The Los Angeles Angels had a lot of players who suffered through tough seasons in 2025, but you’d be hard-pressed to find one that started out with more promise than catcher Logan O’Hoppe. He was on the way to setting a franchise record for home runs for a catcher at the end of June with 17, but O’Hoppe fell apart completely in the last three months of the season.
The Angels think he’s salvageable, and they’re doing a few things to prove it. New manager Kurt Suzuki played for 15 seasons as a big-league catcher, including several with the Halos, so he knows what’s going to be involved in fixing O’Hoppe. He’s also hired a catching coach with the expertise to get it done, at least on paper, and there’s talk that O’Hoppe might actually be an All-Star this year.
“Logan is a special player,” Suzuki said in a piece written by Rhett Bollinger of MLB.com. “Obviously he's a young player. He's still learning just like all of us when we were younger. You never stop learning. I'm excited for Logan to keep trying to get better. The guy is one of the hardest workers that I've ever been around. He wants to be better. He's determined to be better.”
O’HOppe’s new coaching mentor is Max Stassi, who also spent ten years as a big-league catcher. Stassi was known for his expertise in framing and improving pitchers, and according to Suzuki he already has ideas for improving O’Hoppe.
“I call it an obsession he has with receiving, with catching, all the drills that he does,” Suzuki said of Stassi. “I mean, this guy never stops trying to learn, and I think having a young catcher in Logan is definitely going to be helped by having Stassi around. That's one of our biggest focuses. I've been talking to him this offseason, and he's got all these plans and ideas that he wants to do with Logan. And I couldn't be more excited.”
Suzuki and Stassi aren’t the ones talking about O’Hoppe being a potential All-Star. They’re leaving that to GM Perry Minasian, who’re more than a bit of a loose cannon whenever he has a microphone in front of him.
“I'm expecting a better Logan O’Hoppe,” Minasian said. “Logan is a big part of this thing, and [Kurt and him] have a great relationship. And I believe Logan can turn into an All-Star player. He's got that type of potential.”