Photo by Bailey Accorto for TalkNats
On April 15, 2024, the Washington Nationals placed catcher Keibert Ruiz on the 10-day injured list with influenza (the flu). It was reported that Ruiz lost almost 20 pounds which was nearly 10 percent of his body weight — and he certainly wasn’t fat before he got the flu. He played two games in a rehab assignment with Double-A Harrisburg and came off the IL and then played three games in a row without a day of rest. What were Ruiz’s bosses thinking?
“He was pretty sick, and he lost a lot of weight,” former-manager Dave Martinez said before Ruiz’s return to play from the flu.
“We’ll keep an eye on him and make sure he’s feeling good every day. But he’s excited to be back. I think it would be kind of hard [to regain all of his weight] because he’s a catcher, and he sweats a lot — a lot, a lot, but my big thing is his strength. I just want to make sure he’s hydrated and that we keep a really close eye on him because it is a demanding job to go out there and catch every day, nine innings.”
What type of an eye did they keep on Ruiz? It must have been a blind eye. He played in 127 games in that 2024 season even after missing 13 games with the flu. In the first eight games of the season, he only sat one game.
When you go back and think about Ruiz’s good start to the 2024 season, even before he got the flu, he started strong, and was shoved hard, and his season went straight down from that first week when he had a .783 OPS. His manager said, “He wanted to play,” as the excuse to shove so hard on him. There were times Ruiz would play both sides of a doubleheader. It boggles the mind.
The new Washington Nationals’ plan has been to play Ruiz no more than two consecutive full games. The theory is you get less with more — and it is now working that way. In 2024, Ruiz played in 85.2 percent of the games when he was on the roster, which is crazy for a catcher. And you wonder why he finished the season with a career worse at the time with a .619 OPS and bottom ratings in defense. It got worse in 2025 when Ruiz suffered multiple concussions and finished the season with a .595 OPS.
There were rumors that if Harry Ford made the Opening Day roster in 2026 that Ruiz would be DFA’d. It was so bad that a Twitter account posted that Ruiz was DFA’d. That didn’t happen. Now it looks like good fortune the way it has worked out.
With keeping Ruiz fresh and working with him on defense and a new approach at the plate, this season has the catcher on a resurgence. His SLG is the highest of his Nats career at .500 currently. While Ruiz isn’t taking enough walks, the high SLG with a .260 batting average, has him at a very respectable .777 OPS. Ruiz now ranks in the Top-10 highest ranked catchers in MLB, and he is no longer a black hole in the batting order. And his defense is now on the plus side.
In current team valuations, Ruiz (+0.8) is the fifth ranked position player in WAR value behind James Wood, CJ Abrams, Daylen Lile, and Jacob Young. To annualize Ruiz’s value, he is on a +2.5 WAR pace for the 2026 season. To go from a possible bust to the team’s answer at catcher with Ford in the wings is a huge development.
With Ruiz showing positive value at the catcher position, that leaves the team with one fewer need towards the future. If you had to point to the positions of need, it’s third base, first base, closer, and starting pitching. Some of those holes might be filled from team depth with Brady House, Yohandy Morales, and Seaver King in the near-future on the positional player side.
The pitching might be filled partially from within plus free agency. The Nationals are just one-game from .500 and playing well ahead of projections. By having positive developments like the Ruiz situation, there is more optimism for the future.
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