One of the most interesting defensive sagas in baseball in 2025 is happening in Anaheim.
It's about catching -- specifically, the knee-down catching technique that has skyrocketed to omnipresence throughout the Major Leagues. It's about the evolution of the game. And it's about Logan O'Hoppe.
Change in baseball happens slowly, but once it does, it can be sweeping. Just look at how the shift spread around the league during the 2010s. That's what's happening now with catcher stances.
In 2025, essentially every MLB catcher catches with at least one knee down on the ground. You can see that trend on Statcast's new catcher stance leaderboard, which uses the Hawk-Eye biomechanical tracking data that's been available since 2020.
The traditional catcher's squat -- the way catchers caught for decades, with both knees up off the ground -- is rarely used at the Major League level today. Even just over the last five years, MLB catchers have gone from using a knee-down stance under 25% of the time to using one over 95% of the time. The reason is that dropping to a knee helps catchers get lower, which, on the whole, pays big dividends for pitch framing without much cost in terms of blocking.
And that brings us to O'Hoppe.
This season, the Angels catcher tried to zig while the rest of the league zagged. Struggling with pitch framing even while using a knee-down stance, O'Hoppe reversed course and switched to a traditional, both-knees-up crouch.
It worked … until it didn't. After a brief boost in his framing following the change, O'Hoppe's results dropped off again. So he went back. And now he's a knee-down catcher again.
"I hate change," O'Hoppe told MLB.com. "Like, I think that's a huge flaw of mine. It's just annoying to have to always feel like you need to keep evolving and keep changing. I wish I had something concrete that I could always stick to. But I feel like I've got that now. And I'm grateful for that."
Here's how O'Hoppe became the unlikely epicenter of the trend in MLB catcher stances -- by combining old-school and new-school catching all in one season.

O'Hoppe's 2025 season behind the plate has two inflection points: April 29 and June 7. The first is when he switched to a traditional squat. The second is when he went back to catching with a knee down.
The numbers defining each phase of O'Hoppe's catching style are as clear as it gets:
O'Hoppe's catching stances in 2025
According to Statcast's skeletal tracking data
- Through April 26 -- 97% knee down / 3% both knees up
- April 29 - June 4 -- 1% knee down / 99% both knees up
- Since June 7 -- 96% knee down / 4% both knees up
O'Hoppe entered the season following the trend of MLB catchers overall. He'd increased his frequency of knee-down catching in every season since his big league debut in 2022, and by Opening Day this year, he was doing it basically all the time.
That's something O'Hoppe couldn't have imagined even when he was first drafted in 2018, which isn't very long ago at all. But that's the direction pro ball has gone, and fast. O'Hoppe did his best to evolve with it.
"There's more now than I ever thought the game had in store," O'Hoppe said. "I just never thought that there would be this much information, or things that you needed to make sure were right, at this level. It's a challenge I'm working with."
But over the first month of this season, O'Hoppe struggled at the one thing knee-down catching was supposed to help him with: pitch framing. He was one of the least effective catchers in the Majors at stealing strikes on pitches close to the edges of the zone. His blocking wasn't great, either.
O'Hoppe's framing, Opening Day through April 26 (knee-down setup)
- Called strike % on borderline pitches caught: 38.6%
- MLB rank: 38th of 42 regular catchers
And he just didn't feel right. So after his game behind the plate on April 26, O'Hoppe and Angels catching coach Jerry Narron came to the counterintuitive decision: He was going to catch with both knees up.
"It was about getting back to what I do naturally, what feels comfortable," O'Hoppe said. "Because before that, I really didn't feel comfortable being in any position. So I was like, 'I'm just gonna get back to the one I'm most comfortable in, and build from the ground up.'"
When O'Hoppe caught his next game on April 29, he was back up on his feet. And he looked better. More natural.
Over his first week back in the traditional crouch, O'Hoppe's pitch framing improved to the tune of 45.6% called strikes on borderline pitches, a top-10 mark among catchers over that (albeit brief) timespan and well above the 2025 MLB average of 42.3%.
