Prior to the 2012 season,Baseball America ranked Hedges as the Padres fifth best prospect.[7] Playing for the Fort Wayne TinCaps of the Midwest League,Hedges hit .279/.334/.451 with 10 home runs in 96 games.[8] Scouts considered Hedges to be a stand-out defender who had surprised them with his batting at Class-A.[9][10]
In 2013,MLB.com ranked Hedges the fourth best catching prospect in the minors.[11] He started the year with the Class-A Advanced Lake Elsinore Storm where he hit .270 with four home runs in 66 games. He was promoted to the Double-A San Antonio Missions in August where he hit .224 in 20 games. He was also named to the All-Star Futures Game in 2013.[12]
Hedges received a non-roster invitation to the big league spring training camp for the second time in 2014.[13] He was ranked #27 on Baseball America's Top 100 Prospects list coming into the season.[14] He spent the season with San Antonio,where he hit .225 with 6 home runs over 113 games while throwing out 38% of opposing base runners.
San Diego Padres
In 2015,Hedges joined the El Paso Chihuahuas of the Class AAAPacific Coast League.[15] The Padres promoted Hedges to the major leagues on May 4,bringing him up as a back-up to Derek Norris after designating Wil Nieves for assignment.[16] Hedges had hit .324 with 2 home runs in 79 at-bats for the Chihuahuas.[17] On May 6,Hedges notched his first Major League hit,an RBI single in the third inning of a game against the San Francisco Giants.[18] He recorded 137 plate appearances during the 2015 season,hitting for a .168 batting average.[19] In the offseason,Hedges played for the Leones del Escogido of the Dominican Winter League.[20]
The Padres invited Hedges to spring training in 2016,but began the season in El Paso.[21] In April,he suffered a fractured hamate bone in his left hand which required surgery.[22] He returned to the Triple-A club six weeks after the operation and then went on a run where he hit 14 home runs and posted a .395 batting average over a 30-game stretch.[23] He finished the season with a .326/.353/.597 batting line and 21 home runs in his 82 games with El Paso,which was considered a breakout season for a player regarded as a defense-first catcher.[24] Hedges joined the Padres for 8 games in late September after the Triple-A national championship game.[25]
Hedges moved into a role as the Padres regular catcher in 2017,catching 115 games and backed up by Luis Torrens and Héctor Sánchez. Hedges missed two weeks in late July with a mild concussion after taking a foul ball off his mask.[26] On June 19,Hedges was behind the plate when Anthony Rizzo collided with him on a controversial play and knocked him out of the game.[27] He missed two more games but avoided the disabled list. Hedges finished the season with a .214/.262/.398 batting line with 18 home runs in 387 at-bats. Behind the plate,he had a 37% caught stealing rate. His fielding runs above average (26.7) led all catchers,according to Baseball Prospectus,and he ranked second in framing runs.[28]
In 2018,Hedges again began the season as the Padres regular catcher,backed up by A. J. Ellis. He was placed on the disabled list on May 1 with right elbow tendinitis and had his initial rehab assignment cut short by lingering soreness.[29] He returned to action with the Padres on June 24 and remained as the primary catcher for the rest of the season,splitting time in September with call-up Francisco Mejía.[30] Hedges had a strong July and August and finished the season hitting .231/.282/.429 with 14 home runs in 303 at-bats. Behind the plate he finished fifth best among all catchers in adjusted fielding runs (11.8) according to Baseball Prospectus,despite catching only 95 games on the season.[31]
Hedges entered the 2019 season as the Padres primary catcher,but his bat slumped early and he lost time to Mejía when Mejía returned from an injury in late June.[32] Hedges started 49 of the Padres first 73 games,and then 44 games over the rest of the season. He had a batting line of .176/.252/.311 with 11 home runs in 312 at-bats for the year. Hedges' defense remained strong,as he threw out 33% of base stealers and was worth 28.2 fielding runs above average according to Baseball Prospectus. Hedges was also an elite pitch framer in 2019,[33] ranking at the top of the MLB Statcast leaderboard for the year with 20 runs created with extra strike calls.[34]
On August 1,2023,Hedges was traded to the Texas Rangers in exchange for international bonus pool money.[40] Hedges did not appear in the postseason until Game 1 of the 2023 World Series,in which he struck out against Paul Sewald in his only at-bat to send the game into extra innings. The Rangers eventually won the game and went on to win the World Series in five games.
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