Adley Rutschman Camden Yards Return: 2 Homers

Rutschman homered twice in his first game back in Baltimore. The swing that put Boston ahead came out of something he said in the eighth inning.

Baltimore played his old walk-up song. The crowd stood. So did the Baltimore dugout, applauding the catcher they had traded away a month before.

Adley Rutschman stepped in at Oriole Park at Camden Yards on Thursday, September 3. He was wearing a Boston Red Sox jersey there for the first time. Between innings, the Orioles ran a video tribute for him. He had been theirs for five seasons.

He was the first pick of the entire 2019 draft. That summer he also won the Golden Spikes Award, which USA Baseball gives to the best amateur player in the country. Baltimore has a long line of catchers, but the Orioles rebuilt around this one.

He had not hit well since he got to Boston, though. The Red Sox traded for him at the August 3 deadline, and he made his Boston debut on August 11. He hit his first home run for them a week later. Since the trade he had batted .193.

So the ovation was for the catcher Baltimore remembered, not the one Boston had been watching.

He answered the ovation with two swings

In the first inning, Rutschman turned on the third pitch he saw and drove it 377 feet to right-center. The pitcher was Brandon Young, who used to throw to him.

Five innings later, he did it again. Another ball to right-center, this one 389 feet.

Both were solo shots. The first was his tenth home run of the season, and only his second in a Boston uniform. Together they gave him the fifth multi-homer game of his career.

He had already done this once this year. Back on April 24 he hit two off Boston while wearing orange. Two homers for Baltimore in April, two for Boston in September. According to OptaSTATS, no major leaguer had ever had a multi-homer game on both sides of the same matchup in one season.

So a three-time All-Star answered a month of .193 with two swings and two souvenirs.

The eighth inning was the catcher’s inning

Boston came up in the eighth with the game tied 3-3. Rutschman reached base on a grounder to third. Then Baltimore went to the bullpen for Yennier Cano, a reliever Rutschman had caught for four years. Sogard drove Cano’s pitch 395 feet to right-center, and Boston led 5-3.

Rutschman kept it simple afterward. “All of it was special,” he said, “a true testament to them as an organization.”

Boston added a run in the ninth. Baltimore answered with two, and the Red Sox held on 6-5. The loss left the Orioles a game and a half out of the last wild-card spot, which is the strange arithmetic of a homecoming. The people cheering him were rooting hard against the result.

This season you will catch pitchers whose habits nobody else can see, because nobody else is looking from where you crouch. Write them down. Then say them out loud, in the dugout, to the kid hitting next. What you learn back there was never only yours.

Try this at your next practice

• The pitcher card. Take an index card for every pitcher on your staff. Write three lines on it: his best pitch, the pitch he throws when he needs a strike, and the one that gets away from him. Add a line after every outing you catch. Fill enough cards and you become the one your teammates come ask, the way Sogard came to Rutschman.
• The between-innings sentence. Every half inning you catch, come back to the dugout and tell one teammate one thing you noticed. Just one sentence. “He’s leaving the changeup up.” “They’re all sitting fastball.” The habit of saying it out loud is the whole drill, and it is what turned four years of Rutschman’s information into two runs.
• Bullpen tells. Watch a teammate throw his bullpen and write down what changes in his delivery on the off-speed pitch — the arm slot, the tempo, the glove. Then check yourself during the game. A catcher who can see a tell in his own pitcher can see one in the other team’s.

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Sources: Adley Rutschman returns to Camden Yards — and homers twice for the Red Sox (AP via ClickOrlando) · Adley Rutschman homers twice in Baltimore return as Red Sox hold off Orioles 6-5 (Boston Sports Journal) · Adley Rutschman ‘felt the love’ in Orioles return (Yahoo Sports) · Red Sox 6, Orioles 5 — box score and scoring plays (ESPN).