Athletics catcher Shea Langeliers finished his swing and turned toward home plate as soon as he heard an unmistakable sound: his foul ball ricocheting hard off the mask of Brewers backstop William Contreras.
Langeliers knows that pain well. In fact, he and Contreras are among the few who truly understand it.
Only those who have spent sufficient time behind the plate can say from experience they know what it’s like to deal with foul tips, and it’s unsurprisingly not a welcome feeling.
“You’re just getting blindsided, and it’s terrible,” Giants catcher Sam Huff said.
It’s hardly a shock that foul tips received rather negative reviews from a host of Major League catchers interviewed by MLB.com. But to a man, those backstops all shared the same sentiment, most in the exact same words: It’s just “part of the game.”
“I want to be a catcher, no?” Royals veteran Salvador Perez said before a game earlier this season. “That comes with that. It just depends where you get hit.”
To Langeliers, for example, the worst place to be hit is the top of the knee, just above the edge of the shin guard. Hearing his fellow catcher’s testimony, Perez rolled up his right pant leg to reveal a large, dark bruise in the middle of a tattoo on his thigh.
“I got one,” Perez proclaimed.
He’d suffered it two days earlier, and although the pain had faded, the mark remained from an impact that Huff likened to taking a punch — without consent or preparation.
“It’s like you [are] throwing a baseball right at your bicep or just taking a ball and chucking it to your hip or something,” Huff said. “You can’t really do anything about it because you can’t control where it’s going.”
Catchers have plenty of equipment to protect themselves as much as they can, but it only goes so far. Huff recalled taking a foul tip to a specific part of his shoulder, near the collarbone — then being hit in the same spot two days later. For two weeks, he couldn’t lift his right arm above his head.
And of course, there’s always one region where no catcher ever wants to be hit — protection or not. When Huff was with the Rangers, teammate Mitch Garver showed him video of a foul tip to the groin that sent Garver to the hospital, prompting Huff to change to a “bulletproof cup” preferred by MMA fighters.
Mets rookie Hayden Senger called that “unpleasant area” his least favorite place to get hit (the inner thigh is a close second). He speaks from experience.
“I had one game in high school where I got hit twice in the cup within three pitches, and that didn’t feel good,” Senger recalled.
Does ‘one knee down’ help or hurt?
Where catchers are most vulnerable to foul tips has changed in recent years thanks to a drastic shift in their positioning behind the plate.
In 2025, every MLB catcher receives the ball with a knee down, a stance rarely used as recently as 2020. That year, only two of 38 qualified catchers used the one-knee stance more than 90 percent of the time. This season, 55 of 58 backstops meet that criterion. Only three AL West catchers — the Astros’ Yainer Diaz (86%), the Angels’ Logan O’Hoppe (68%) and the Rangers’ Kyle Higashioka (41%) fall below that line.
Having one knee down primarily helps catchers frame pitches better and is intended to lessen the physical wear and tear as well. Critics of the new trend point to difficulties in blocking and throwing out would-be basestealers, but Braves rookie Drake Baldwin pushed back on that opinion.
“People say you can’t block out of one knee, but I think a lot of the data has shown if you’re doing the one-knee right, you can actually block better, keep the ball closer and even throw about pretty similar to even better than that,” said Baldwin, who has one knee down 98% of the time this season. “I think there’s a lot of benefit to [having] one knee down.”
For all its positives, though, the new stance opens catchers up (literally) to being hit by foul tips. Catchers’ thighs are more exposed, and it’s harder to hide their throwing hand somewhere it’s not at risk of being nicked.
“You get hit the same amount, but it’s just a higher risk of getting it not on the catching gear,” Langeliers said.
That does appear to be changing. According to Baldwin, purveyors of athletic gear are adjusting to the change, lengthening shin guards to better protect backstops who have a knee down.
Blue Jays veteran Tyler Heineman said some catchers wear padded sliding shorts as an extra layer of safety, but there’s only so much they can do, particularly in the new stance.
“It’s really impossible to protect from basically your hips to your knees,” Heineman said.
‘I’m just going to wear it tonight’
As dangerous as foul tips can be, Yankees catcher J.C. Escarra said they don’t actually happen as often as many might think. Sometimes, though, they have a tendency to all come at once — although Escarra says that’s not necessarily a bad thing, at least for his team.
“A couple games ago, I got hit four or five times,” Escarra recalled. “It’s good when I get hit, because that means they didn’t hit the baseball forward.”
Langeliers says it’s hard to put a number on how many foul tips he takes on average, but he certainly remembers the bad nights.
“There’s been games where it’s like four or five times I’ve been hit in the head, four or five times I’ll take something off the body,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Alright, I’m just going to wear it tonight, I guess.’”
While a ball to the mask or a vulnerable spot can cause lasting damage, most foul tips leave only a mark. Escarra considers himself fortunate never to have dealt with a particularly bad foul tip injury — an admission that caused him to knock on the wood of his locker — but he’s had his share of bumps and bruises.
Minor dings caused by foul tips to the wrong spots, particularly those off the hands, can certainly affect catchers at the plate. But their impact is usually delayed.
“I think it’s more the next day and two days after that, once it gets swollen,” Escarra said. “Once you’re in the moment, you feel it, but your adrenaline is going, so you forget about it.”
According to several catchers, it’s all in how you react. Huff said his goal is not to show pain, unless it’s so bad he needs a trainer to come out. Langeliers, meanwhile, has learned to take his lumps — literally — so it doesn’t hurt his team.
“It’s kind of another mental battle because when the pitch is coming, you can kind of feel whether the guy’s going to swing or not,” the A’s backstop said. “Sometimes we’ll flinch, and if he check-swings, it could cost you a strike. You’re playing a little mental game with yourself. It’s kind of like, ‘If I flinch and he fouls it off, it’s still going to hit me because I’m still sitting there, so I might as well not flinch.’”
It’s not just catchers who are at risk, of course. Not only do hitters tend to foul pitches off their own lower bodies, but the home-plate umpire can take a beating behind the dish from a ball that evades (or ricochets past) the catcher.
Naturally, umps are understanding when catchers need a moment after a nasty foul tip to an unprotected spot.
“The umpires are really good, because they get it, too,” Rays catcher Matt Thaiss said. “It’s mutual.”
Hitters check on catchers and apologize if they cause some pain as a result of a swing — usually, anyway. (If they don’t, it’s not a big deal — Senger said no apology is necessary.)
When it’s a catcher in the batter’s box, the mood is a little different. Langeliers likes to joke around with an opposing catcher after a foul tip, then make sure his counterpart is alright.
Few people have been there before, but Langeliers has.
“I feel awful when I do it, because I know exactly what it feels like,” he said.
