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...wasn't that hard of a call. Came up with it when I was working under the assumption that Jaso would be the team's primary catcher in 2012; Jaso was obviously going to land a platoon partner so the Mariners needed to add a catcher who could mash lefties and preferably had some sort of track record. So I headed over to Fangraphs and set up the following leaderboard:
>catchers
>vs. LHP
>multiple seasons: 2009-2012
>min. 150 PA
>sort by wRC+
It spat out the following list.
#1-4: guys we can’t have (Posey, Lucroy, Napoli, V-Mart)
#5: Jesus Montero (yay!)
#6: Geovany Soto, would’ve been interesting and cheap but Rangers
#7-9: guys we can’t have (Santana, Hanigan, Ruiz)
#10: Ramon Castro, would’ve been interesting and cheap but Dodgers and injuries
#11: guy we can’t have (Iannetta)
#12: retired guy
#13: Kelly Shoppach
(Ronny Paulino, incidentally, is #18 on the list. Gotta love Z's coherency on this one: Shoppach as plan A, Paulino as injury depth in spring training/plan B.)
When Jaso was traded, that kinda went out the window... but not entirely. Obviously a backup catcher was still needed, and obviously Ibanez was going to see playing time vs. RHP (Morales, the DH, is also historically mediocre vs. LHP), so it was still going to be a right-handed guy. Same list. I did, as you recall, very much like Erik Kratz for a while; by all reports he's a pitch-framing master of defense and game-calling who's known for his vast experience handling MiLB pitching staffs and can also hit LHP at an above average rate. Sort of a Shoppach-esque hitter, actually, if not quite as good. But I guess Philly decided they liked him as their backup.