A TALL ORDER
Catchers by trade are not meant to be 6 feet, 5 inches. But somehow, Jacob Stallings makes it work.
Growing up outside of Nashville, it was hardly uncommon for Jacob Stallings to have college coaches attend his games at Brentwood Academy. Although Stallings admitted that he “wasn’t a great hitter back then,” he was a successful pitcher and terrific defensive catcher. Given the dearth of the latter throughout all levels of baseball, NCAA Division I programs were absolutely interested.
One of the coaches who came to watch Stallings was Derek Johnson, who’s currently the pitching coach for the Cincinnati Reds. Johnson had the same job at nearby Vanderbilt University at the time.
“He told me he wanted me to be a pitcher because he thought I projected out better there and wanted me to focus on that,” Stallings explained. “We get a good laugh about that now.”
It’s a good thing for the Pirates that Stallings ignored Johnson’s pitch and instead stuck with catching, as he’s blossomed into one of the best behind-the-plate defenders in all of Major League Baseball, a Gold Glove finalist in 2020.
But someone projecting Stallings — who would eventually commit to the University of North Carolina — to become a better pitcher than catcher is hardly strange given his height. At 6 feet 5, he’s pretty much a giant at his position, literally towering over his peers.
How Stallings makes this work is interesting. He has always been extremely flexible, and is also technically sound when it comes to how he sets up and frames pitches, throws and moves his body to block balls in the dirt.
Those tasks are hard enough when you’re below the average height for a male in the United States — per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it’s around 5-9 or 69 inches — but it’s obviously magnified when you have longer levers, hence a reason tall catchers are often shifted to other positions.
“Growing up, [Carlton] Fisk was big, but you really don’t see it much anymore,” Pirates manager Derek Shelton said. “It’s a hard position to play when you’re big because it’s taxing. You’re trying to block the ball and keep it in front of you. You have to be really in sync with what you’re doing catching and throwing, and ‘Stalls’ does it as well as anybody. But it’s definitely a challenge.” And an anomaly.
If you examine some of the best catchers in major league history, only a few are above-average heightwise. And not by much.
As Shelton said, Fisk stands 6-3, as does Mike Piazza. Gary Carter was listed at 6-2, while Johnny Bench wasn’t terribly far behind at 6-1. But then you also had guys like Ivan Rodriguez (5-9) and Yogi Berra (57), who, in their primes, probably couldn’t dunk a basketball if they jumped off a chair.
Pirates history has similarly been filled with vertically challenged backstops. Jason Kendall, Francisco Cervelli and Manny Sanguillen are the towering titans of the group — standing around 6-0. Russell Martin, Michael McKenry and Mike Lavalliere were all listed at 5-10, the same for the two primary candidates to back up Stallings, Tony Wolters and Michael Perez.
The Pirates did have a tall
backup catcher (Chris Stewart, 6-4) at one point and should have had another in Matt Wieters (6-5) back in 2007, though they passed on the lanky backstop and drafted pitcher Daniel Moskos instead.
“It has to be challenging for guys that tall to make it work,” said Shelton, who himself falls into that Manute Bol range of tall catchers … around 6 foot. “But it’s also an advantage because of your reach. If you’re really good with your hands like Stalls is, it’s an advantage for him. If a pitcher misses a target and he’s set up on one side of the plate, he can keep balls on the plate because of his length.”
Stallings said he actually didn’t start catching until around middle school, when the starter on his travel ball team hurt his arm, Stallings gave the position a shot and wound up throwing out a handful of runners during a tournament.
Something about the position stuck, although it took Stallings some time to grasp the really important stuff.
“It took me three weeks to figure out that I needed a cup,” Stallings said. “I was just back there clueless, obviously.”
After spending much of his youth at third base, Stallings loved being involved in every pitch, the strategy
behind calling a game, analyzing hitters’ swings and trying to help a pitching staff. It also worked out that Stallings was pretty good, his height hardly a hindrance because of some flexibility in his joints.
While other tall catchers might struggle to provide a low target, it has never been onerous for Stallings. His throwing is aided by a natural economy of movement, where Stallings barely moves his glove after a receiving a pitch, transfers it to his throwing hand and fires, all within a radius of about three inches.
When trying to keep pitches from rolling to the backstop, Stallings also has extremely quick reflexes and has able to turn his body into a — rather sizable — brick wall in the blink of an eye.
“He has great flexibility,” said Pirates coach Glenn Sherlock, who works with the team’s catchers. “He can really move his body into positions. When he’s blocking balls, he can get extremely low to the ground. Or when he’s catching strikes, he can get very, very low. I would say flexibility is something that’s pretty unique to Jacob.”
The itch to pitch hasn’t left Stallings. During his freshman year at North Carolina, Stallings broke his left hand. He couldn’t hit or catch, but he could throw. So coach Dan Fox had Stallings make a couple of appearances, and things went fairly well, the catcher putting up two scoreless, hitless innings while striking out two and earning a win.
After recording an out with Class AA Altoona in 2015 and pitching a scoreless inning for the Pirates in 2019, Stallings has a career, post-high school ERA of 0.00, with that perfect game still very much intact. But even though he has had some success throwing the ball in front of the plate, he has become more well-known for his work behind it, which has become it’s own evolving process.
Blocking has long been a focal point for Stallings and those who have worked with him. So much so that he can remember one time in Class A, when former Pirates bench coach Tom Prince had Stallings do so much pregame blocking work that he eventually scratched from the game.
“We went out and blocked probably 100 balls because I had a tendency of dropping my left knee as the pitch was coming, so it really limited my ability to move side-toside on blocks,” Stallings said. “We worked on what I do now: keeping both knees up and adjusting from there.
“We did so much blocking that day that he didn’t let me play in the game. He took me out of the lineup because we got so much work in.”
With receiving becoming more of a focal point for catchers, Stallings has also tinkered with different stances if there’s nobody on base, occasionally jutting a leg out or sitting lower in his crouch to try and open up more of the strike zone.
They’re not things your average 6-foot-5 male can do, unless, perhaps, you’re an NHL goaltender.
“I don’t think I was ever really told [I was too tall] because I’ve always been really flexible in my joints, so I’ve been able to get low. I’ve always had a pretty good arm,” Stallings said. “That allowed me to be back there, and I’m always trying to figure out ways to be quicker and more efficient. It just kinda worked out, I guess.”
I don’t think I was ever really told [I was too tall] because I’ve always been really flexible in my joints. Jacob Stallings