The A's and Cubs just swapped catchers.  Wanna know why?  Well, let's look at PI features and find out why.

Here's the production AL teams are getting from their catchers.   The A's are next-to-last.  And they're paying good money for that, too.

The Cubs were in a similar position.  The were also next-to-last in their league in offensive performance from catchers.  So why would the Cubs make this trade?  At least Oakland can clear some salary (even if they are picking up some cost, the Cubs will also get some).

Well, the above actually overestimates Cubs catchers.  They began the year with Michael Barrett.  But he ran into some problems getting in a fist fight with the star pitcher while hitting far worse than last year (though far better than Jason Kendall), leading the league in passed balls, committed several other bad defensive plays, and numerous numbskulled manuvers on the bases.  Oh, and after the Zambrano fight he got in a dugout shouting match with Rich Hill, another starting pitcher.  One usually sees such all around meltdowns when Nazis attempt to open the Ark of the Lord.

Aside from him, Cubs catcher OPS+ are as follows:

Blanco 25
Hill 17
Soto 6
Bowen -29.

Yea, that's 153 of the ugliest plate appearances you'll ever see.  Insanely, Jason Kendall represents a big upgrade for the Cubs.  Beane can clear salary (and Bowen really should be much better).  The Cubs can afford it, hope Kendall can have one of those unexpected veteran regenerations, and were just sick to death of hoping one of their catchers would hit half as well as their pitchers.  (To be fair, those Cubs pitchers can hit!)

This entry was posted on Monday, July 16th, 2007 at 10:25 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.