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The Toronto Blue Jays have agreed to a one-year, $2MM deal with John Buck, pending a physical, according to ESPN.com's Jayson Stark.

Buck was non-tendered yesterday by the Kansas City Royals. As Tim pointed out in our summary of the most interesting new free agents, Buck is still just 29 years old and has exhibited some power in the past. His career numbers are .235/.298/.407 with 70 homers in 584 games.

Buck has been a fairly crappy hitter for most of his career so I'm a little underwhelmed, but he aught to be about as good as Barajas with maybe a bit less pop. He's never had an OBP better than .308, but even he hovers around .300 he may still get on base more often than Barajas, which tells you something. Does anyone know how he is defensively?

He has a career CS rate of 26%, which isn't great, and has been below 20% the last two years, which is very not-great.

Basically, Buck is a slightly younger Barajas...good power, higher strikeout and walk rates, somewhat worse defense, but with a good reputation as a game-caller. Not a bad option as a stop-gap.

You can't really expect much more from a catcher. They're all pretty even defensively or else they wouldn't be in the majors. The ones that can hit or throw well are a luxury. Buck should be a decent enough stopgap catcher for the near future like Barajas was. He's still only 30 so that's good too.

Nice. Can't go wrong with Royals rejects.

good for us.

i am waiting for us to bring in a big FA.

zilby wrote:good for us.

i am waiting for us to bring in a big FA.

Don't hold your breath.

zilby wrote:good for us.

i am waiting for us to bring in a big FA.

you'll be waiting a couple of years. with AA's emphasis on rebuilding the farm system, the Jays are not going to sign any top tier FAs and risk losing a couple of draft picks in the process.

I think we might be a shoe in for the worst team on-base percentage in baseball next season.

Michael Bradley wrote:I think we might be a shoe in for the worst team on-base percentage in baseball next season.

Possible, but you're forgetting how bad some NL teams with pitchers can be with OBP. Buck is actually an improvement on Barajas, Wells will hopefully rebound, Snider will improve, Ruiz is a high OBP guy if he plays, and Bautista, Hill, and E5 are solid. Gonzalez and possibly losing Overbay would hurt it but I think they'll be in the high teens, low 20s rank overall.

Hoopstarr wrote:

Michael Bradley wrote:I think we might be a shoe in for the worst team on-base percentage in baseball next season.

Possible, but you're forgetting how bad some NL teams with pitchers can be with OBP. Buck is actually an improvement on Barajas, Wells will hopefully rebound, Snider will improve, Ruiz is a high OBP guy if he plays, and Bautista, Hill, and E5 are solid. Gonzalez and possibly losing Overbay would hurt it but I think they'll be in the high teens, low 20s rank overall.

And there's always the Royals...team OBP of .318 last year.

Buck's WAR was actually slightly high (0.9 vs. 0.8) than Barajas'. Basically he's a younger Barajas, as mentioned.

And, if I'm not mistaken, Buck spent the entire year with the big club, which pushes him over five years of service. That makes him FA-eligible after the season, which means that a fairly big year (400+ PAs and 110+ games with solid production) could nudge him up to Type-B status. Not entirely likely, but another possible source of upside.

I thought WAR was pretty useless for catchers? From what I know, it's defensive half is UZR, which isn't useful for catchers.

Edit: Sorry, at least according to this article they don't have any defensive input at all into determining WAR for catchers.

Also, that links to a very interesting article or 3 on C defense. They are all about the With or Without You ranking. Basically, it measures catchers performance at three easily calculable things (passed balls, wild pitches and caught stealing) with each individual pitcher versus that pitcher with other catchers. While probably not too useful on a year to year basis, as the sample size with other catchers will be too small, as a career ranking it seems to be the best I've heard of.

According to this one, Rod Barajas may be historically good at preventing passed balls, preventing them at the 7th best rate since 1953. It also has Buck as a big step down defensively, though really only relatively speaking. All catchers do seem pretty equal, with the difference between the best and the worst in that article being about two wins. Barajas to Buck looks like it might cost one.

I know Buck as I had on my fantasy team for a couple of years (a very deep league obviously) and I watch a lot of baseball, following all my players via Extra Innings. You'll see a good defensive catcher with some pop in his bat. He's very streaky, very hot or very cold. He has the potential to hit 15-18 homers and will certainly reach this plateau if he's getting 450 AB or a little more. He's a number 8-9 hitter in an ideal world...

Ah the centerpiece of the Carlos Beltran deal....