The trials and tribulations of the organization’s third catcher
With the 2024 regular season over, it is time for us to go back and take a look at the players who appeared for the Texas Rangers this season.
Today, we look at catcher Sam Huff.
If it feels like Sam Huff has been around forever, well…he kind of has.
Jose Leclerc is still, technically, the longest tenured member of the Texas Rangers organization as far as players go, having been signed in December, 2010. Assuming he doesn’t sign a new deal in the next three-plus weeks, however, Leclerc will be a free agent, and Leody Taveras, signed in June, 2015, will be the longest-tenured player in the organization. Should Taveras be traded or non-tendered, as many believe will happen, Sam Huff would then take over the mantle as the longest-tenured player in the organization.
(That assumes, of course, that Huff isn’t traded or non-tendered. In that case, the player who will have been with the organization the longest would be Jacob Latz. Weird, huh?)
Huff has been with the Rangers since signing in June, 2016, as the team’s 7th round pick out of Arcadia High School in Phoenix, Arizona. The 2024 season was the ninth season Huff spent with the Rangers, and I’m not sure if there’s been a time over that nine season span when Huff has seemed less likely to have a future with the Rangers than he does now.
24 position players appeared in at least one game for the Texas Rangers in 2024. 23 position players had more major league plate appearances for the Texas Rangers in 2024 than Huff. Huff, who was up a couple of times for brief stints when Jonah Heim was on leave, appeared in three games this year for Texas. Those appearances:
April 20, 2024, at Atlanta. Huff, who had been called up that day when Jonah Heim went on the bereavement list, entered the game at catcher in the bottom of the seventh after Andrew Knizner had been pinch hit for. He did not get a plate appearance, and was sent back down on April 22, when Heim was activated.
June 15, 2024, at Seattle. Huff, who had been called up that day when Jonah Heim went on the paternity list, pinch ran for Josh Smith with two outs in the top of the ninth, with the Rangers down 7-3. The Rangers had entered the inning down 7-1, and Smith had walked with the bases loaded to force in the second run of the inning. Huff would go to third base when Marcus Semien singled to make it 7-5, and was stranded there when Corey Seager grounded out to end the game. And if all that sounds familiar, that’s the same game I talked about at some length in the Jesus Tinoco write up a few days ago.
June 17, 2024, at New York against the Mets. Sam Huff started at catcher, played the whole game, and went 0 for 3 with a walk and two Ks. He was sent back to AAA the next day when Heim was activated.
So, yeah. Not a memorable major league season for Sam Huff.
Which didn’t keep him from being a popular topic of discussion throughout the season. There’s the old adage that the most popular player on a football team is the backup quarterback. Similarly, one of the most popular minor leaguers in the Rangers’ system for much of 2024 was Sam Huff, due to the lack of productivity the Rangers were getting from their backup, Andrew Knizner, and the catcher position more generally. Surely, the argument went, Huff wasn’t so bad of an option that the Rangers were better off with Knizner, right?
Well, the Rangers eventually replaced Knizner, but they replaced him with Carson Kelly, acquired from the Detroit Tigers at the deadline at a time when it appeared that the Rangers might be a playoff team and the Tigers wouldn’t. Huff stayed in Round Rock, where he finished the season.
It seemed evident from the outset that Huff was not seen as a serious major league option from the outset. Early in spring training, when discussing the catching situation, Bruce Bochy said that the backup situation was not fully settled, saying they had two really good options. That would seemed to have given Sam Huff fans a warm glow for a few seconds, until Bochy indicated that those two options were Knizner and Andrew Knapp, a veteran who was in camp on a minor league deal, and who spent a good chunk of the year in Round Rock.
And there’s a good chance that Huff wouldn’t even still be here had he not received a fourth option, by virtue of spending most of the 2021 season on the injured list. That was the year when he was limited to DH duty even when he was active due to knee surgery. But for the fourth option, the Rangers would have had to have kept him on the active roster at the start of 2024 or exposed him to waivers to send him down.
The knock on Huff, going back to when he was drafted, has been his defense, with there being questions throughout his career about whether he would be able to stay behind the plate. He has a good arm, but the so-called softer skills involved in catching, the game calling and pitcher handling and the like, have been viewed as not being up to the level that the Rangers, at least, want from their catchers.
That said, those who believed in the bat have always felt that that wasn’t enough of an issue to keep him from a major league job, and even if you didn’t want him behind the plate, his bat would have value at first base or DH. There were even arguments made that maybe Huff should move to first base permanently, that his bat had too much potential, his power stroke too potent, to have his at bats limited by the rigors of catching. His cameo in the COVID season, when he slashed .355/.394/.742 and had three home runs in 33 plate appearances, provided encouragement to that line of thinking.
The problem is, though, is that Huff’s performance with the bat in 2024 didn’t provide much reason to believe that would be the case. Huff slashed .246/.310/.416 in 477 plate appearances at Round Rock this year, with 39 walks against 150 Ks. Contact issues have always been the red flag in Huff’s offensive profile, and that came to the forefront this year. The 31.4% K rate he had at Round Rock would have played him second among qualified MLB hitters in 2024, between Zack Gelof and Elly De La Cruz. Only three other major leaguers — Colton Cowser, Oneil Cruz and Logan O’Hoppe — were even above 29%.
Maybe Huff sticks as the backup in 2025, and gets a shot. Maybe he is released or non-tendered and goes into camp in 2025 with another team, one more willing to give him major league playing time. Maybe he hangs around on the 40 man roster through the end of camp, gets put on waivers, goes unclaimed, and spends yet another year toiling away in Round Rock.
Even more uncertainty for Huff than he had at the start of the year, after his disappointing 2024 campaign.
Previously: