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ANAHEIM, Calif. — On Oct. 28 and 30, beyond the grass in right field at Yankee Stadium where Juan Soto and Mookie Betts patrolled, Logan O’Hoppe sat in Suite 1 and observed Games 3 and 5 of the World Series as a fan.
The idea was conjured a month prior, when the Angels catcher was still in the midst of the most trying stretch of his baseball life. A promising 2024 season had suddenly derailed when the 25-year-old hit .099 during a torturous month of August. The struggles bled into the start of September and weighed on him mentally, though he didn’t want to show it.
“Not a lot of people knew the demons, quite frankly, I was battling,” O’Hoppe told FOX Sports.
He would eventually find some reprieve, rebounding with 11 hits in his final 23 at-bats of the year. Now, feeling rejuvenated after the late-season rebound and an offseason away from the daily grind, he can say he grew from the punishing experience.
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“I learned a lot from it,” O’Hoppe said. “Once I stepped away from it and reflected on it, it made me fall in love with the game again. I realized where I was going wrong, where I was putting too much weight on different things, where I didn’t need to beat myself up when I was.”
A conversation toward the end of his slump also helped in that process.
O’Hoppe was at breakfast with Angels hitting coach Bo Porter in early September, when they began discussing the catcher’s season in the midst of a ninth-straight losing season in Anaheim. Then they started to visualize how 2025 might be different. Porter suggested O’Hoppe attend the World Series to experience the excitement and adrenaline of the event, even if he wasn’t the one playing.
“I felt like knowing his overall team goal and what we want to do here and him being a huge part of it, during our conversation it was something that triggered in my mind,” Porter said. “I felt he would really benefit from getting into that atmosphere and going, ‘OK, this is what it’s all about’.”
O’Hoppe decided then he was going to attend the Fall Classic wherever it took place. The location was fortuitous for the Long Island native, who still lives at his childhood home in the offseason. He went to Game 3 with a friend and Game 5 with family.
After a season that drained him mentally, it was helpful to view the sport through the lens of a fan again. He sent photos to Porter from Yankee Stadium and took notes on his phone:
What’s the environment like?
How are guys going about their work?
How is it different from what we’re doing?
What things are we doing that are the same that he can hold true to?
And then he got away.
The experience in the Bronx was only a small part of a larger reawakening over the offseason, as O’Hoppe attempted to find himself and rediscover his love for the game after a period that tested his fortitude unlike ever before in his professional career.
After the season ended, he still worked out and hit. Otherwise, he tried not to look at anything baseball-related.
“I was pretty … I don’t want to say bitter at the game, but I was definitely a little burnt out at the end,” said O’Hoppe, who had an .800 OPS in the season’s first half and a .578 mark after the break. “Getting away from it helped me identify who I am off the field. Then, I realized it’s got to be the same person that goes on it.”
Since he was drafted eight years ago, O’Hoppe has developed different meditative tools in an attempt to grow and better equip himself for the inevitable low points that come from his profession.
One of the most impactful is journaling, a practice he picked up shortly after Philadelphia took him in the 23rd round in 2018. Hannah Heusman, a mental strength coach for the Phillies at the time, thought the activity could be useful for him. He hasn’t stopped since.
“It’s not only changed my career but my life,” O’Hoppe said.
He keeps a journal for baseball-related thoughts and another for life off the field. Lately, he’s focused more on the latter. Often, he journals when he finds himself overthinking. The process gives him more of a third-person perspective into his thoughts and helps sort through clutter.
“It’s more like, ‘What’s going on in my head? What do I really need to focus on, and what’s, quite frankly, BS?'” O’Hoppe explained. “What am I stressing about that I don’t need to? It ebbs and flows. Some days I close the journal and I’m like, ‘I’m good.’ Some days I’m like, ‘All right, I spewed out stuff I didn’t need to.'”
The exercise is less about perfection and more about growth and finding clarity. The musings used to be structured, but he has learned it tends to work better for him when it’s on a whim. He takes a journal to the field and does some of his best work on plane rides.
