Ceddanne Rafaela Can Jump

Ceddanne Rafaela can jump. He can bound up and over a high outfield wall to rob a home run. He can leap forward to secure a ball that otherwise would have fallen out of his reach. He can spring up like a cat to turn a double play after laying out for a catch. But none of those jumps are the kind I’m referring to. I’m talking about this:

In the GIF you just watched, Rafaela travels more than 100 feet in less than five seconds to rob Bo Bichette of extra bases. It’s a stunning catch. It would have been a tough enough play for the Gold Glove winner in right field, let alone for Rafaela coming over from center. That ball had an expected batting average of .820 off the bat, and just look how far away Wilyer Abreu is when he realizes all he can do is back off and let his teammate work his magic. You don’t need Statcast to tell you that’s a five-star catch, and it stands out even among the nine five-star catches we’ve seen this year. It was one of only three with a catch probability of 5%.

Rafaela’s slide into the outfield wall, the way he raised his glove in triumph, and the fact that this happened on the first pitch of the game make this an endlessly rewatchable highlight. Yet, what really makes this catch so spectacular is the sheer amount of ground he had to cover before he could even consider reaching out for the ball. It’s not that he crashed into the Wasabi sign in right field, but that he was anywhere close to the sign to begin with. In other words, it’s all about his jump.

Baseball Savant defines “outfielder jump” as the number of feet above or below average that an outfielder travels in the proper direction in the first three seconds after a pitch is released, on plays with a catch probability of 90% or harder (two-star or above). It’s a valuable metric because it measures a skill that’s almost impossible for fans to judge with the eye test alone. Most of us watch most of our baseball on TV, a medium that usually prevents us from seeing where the outfielders are standing at the moment each pitch is released. Unless you’re watching a well-framed replay of a dazzling catch (like the one above), it’s rare that you’ll see an outfielder’s initial reaction to a ball coming his way. So, outfielder jump is one of my favorite Statcast tools. If Rafaela frequents Baseball Savant, I have a feeling it’s one of his favorites too:

So far in 2025, Rafaela is the league leader in outfielder jump, and it’s not particularly close. At 6.2 feet above average, his jump is longer than the median height of a major league player. Think of it this way: If Rafaela and a league-average outfield jumper were both running for the same ball from the same starting point, it would only take three seconds for Rafaela to gain so much ground that Mike Trout could comfortably lie down between the two outfielders. What’s more, Rafaela’s average jump puts him 1.4 feet ahead of the next best jumper, Johan Rojas. More than half of qualified outfielders fall within 1.4 feet of league average, in either direction. Rafaela’s jumps have been at least 1.4 feet better than the those of everyone else. The small-sample-size caveat that we tack on to almost every article in April certainly applies here, but if we can marvel at what Randy Rodríguez is doing, we can marvel at Rafaela’s accomplishments too. Sustainable or not, no one lucks into a great outfield jump. You can either move that fast or you can’t. And Rafaela can.

Having said that, Rafaela’s speed is actually something of an enigma. One reason I find his jump numbers so fascinating is that, while he is fast, I’ve never considered him a first-rate speedster. His 28.3 ft/sec sprint speed ranks in the 84th percentile this season. He has compiled just 1.8 baserunning runs (BsR) through 201 career games. In his prospect days, evaluators disagreed about whether his speed was truly elite (70 FV) or closer to plus (60 FV). Here at FanGraphs, Eric Longenhagen gave Rafaela a 60 grade in 2023 before upping it to 70 a year later. As those differing grades suggest, measuring speed is more nuanced than one might think.

Dating back to his debut season in 2023, Rafaela ranks 72nd in sprint speed among qualified runners (min. 10 competitive runs), putting him in the 84th percentile. Compared to his fellow center fielders, he ranks 23rd, just barely landing him in the top half of qualifiers at the position. However, his average time from home to first base ranks in the 95th percentile of baserunners. That’s a pronounced difference, especially for a right-handed batter; most players whose home to first rankings are significantly better than their sprint speed rankings are lefties who have the advantage of their batter’s box being closer to first base. Over the past three seasons, only four right-handed hitting outfielders have a home to first time as fast as Rafaela’s: Brandon Lockridge, Dairon Blanco, Byron Buxton, and Myles Straw.

According to sprint speed, Rafaela is at least half a foot per second slower than any of those four. He trails even further behind in “bolts,” which Statcast defines as any run that clocks in above 30 ft/sec. Lockridge and Blanco have bolted in more than half of their competitive runs. Buxton and Straw have bolted in about 20% of their competitive runs. Meanwhile, Rafaela has only bolted twice in his career. That’s less than 1% of his competitive runs. Since 2023, only one player on the Baseball Savant leaderboard has a higher sprint speed and a lower bolt rate: Cubs rookie Matt Shaw, who has only played 18 career games.

