It has happened already with Patrick Bailey, and as he continues to establish himself as an MLB catcher, it will continue to happen.
The tendency with emerging young stars is to figure out who they are, so Bailey has been compared often to Buster Posey. The throwing ability leads others to bring up Pudge Rodriguez, and his quickness behind the plate might lead some to compare him to J.T. Realmuto. Bailey is a switch-hitter with a good glove, which could lead to comparisons to a couple of Baltimore Orioles, Matt Wieters and current star Adley Rutschman.
But the best comparison right now might actually be to a current teammate, a Giants legend who isn't Posey but played with him. When Giants bullpen/catching coach Craig Albernaz talks about Bailey, he compares him to infielders who are able to get throws off from different angles. In that respect, perhaps Bailey is actually most similar to Brandon Crawford.
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"[Infielders] have to throw from a bunch of different angles, depending on the ball, where your feet go, the [speed] of the runner. For me, it's the same thing as catching," Albernaz said. "When the runner goes, being able to throw from different arm slots is going to quicken your exchange time, and also you don't lose much velocity on the ball. You might lose some, but it's not as drastic as everyone thinks.
"For Patty, it's just get the ball in your hand, and wherever the pitch is, just get off and sling it. That's the mindset he has and he's extremely talented, and he can accurately put the ball where he wants."
Even at his peak, Crawford never had the strongest arm at the shortstop position. But he always has seemed to have a frighteningly accurate stopwatch running through his head, and he always has had a feel for exactly what's needed on any given play. Bailey has shown the same skills early on, knowing when he can focus on his usual throwing mechanics and when he simply has to grab the ball and sling it.
Like Crawford, who has spent 13 years hitting his first basemen in the chest, Bailey seems to put the ball on the right-field side of the bag more often than not. That makes life easier for his infielders, and it's crucial given how often the Giants challenge plays. Bailey already has made multiple throws this season that appeared to be late, but in fact allowed the receiver to tag a runner's legs or back before he touched the base.
San Francisco Giants
Through 42 games, Bailey has been tested 33 times. He has thrown out 13 of those runners -- the most in the majors since he was recalled from Triple-A -- despite ranking outside the top 20 in average throwing velocity. While there's a lot that goes into nabbing baserunners -- from the pre-game work done by Mark Hallberg and the rest of the coaches, to the tags applied by Crawford and others -- it's not hard to see how Bailey has been so successful, so fast.
He ranks second in the majors in average pop time at 1.87 seconds, behind only Realmuto, the game's best all-around catcher in recent years. Pop time is the amount of time between the moment a pitch hits the catcher's mitt to the moment it reaches an infielder's receiving point at the center of the bag.
Realmuto leads the league every year, but nobody else has been faster than Bailey, who is well under the MLB average of two seconds. Recently, Albernaz sat down with NBC Sports Bay Area to break down some of his rookie catcher's best throws and explain how Bailey is able to get the ball out of his hand so quickly.
On June 30 against the New York Mets, Bailey gave the Giants a lead with a three-run homer in the eighth and then helped Camilo Doval close it out by cutting Starling Marte down at second base in the ninth. Marte has only been caught four times in 28 attempts this year, so Bailey needed to be perfect. He was, with a 1.81 pop time that is his second-fastest of the year.
When you watch it, you see Bailey keeping an eye on Marte and start his move to second before the 101-mph pitch is halfway to the plate.
"The first thing he does is he reads the runner," Albernaz said. "So he knows he's going, so now you can anticipate, and what he does really well is he gets his back side and his weight shifted to his front leg, so now, by shifting his weight to his front leg before the ball gets there, now he can free up his right leg to get up and down.
"He's shifted and ready to go before the ball gets there, and now he's just redirecting the ball into his hand. It's in front of him, so now when that right foot gets down, his arm stroke is getting into the right spot before that left foot hits."
As Albernaz watches that play, he sees Bailey's left foot get down quickly. That has been the main thing the staff has stressed with him since he arrived at summer camp in 2020, just a few weeks after he was taken in the first round of the MLB draft.
"All the best athletes, they hit the brakes well. The left foot, for a catcher, when they're throwing, that's hitting the brakes. That foot has to get down," Albernaz said. "As soon as that left foot gets down, it hits the brakes and then the flow just generates through it. If you look at J.T. and Patty, when that left foot hits, he generates so much force that his left foot actually will move. It doesn't just stay there. He's generating so much that his left foot will actually lose a little ground or spin to the side because he's driving so hard."
It's not easy to throw a runner out on a 101-mph cutter, but the ball at least gets to you quickly. That wasn't the case earlier on that road trip, when Bailey threw Whit Merrifield out on an Alex Wood changeup that was so low Bailey's glove was touching the dirt when he caught it.
Merrifield, who has 19 stolen bases this year, initially was ruled safe, but a review overturned the call. As he has done often, Bailey whipped the ball sidearm because it was his only shot to get the ball down to second quickly.
It's not how you would teach a young catcher, but when Bailey arrived, Albernaz knew the Giants shouldn't try to change his methods. They wanted him to stay athletic behind the plate, and when the two now warm up before games, Bailey works on throwing from different angles.
"He's always slung it," Albernaz said. "Usually your first instinct [as a coach] is to change him, but we've talked about it and that's something he does really well. With him, we talk through it and there are certain checkpoints that he has. Usually when you throw from the side, your fingers will get below the ball. Our main conscious effort is to make sure his fingers just stay above the ball a little bit so he controls that ball flight, so it doesn't have extreme tail to it.
"When he's slinging it from the side, you want to make sure that you don't stand up and get really tall, and that's going to affect ball flight as well. That's something we addressed this offseason."
Bailey has only had one series against the Los Angeles Dodgers as a big leaguer, but he made an immediate impact. On a wild Friday night at Dodger Stadium, he threw Mookie Betts out at third in the bottom of the ninth. That helped send the game to extra innings and set the tone for a Giants sweep.
Betts isn't as fast as he was in his prime, but he has only been thrown out 11 times in four seasons with the Dodgers -- and he got a good jump. Bailey did, too.
"As soon as you see him going, you want to go, too," Albernaz said. "That's what Patty is doing. He sees the big jump, he knows where the pitch is going to be, and that's where you can explode through it."
Albernaz saw two things on that play that stood out. Casey Schmitt made a tremendous tag while on the move, and Bailey did a good job of "letting the ball travel to him while moving his body." The exchange after the ball hit his glove was lightning-fast, with Bailey redirecting it to his hand as he stood up.
"That's the beauty of Patty Bailey," Albernaz said. "He has different arm strokes, which is going to affect his exchange, so no matter where the pitch is he has a solution to throw out that runner. That's something that's so rare and something that he takes a lot of pride in, especially with his pregame work and throwing and all that stuff. That situation there, that [exchange] was huge, because [Betts] got a pretty big jump."