Are We Set With Schneider and Castro At Catcher?

When the Mets decided to cut ties with Paul Lo Duca last season, and then ship off prized prospect, Lastings Milledge for Brian Schneider and Ryan Church, none of us really knew what to expect.

As it turned out, both Milledge and Lo Duca would have made little if any impact on the Mets anyway. But, the whole point of those moves was to finally get a catcher who would do defensively what no Mets catcher has done since Jerry Grote… at least that was how it was presented to us.

So now, after one season we have had more than enough time to examine the case and make some sort of a determination on our catching situation going into the 2009 season.

Schneider hit .257 with 9 HR and 38 RBI’s in 110 games last season.

Castro hit .245 with 7 HR and 24 RBI’s in 52 games last season.

Defensively, Schneider was just a tick better than the league average in several defensive categories. Castro was significantly worse than the league average.

They both failed to get on base with any consistency. Schneider had an on-base percentage of .334 and Castro checked in with a .312 on base percentage. Surprisingly, for Schneider that was a career high.

I’ve never been a big fan of giving up offense for defense, especially in the National League where you already have one dead spot with the pitcher. But until Luis Castillo is actually gone, I have to assume he will be the starting second baseman.

I just don’t know if we can survive the season with Schneider, Castillo and the pitchers spot day in and day out.

We already have some big “ifs’ in left and right field. Who knows what we can expect from Dan Murphy in 2009, or Fernando Tatis, or Ryan Church. None of those situations are a given.

Until we traded Milledge, Humber, Gomez, Mulvey and Guerra, Dan Murphy wasn’t even in the Mets top twenty prospects list.

Tatis came out of retirement to do what he did last season but he is not a lock to repeat that success, and Ryan Church was never the same after he finally returned.

We are all keeping our fingers crossed and hoping for the best. That’s all we can do.

But if there is any chance for the Mets to upgrade behind the plate or at second base, I think it’s imperative that we act on it with all due haste.