Blue Jays Bold Predictions: Alejandro Kirk will be a top-five catcher in baseball in 2025

In January, Toronto Blue Jays catcher Alejandro Kirk was ranked as the eighth best catcher on MLB Networks ‘Top 10 Right Now’ list. The top five was: William Contreras (Milwaukee), Adley Rutschman (Baltimore), Will Smith (Los Angeles Dodgers), Cal Raleigh (Seattle) and JT Realmuto (Philadelphia).

That is an elite group of catchers led by All-Stars and world champions. And, if everything goes right for Kirk this season, there's a chance he could break into that top five by the end of the year.

Since his debut in 2020, Kirk has exhibited the skills on both sides of the ball that have already made him a top 10 catcher in the sport, and he has a chance to improve on that standing this season. Kirk's already elite behind the plate, as evidenced by him leading all catcherswith 38 DRS since the start of 2022.

He also ranks third in blocking runs and fourth in framing runs in that time frame. In fact, Kirk's framing is good it fooled Max Scherzer this spring. It’s one of the reasons pitchers love throwing to him and why Kirk should have been in the Gold Glove conversation last year.

Alejandro Kirk will be a top-five catcher in baseball in 2025

On the offensive side, Kirk has shown that he can be an above average hitter at the plate.

He had a WRC+ of 124 from 2020-'22 before it dipped to a 95 over the last two combined seasons. Despite the dip, he still has a tremendous eye at the plate (11.5% strikeout rate in his career) along with a career .344 on-base percentage.

The biggest knock against Kirk is that he doesn’t hit for a lot of power — he has just 36 career home runs in 434 games —and is one of the game's slowest base runners (he's been worth -16.6 BsR since his debut and was in the 4th percentile in sprint speed last year).

For Kirk to be considered a top five catcher, he’ll need to improve in some parts of his offensive game.

FanGraphs thinks he'll still be strong behind the plate, they project him to be worth 18.9 defensive fWAR this season, but they also seem to think that he'll take the next step offensively as well.

Their steamer projections have Kirk with an offensive fWAR of 6.5 in 2025 compared to his -6.1 mark last year. Kirk has a projected slash line of .271/.349/.413 with a 120 WRC+, 11 home runs and a strikeout rate of 12.2%.

That strikeout rate is expected to be the second best among full-time catchers this season and his projected batting average would fourth, which would be ahead of Rutschman and Smith. There’s no guarantee if Kirk can get to these projections, but he's been smoking the ball off his bat this spring, which is a good sign.

In 2022, there was once a debate about the Toronto Blue Jays catcher of the future would be thanks to the presence of Danny Jansen, Kirk and Gabriel Moreno. Flash forward three years and only Kirk remains.

Kirk's this team's clear No. 1 catcher, and the opportunity is there for him to excel and become one of the top catchers in the game.