Update 9:30 am
According to Jon Heyman of SI.com via Twitter, the Mets have offered Barajas a minor league contract.
Huh? This makes no sense… Why would Barajas accept a minor league deal?
Heyman says he gets low dollars if he makes the team… Not sure what that means exactly, other than the Mets have low-balled him.
Do the Mets have any intentions of discontinuing all the embarrassments any time soon?
When is enough, enough?
Original Post 2:13 am
This just in from Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports,
The Mets are making “a hard push” for free-agent catcher Rod Barajas and negotiating with him on a one-year deal, according to major-league sources.
Barajas, 34, likely would get the bulk of playing time for the Mets, whose other catchers — Henry Blanco, Omir Santos, Chris Coste and Josh Thole — are either backups or unproven.
It looks like all that talk yesterday by Omar Minaya on how happy he was with his catching situation was just that, talk.
On Tuesday, Minaya suggested that the unproven Josh Thole would challenge Omir Santos, who is best suited to be a backup, for the starting catcher job. Henry Blanco would backup the eventual starter.
Barajas is probably a worse hitter than both Thole and Santos, but is highly regarded defensively and has a good reputation for working with a rotation. He batted .226 for the Blue Jays last season, but did swat 19 homers and tally 71 RBI’s in 429 at-bats.
He also threw out 29.5% of would-be base-stealers which ranked second in the AL.
At this point, it wouldn’t hurt to bring Barajas on board and let Thole stew in AAA in 2010 where he can hone his still developing defensive skills.
Regarding the Hot Stove season, It’s like Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”