So, Rafaela doesn’t reach the same maximum speeds as the guys we think of as elite runners, but he still covers ground — on the bases and in the field – faster than most other players. Quick reactions and an ability to maintain his speed over multiple seconds, two things measured by outfielder jump, could help explain why. One thing we can say for certain is that it doesn’t have anything to do with running efficient routes. Outfielder jump can be split into three components: “reaction” (feet covered in any direction during the first 1.5 seconds after pitch release), “burst” (feet covered in any direction during the next 1.5 seconds), and “route” (feet covered against the most direct route to the ball in the first three seconds). Rafaela leads the league in each of the first two components. His routes, however, put him among the bottom 10 qualified outfielders. That’s clearly not a problem. In fact, as Davy Andrews found a few years ago, a high route score is negatively correlated with OAA. More often than not, running as quickly as possible as soon as possible is more effective than running in the exact right direction. Rafaela is the proof in the pudding.

To that end, if Rafaela has any sort of speed problem, it might be getting where he’s going too quickly. On this linked play from last season, he was about an inch or two past where he needed to be when the ball reached his glove. It came bouncing off his wrist, and inertia carried him into the wall. Here’s an example from this year of another play that sent him crashing into the fence. He didn’t give himself time to slow down, and a ball he could have played off the wall turned into an embarrassing mistake:

Now comes the part you’ve been dreading: I have no choice but to tell you that Rafaela’s early-season jump numbers are unsustainable. In 2024, he was one of the best jumpers in the majors, much like he is right now. He ranked fourth among qualified fielders. His average jump last year? 3.3 feet above average. That’s only slightly more than half of his current jump score. Outfield jump dates back to 2016, and in that time, no player (min. 10 opportunities) has ever finished a season with an outfield jump above six feet. No qualified outfielder (more two-star opportunities than team games divided by five) has ever finished with an outfield jump above five feet:

With all due respect to Rafaela, it’s hard to believe he’ll continue to be this much better than any other major league outfielder from the past 10 seasons. That said, his average jump could drop by more than a foot, and he’d still have a chance to finish with the best outfield jump numbers we’ve ever seen from a qualified player. Since he emerged as a top prospect during the 2022 campaign, evaluators have had nothing but the highest of praise for Rafaela’s center field defense. The team at Baseball America specifically took note of his jumps when ranking him on the publication’s top 100 list in 2023, writing: “Rafaela’s great jumps placed him as one of the best defensive center fielders in pro ball.”

Rafaela lived up to those high expectations in his brief cup of coffee that year. His average jump in 2023 was a ridiculous 6.9 feet above average in seven opportunities. That’s compelling evidence that what we’ve seen this year, in another seven opportunities, isn’t just a fluke. As for his lower jump score in 2024, he has a pretty good excuse. Rafaela only started playing the outfield in 2021, and 2022 was the first year he played more than half of his games in center field. While he played a bit more infield at the big league level in 2023, he still spent the majority of his time in the outfield that season. In 2024, however, Rafaela played more innings at shortstop than at any other position, while also seeing time at second and third base.

Alex Cora acknowledged that what the Red Sox were asking of Rafaela was holding him back from reaching his full defensive potential. “We know how good he can be at short. We know how great he is in center field,” the skipper told reporters. “But the moving around, it takes away from good jumps and being engaged.” Given the context, it seems Cora was talking more about Rafaela’s instincts suffering at shortstop than in center. Still, the point remains: Playing multiple positions can take a toll on a player. Now that Rafaela is exclusively playing center field for the first time in his career, it’s not unreasonable to think he could get better jumps than ever.

Through 20 games this season, Rafaela has already compiled 4 DRS, 3 OAA, and 3 FRV. He has been nothing short of delightful to watch in the outfield. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of his performance at the plate. His discipline has been better – his walks are up and his strikeouts are down – but he’s sending too many balls into the ground. Over 74 trips to the plate, he’s hit only one double, one triple, and one home run. A 40th-percentile xwOBA suggests he could be more productive going forward, but it’s hard to look past his 67 wRC+. It will be even harder for the Red Sox to look past when they have better options available. If/when Masataka Yoshida returns from the IL and/or Roman Anthony forces his way to the show, Rafaela’s glove might not be sufficient to earn him regular playing time if his bat doesn’t come around. So, make sure to appreciate his incredible jumps while you can, and hopefully, he’ll start hitting enough that we get to enjoy his defense for a whole lot longer.

Source