Catcher Carlos Ruiz is the backstop, and maybe the backbone, of the Phillies

Around the Philadelphia Phillies’ locker room, catcher Carlos Ruiz is affectionately known as Chooch. For reasons that aren’t clear even to Chooch.

“I don’t know,” he said Saturday. “You’ll have to ask them.”

Lately, however, some teammates have begun referring to him by another name.

“He’s the Roy Halladay of catchers,” reliever Ryan Madson said.

That’s a nickname that needs no explanation in a city where Halladay could be elected king. And it speaks volumes about the respect the softspoken Ruiz has won in a clubhouse full of superstars who, with a win Sunday in Game 3 of their opening-round playoff series with the Cincinnati Reds, will advance to their third consecutive National League Championship Series.

The only Phillies regular never to have made an All-Star team, Ruiz led the team in hitting (.302) and on-base percentage (.400) this season. One of five Phillies to have started the team’s last 32 consecutive postseason games — the longest streak by a quintet on one team in major league history — he is the only one of that group never to have gotten an MVP vote.

Ask the Philadelphia players which teammate they’d vote for, though, and the 31-year-old Ruiz would win in a landslide.

“He is a leader,” Manager Charlie Manuel says.

That’s an honor he’s had to earn. Signed as a pudgy 19-year-old second baseman out of the western Panama province of Chiriqui, Ruiz was asked to learn catching in the low minors.

It wasn’t a lesson he appeared to relish.

In fact, one of the first things he had to learn was that catchers often have to play hurt.

“One year in instructional league, I said if you don’t want to go out and play, there’s other guys that will block the plate,” recalls bullpen coach Mick Billmeyer, then the Phillies’ minor league catching instructor. “He got mad at me for about a week. He didn’t talk to me.”

Today Billmeyer calls Ruiz — who tried to play though a concussion and a sprained knee ligament this season — his favorite person in the game.

“If this guy ever retires, gets traded or quits, I’ll miss this guy more than anybody,” Billmeyer says. “He’s just a great person. And funny.”

The next thing Ruiz had to learn was how to call a game and win the confidence of his pitching staff. When closer Brad Lidge came to the Phillies from Houston before the 2008 season, he said Ruiz’s timid pitch selections were often little more than suggestions. When Lidge shook him off, the catcher changed the pitch.

Now Ruiz knows his pitchers so well and calls a game with such conviction, the pitchers follow him instead. In Halladay’s no-hitter in the opening game of the playoffs, for example, the right-hander shook him off just once.

“He’s got a real good feel for the game,” said Roy Oswalt, one of 21 pitchers Ruiz had to learn this season. “He gets a real good feel for the pitcher and what he likes throwing that night.”

The last piece of the puzzle was hitting, something the Phillies always knew Ruiz could do but something he had to set aside while he learned to be a catcher.

“The last two years I’ve seen a big improvement,” Manuel said. “And I think the hitting relates back to the fact that he’s really gained control of our staff. The pitchers accept him. They like throwing to him.

“I think it’s relaxed him enough to where his hitting skills came out.”

Especially on the biggest stage. A .260 career hitter, he has reached base in 22 consecutive postseason games, and he hit a team-best .353 in the last two World Series. And though he’s hitless so far this postseason, he drew a two-out walk to start a three-run rally in Game 1 and drove in the Phillies’ last run with an out in Game 2.

“He’s become the full package as a catcher,” said left-hander Cole Hamels, who will start for the Phillies Sunday night. “He’s learned every individual pitcher and that really does help . . . when you get into a situation, especially a crunch situation. Then he’s been able to pick up his hitting. That’s been huge.

“He’s going to be great in the field and then great on offense.”

kevin.baxter@latimes.com