“The best way I describe it is I write contracts with myself,” O’Hoppe said. “How I want to go about certain situations, so I feel like I’m a step ahead when things come about.”
During the second half of last season, though, there were no obvious answers.
After homering on the first day of August, O’Hoppe endured a 3-for-47 stretch over the next 13 games. He bounced back with two multi-hit games only to sink again, going 1-for-30 in the final nine games of the month and 7-for-71 over a 22-game stretch.
The toll of the weeks-long skid tested even his most trusted methods.
“It was the hardest month, month and a half, that I had in my career,” the former top-100 prospect said.
By Baseball Reference’s version of wins above replacement, O’Hoppe still finished the season as the 10th most valuable catcher in Major League Baseball. Only five catchers hit more home runs, but one abysmal month took him from an All-Star caliber player in the first half to one who finished the year batting around league average.
By the end of August, his OPS had dipped by 100 points, from .800 down to .701. He could tell you the moment when his season began to crater.
More importantly, though, he can also recall the exact moment when he started to dig himself out of the doldrums.
“When you look at his ability to not only go through it but to come out the other side of it a better man, it lets us know what he’s made of,” Porter said.
On Sept. 19, O’Hoppe endured his 15th hitless performance in his past 21 games.
After the 0-for-4 day in Houston, he decided to take a new approach.
“Literally the rest of the year, I let go of the result,” O’Hoppe said. “If I go 0-for-the-rest-of-the-year, screw it. I’ve got nothing to lose at this point. I just worried about literally hitting the ball, as crazy as it sounds.”
The elementary approach worked.
Over the final 12 games of the season, O’Hoppe tallied a .317 batting average and .855 OPS. That late-season production provided some reprieve and gave him a new perspective.
“All the new-school stuff seems really cool and attractive, and I want to do it because it’s sexy on paper, but that’s not how my brain works,” O’Hoppe said. “The more a 5-year-old would describe it, the better I’m going to grasp it, and I’m not afraid to admit it.”
To get out of his funk, O’Hoppe decided to approach the game again like he was 10 years old. He went to hit not because he felt he needed to get better but because he enjoyed hitting. He did his catching drills not because he needed to be perfect but because he enjoyed catching. In the offseason, he enlisted the help of his best friend, an old travel ball buddy, to feed him batting practice from the machine every day.
It felt like he was a kid again.
“When I went about it that way, I found myself thinking less about it, dealing with the failure a lot easier,” O’Hoppe said. “That’s the approach I’m taking now. At the end of the day, it’s like, ‘How crazy is it that I get to do this every day?'”
This winter, he also consciously pursued activities that made him uncomfortable.
The August plunge taught O’Hoppe that growth could emerge out of distress. Sometimes, it could emerge from being submerged.
“It’s a silly example, but every morning, I’d wake up and I’d hop in the cold tub,” O’Hoppe said. “I hate it. I really hated it in the morning, but if I can lean into that discomfort in the morning, then the rest of my day is easy.”
He took that same approach with his workouts and relationships. He had tough conversations both with the athletes he trained with at Belding Performance and with his friends and loved ones away from the gym.
“In the past I was like, ‘Ah, I’m not going to say anything, I’ll let it go over,'” O’Hoppe said. “No, I’ve got to lean into that discomfort and have that conversation. Doing those things have helped me not only in baseball but life, tenfold.”
O’Hoppe found that while those conversations might ruffle feathers in the short term, they often drew him closer to the people he cared about over the long run.
He hopes to create that same culture in Anahem, with a club that is surprising many in the early going. The Angels have won each of their first three series in the year while jumping out to a 8-4 record.
O’Hoppe has already hit five home runs, including a stretch of four straight last week.
Not that he feels tied to the results anymore after his offseason of growth.
“I really feel like that stretch last year in August in particular turned me into a completely different person,” O’Hoppe said. “I’m enjoying the process of this and the season and being here as if I’m 5 years old again.”
Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on X at @RowanKavner.
Logan O’Hoppe
Los Angeles Angels
Major League Baseball
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