to win. The kid finished the year with six catcher’s interferences in 13 games, nobody caught on to my dastardly plot, and we won the championship.

Maybe I’m going to baseball hell for my bush league B.S., but that 2012 league championship banner is still up in my high school’s gym, and that kid still holds the league record for catcher’s interferences.

Like I said before: Intent does not matter. Impact does.

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Looking ahead

Well, there you have it: Everything you didn’t know you needed to know about one of the goofier plays in baseball.

While it would be a stretch to say we’ll be rooting for more catchers to have their gloves smacked in 2022, we’d be lying if we said we won't be watching for these interferences a little bit more closely this season, especially from the likes of Soler and La Stella.

Mitts will be hit, umpires will point, and batters will continue to stroll to first base like they didn’t do anything wrong.

Weird sport we love, huh?

Jake Mintz and Jordan Shusterman, creators of the Twitter account Céspedes Family BBQ, write about all things baseball for FOX Sports.