MLB teams do not publish what they pay bullpen catchers, but reported figures generally fall between about $30,000 and $110,000 a season, with experienced bullpen catchers on long tenured staffs at the top of that range. The bigger money can come in October: players vote on how to split their postseason bonus pool, and bullpen catchers on a deep playoff team can receive a share worth far more than their salary. A full share for the 2025 champion Dodgers was worth $484,748.
A bullpen catcher is a member of the coaching staff, not a player on the active roster, so he is not covered by the major league minimum salary that applies to players.
Find a more flexible bullpen catcher, I’ll wait @FoulPoleSports pic.twitter.com/QkkWF1I97O
— joey (@BradyGoatTalk) April 25, 2019
What a Bullpen Catcher Does
The bullpen catcher warms up relief pitchers during games and catches bullpen sessions for starters between outings, which can mean hundreds of pitches a day. He also throws batting practice, helps with drills and gives pitching coaches another set of eyes on how a pitcher’s stuff looks. Most are former catchers who played in college or the minor leagues, and many stay with one team for years. They travel with the club all season.
Here is a podcast on a day in the life of a bullpen catcher.
What Affects Bullpen Catcher Pay
Pay depends mostly on experience and on the team. A bullpen catcher who has worked with a club’s pitchers for a decade has more leverage than someone in his first season, and teams with bigger budgets tend to pay their support staff more. Travel meals and hotels are covered on the road, like the rest of the traveling party, and staff generally receive the club’s employee benefits.
Each year MLB builds a players’ pool from a portion of postseason ticket sales, and it is split by how far each team goes: 36 percent to the World Series champion, 24 percent to the runner up and smaller portions to the teams eliminated earlier. The 2025 pool was about $128.2 million. Players on each team then meet privately and vote on how to divide their portion into full shares, partial shares and cash awards for staff. Bullpen catchers, who spend every day with the pitchers, are commonly voted full or partial shares.
For a bullpen catcher on a championship team, a full share can be several times his salary. Even the Red Sox, eliminated in the first round, paid a full share of more than $9,000.
How That Compares With Catchers Who Play
Catchers on the active roster are players, so they earn at least the major league minimum, which is $780,000 in 2026, the final year of the current labor agreement. The agreement expires December 1, 2026, and the minimum for 2027 and beyond will be set in the next deal. More on that on our MLB minimum salary page.
Catchers in the minor leagues earn far less. Since the first minor league labor agreement took effect in 2023, most minor leaguers earn roughly $18,000 to $44,000 a season, while a player on a team’s 40 man roster assigned to the minors earns at least $63,600, according to Baseball America. Our minor league baseball salaries page has the full breakdown by level.
The Bottom Line
A bullpen catcher’s salary is modest by baseball standards and not publicly reported, typically somewhere between $30,000 and $110,000. What can change his year is October: players vote postseason shares to the staff who helped them all season, and on a World Series team that share can approach half a million dollars.
Sources: MLB’s 2025 postseason share figures as reported by FOX Sports and the Associated Press, and minor league pay from Baseball America.