We’ve all seen the Savant screenshots for Dillon Dingler. He’s been in top of the top for almost every fasciate of the game this year. As the title suggests: Dillon Dingler’s off to a scorching start to the 2026 MLB season. Let’s dig into just a few aspects deeper to help show how, and how much, he’s impacted the team than we see from that.
Offense
Power
Currently he has a .936 OPS, which would be .184 points higher than last season’s OPS. That’s partially thanks to his 1.5% increase in walks, but his slugging is carrying a lot of that with a jump to .567 early in this season. That .567 SLG could be just the 6th time a Tigers catcher has had at least .500 SLG in a single season and 2nd only to Rudy York’s 1938 season.
What’s a reason for the jump? He’s destroying 4-Seam fastballs with a .813 SLG. And it’s not luck. His 1.224 xSLG against them is second only to Ben Rice out of the 290 batters who have seen at least 50. His HardHit% vs 4-Seam: 78.6%. His whiffs have seen a drop of over 10% when compared to last year.
Different contact point
His ideal attack angle (between 5° and 20°) is currently at 62.3%. 3 out of every 5 BIP he’s got, he’s making contact at the most idea angle. If we look at his swing path datapoints, a lot remains the same from last year. Similar tilt, similar bat speed, but 2 things stand out a little bit to me. He’s standing closer to the catcher by 2.4” and he’s letting the ball travel 2.7” deeper across the plate. In doing so, he is better able to be on time with his swing to get the point of contact needed to generate this power we are seeing from him. Interestingly as well, his attack direction has now gone from 0° pull to 2° opposite.
Challenges
Dillon has also been so great when it comes to calling challenges as well. No one has challenged more than him and been more successful at this point. If we look at the Net Overturned For metrics for catchers, Dillon’s 10.3 is tops. Interestingly, we can see how hitters have done vs specific catchers as well and we can see that Dillon hasn’t been quite as favorable as hitters have gained 2.2 calls. Savant will combine that together to get total for the two, which has Dillon at 8.1. Which is still terrific! That would have him 3rd amongst all catchers.
Note: if you’d like to read more about it and dig into all the tools available, I highly recommend visiting the Baseball Savant ABS page here.
To give some visualization to the above, here’s a plot to show the two together in quadrants and what each quadrant means:
For extra fun, take a look at where he is when it comes to that total challenge total and wRC+ for catchers:
The only word that comes to mind seeing this: elite.
Conclusion
Dillon’s been an absolute terrorizer for the opposing pitchers while being a great help to his own. We have seen it watching the games, we’ve seen it looking at his stats, and hopefully this will help to appreciate it even more and, hopefully, he doesn’t slow down any time soon.
Chris Brown 
Emily Waldon