Good enough

The Mets are apparently about to sign a couple of catchers. According to various reports, Yorvit Torrealba will sign a three-year deal to be the starter and Ramon Castro will sign up for two years as his backup, though Castro is expected to start more often than he did in 2007. This is hardly ideal, but I'll take it.

The appeal of Torrealba eludes me. He's a career .251/.313/.391 hitter who's never played more than 113 games in a season and only once played more than 76. At this stage, he's basically a younger, slightly worse Paul Lo Duca with the bat and his defense doesn't seem to add much value. His much praised game-calling ability sounds about as likely to win games as Lo Duca's "clubhouse presence." I don't see how this adds up to a starting catcher.

It does make it a little easier to believe that Castro really will get more playing time that he has in the past. The idea that Willie Randolph would execute a strategy more complicated that naming one guy the starter and playing him five days a week doesn't jibe with his entire history as Mets manager. He's not shown much inclination to get creative when filling out the lineup card. And while Castro hasn't really proven he can hold up for a full season, he is clearly the superior hitter of these two. But perhaps if the inferior catcher isn't a fiery clubhouse leader from Brooklyn, Willie will have him take a seat a bit more often. These moves probably won't constitute a huge upgrade for the position, but if Castro plays about eighty games and Torrealba hits around his career averages, Mets catchers should be more productive in 2008 than they were in 2007. And if they're not, at least we won't have to hear how they're valuable anyway because of their intangibles and grit and whatnot.

In closing, I'd like to comment briefly on the big baseball-related legal story of the day. This has been a long time coming and I am glad to see the law-breaker in question finally held responsible for his actions. He's made a mockery of the laws of our nation for too long. Shame on you, Derek Jeter.