Still, he had to look around the league and see that basically no other catchers were catching that way. At the time O'Hoppe went to the knees-up setup, only two other catchers were still doing it with any regularity -- 35-year-old veteran Austin Barnes, and Kyle Higashioka and his ultra-flexible ankles.
But O'Hoppe plowed ahead. Succeeding in the big leagues sometimes takes adjustments much more out-of-the-box than the one he was trying.
"I've tried so much stuff over the past years that nothing feels weird anymore," O'Hoppe said. "It may feel different at first, but I feel like I've tried so much now that it really doesn't even matter."
The problem was, O'Hoppe's framing boost didn't last. After that first week of knees-up catching, he slipped back to the level he was before, with the knee down. For the next month, he only got called strikes on 39% of borderline pitches, again a bottom-tier mark among catchers. Plus, his blocking numbers were still lagging. And on top of that, he was running into a new problem, setting up in his stance too early and telegraphing his pitch locations.
O'Hoppe's framing, April 29 through June 4 (knees-up setup)
- Called strike % on borderline pitches caught: 39.8%
- MLB rank: 37th of 45 regular catchers
The crouch experiment was fun while it lasted, but without sustainable results, O'Hoppe resigned himself to the inevitable: The rest of the league was catching with their knees down for a reason. By early June, it was time to try it again.
O'Hoppe's last game as a traditional knees-up catcher was June 4. His next game, on June 7, he was one-knee-down again.
But this time, O'Hoppe's knee-down stance looked a little different than the one he was using earlier in the season. The knee on the ground had switched.
Back in April, O'Hoppe primarily had his right knee down with his left leg up -- that was the case for four out of every five pitches he caught. Now, his left knee is always the one that's down.
The reason: It's not quite both knees up, but it's as similar as he can get.
"It was the closest to my normal stance when I have two feet down and I've always felt the most comfortable," O'Hoppe said. "That is the closest thing to my most comfortable position."
To figure out exactly how he wanted to set up, O'Hoppe watched video of knee-down catchers with similar body types, studying the moves they make so he could replicate them. He took all the reps he could off the pitching machine, but gleaned stronger feedback from catching the Angels pitching staff in bullpen sessions, where he could deploy his new knee-down stance in game-like conditions.
Once he brought the left-knee-down stance into real games, change again sparked improvements. And this time they've been sustainable.
O'Hoppe's framing since June 7 (knee-down setup)
- Called strike % on borderline pitches caught: 45.1%
- MLB rank: T-3rd-best among 37 regular catchers
O'Hoppe has been down on the left knee for almost a month now, and his pitch framing has bounced back. He also is more confident catching "misfires" -- pitches where the pitcher misses his target -- which he calls the hardest pitches to receive.
And the way he sets up behind the plate now seems to be benefitting the Angels' pitching staff as a whole.
When throwing to O'Hoppe in his original right-knee-down setup in April, Angels pitchers produced a run value of negative-14. And with O'Hoppe behind the plate after switching to a traditional knees-up crouch, Angels pitchers had a run value of -35. (A positive number is good; that's runs prevented for the pitcher. A negative number is bad; that's extra runs created by the opposing offense.)
But with O'Hoppe in his new left-knee-down setup, Angels pitchers have generated a value of plus-14 runs prevented.
"I feel like this step of going back to the knee has really helped," O'Hoppe said. "But I don't think it would have been as good for me if I went just from one knee and then changed one-knee positions [to the other knee]. I'm happy I went back to the knees-up. I felt like it gave me a little reset."
O'Hoppe's blast-from-the-past, knees-up catching experiment might have only lasted a month or so, but he doesn't see it as a failure. He sees it as essential.
The journey that's taken him through polar opposite defensive approaches -- from the new school of catching to the old school and back again -- has shown him that change is maddening but educational. And maybe inevitable.
"We'd be here all day if I told you everything that I've learned from it," O'Hoppe said. "But it opened my mind. So as much as I hate the change, and as frustrating as it was to not have something concrete to follow, it has taught me a lot."