Can Connor Wong's Offensive Breakout in 2024 Be Trusted?

With Kyle Teel headed to Chicago, Connor Wong is the catcher of both the present and the future for the Boston Red Sox. In 2024, he had a full-on breakout season. In 2023, Wong's first full season in the big leagues, he slashed .235/.288/.385 for a wRC+ of 78. In 2024, Wong blew those numbers out of the water, slashing .280/.333/.425 with a 110 wRC+. Not only was that an enormous improvement, but it made him the seventh-best hitting catcher in baseball (minimum 400 plate appearances). While he had a couple of dry spells throughout the season, Wong could be counted on when he stepped to the plate. He peppered the Green Monster with doubles, and all but one of his 13 home runs were to the pull side. His 11.9% pulled fly ball rate put him in the 77th percentile, which made him a great fit for Fenway Park. What caused this offensive surge? Let’s take a look, keeping an eye out for indications that it will or won't be sustainable as we head into 2025.

The first thing we notice when we compare the two seasons is that Wong lowered his strikeout rate by nearly 10 points from 2023 to 2024, going from 33.3% to 23.5%. His 29.5% chase rate is also uncomfortably high, but it's a drop of five percentage points from last season, and that's an enormous improvement. Wong also increased his contact rate on pitches in the zone. Those kinds of gains in plate discipline are extremely encouraging; they speak to seeing the ball better and making better swing decisions, and they tend to carry over from one season to the next. Wong is being more selective, and that allows him to get deeper into counts and to swing at pitches that give him a better chance to do damage. That’s the type of hitter the Red Sox hope Wong can be throughout his tenure in Boston. However, the strikeout rate doesn’t tell the entire story.

Swinging at better pitches and making more contact in the zone is usually a recipe for hitting the ball harder, but Wong's contact quality numbers fell off in a big way. His average exit velocity fell all the way to the 11th percentile and his 34.% hard-hit rate put him in the 20th. He just didn't seem to have the top-end power that he flashed in previous seasons, and that is a very concerning development.

Wong also appeared to get very lucky in 2024. His .348 BABIP (batting average on balls in play), was the seventh-highest in baseball. In fact, over the past five seasons, only one catcher has run a higher BABIP. Wong's .330 wOBA was also a whopping 41 points higher than his .289 xwOBA. Among batters who made at least 400 plate appearances, that was the second-highest gap in baseball. Look how far he is into the lucky side of this graph.

If he's any closer to the dotted line that shows his expected performance, Wong's season looks very, very different. That kind of overperformance just isn't sustainable. Counting on luck to continue season after season is something that can’t happen on a major league baseball team. That’s not to say that Wong won’t be a contributing member of the team and counted on to come through in big situations, but his luck is bound to run out at some point.

It's important to note that by most metrics, Wong made great strides at the plate in 2024. That's huge, and if his exit velocity numbers bounce back up, there's genuine reason to expect him to keep improving. All the same, it wouldn't be reasonable to expect him to keep outperforming his underlying numbers by so much. The hope should be that last season's success inspires Wong to continue being selective with his swings and keep abusing the Green Monster. However, we should expect him to regress season in 2025. That’s something the Red Sox, who are serious about contending, can’t afford. Let’s all hope that Wong believes in his offensive breakout from 2024 and does everything necessary to make it look like the first in a long line of successful seasons behind the dish in Boston.