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Especially regarding defense. A left fielder, our fist baseman is involved in less than a dozen plays per game (Trayvon set a record last year with 14 right?), while the catcher has a part in every single play. If you can get a guy who is even 1 percent better at pitch calling, that could make a bigger difference than getting a guy who is 10 times better in the outfield.
It could very well be that Jaso was a but of a push over in the pitch calling department and let the pitchers have their way too often. We don't know how good Jaso is with average pitching talent in average pitching environments after having spent his career with the über talented Rays staff and the offense demolishing Safeco field. You can't really pull a catcher when he's calling a poor game.
Another thing, a lot of hay has been made on fangraphs lately about the increased value of the stolen base recently due to decreased run scoring and in particular, home runs. It follows that, at least while they are in Safeco, that value is even higher. It's been argued that Jaso isn't so much worse than league average at catching base stealers, but, if you look into last years numbers a bit, you find out that Jaso did not stop stolen bases 21% of the time. Of the 7 times Jaso caught a runner, 1 was at home, which are flukes when a runner even tries, and 3 were pick offs, where Jaso took advantage of runners lack of respect and threw around the batter. Those are well and good, but I doubt he continues to pull them off now that people have seen he can do it. That leaves runners with 27 successful steals vs. 3 actual failed attempts, or a 90% success rate. That is just way too easy to take a base.