If Victor Martinez Leaves, John Buck Would Be A Great Replacement

But to me, Werth is of greater need. If they cannot sign Victor, I would not complain about Werth and Buck.

Yea right.

Bucks career slash line: .243/.301/.421
7 seasons, 702 games
wOBA: .311
Career WAR: 7.3

Victor’s career slash line: .300/.369/.469
9 seasons, 1004 games
wOBA: .360
Career WAR: 28.4

After Victor, the catcher options get thin but Buck is not Victor Martinez.

Take another look Jared.

Sign him. Buck will regress badly, but fine with me.

A great replacement would be Mauer, Posey or McCann. There is no great, or even really good, replacement for VMart. If the Sox don’t resign him (and I do agree that they shouldn’t break the bank for him) they will have to settle for an acceptable replacement. And I guess that is what John Buck is.

And if LA non-tenders Martin signing him to a minor league deal to give Salty some competition for the backup spot on the team. Martin may have forgotten how to hit in LA, but I would be interested to see what a change of scenery would work out with him.

My option would be “If they can’t sign Martinez, Buck would be a terrible replacement, but better than any other free agents.”

The fact is that Buck will be looking for a contract based on his career year which was still not very good. His OBP is just unacceptable for anyone on the Red Sox. I’d think signing him would be the lesser of evils if he would agree to a one year, cheap deal, but that isn’t what he’s looking for at this point at least. I’d much rather see them try to acquire Napoli or Martin (both of whom have major downsides, but also have quite a bit of upside) and see them try to give one of them and Salty a chance.

Buck, Olivo, Ramon Herndandez, AJ Pierzynski, et al. Yes some are better than the others, but there is not that much of a difference between them all. If this were fantasy baseball (and I know it’s not, but I’m just using it as an illustration), we would refer to this a plateau. VMart is your top choice, and from there we drop off a ton to a second tier with a bunch of interchangeable options.

My point is that Buck is going to be the most expensive of all of these lesser options, probably by a pretty decent margin thanks to his BABIP-inflated career year. So if we’re not going for Victor (which we should), then why pay extra for Buck?

Buck had the best year last year of any catcher that is a free agent who’s name isn’t Victor Martinez.

Buck for one year with a club option of some type. That way if he pulls a Marco Scutaro and dissapoints us, we can decline the option, and he’s a Free Agent.

And if a team like the Mets want to give him this multi-year 2-3 year deal, let them.

Switch back to catcher.

BOOM

Werth is in the age-group I rail against so often, but he’s athletic and consistently busts out the mid to high .800 OPS range, and would be great in LF. Crawford is a player who clearly fits the CF mold, and I believe would do wonders in our insane CF. An outfield of Werth/Crawford/Drew is badass, especially until the Kalishes etc are ready.

Try out Lowrie at 3B, don’t resign Victor, and give us a strong outfield for the next at least 4 seasons. Even if Werth regresses, he’s starting from such a higher level than the others. These are the types of players I want to sign, those that are reallyreally good to begin with.

What happened to all the Ianetta talk? Did it go away once Olivo left Denver?

if VMart walks I’d rather see us go get a cheap defensive minded catcher offense be damned! Offense can easily be replaced at other positions.

it will allow Salty to get another season under his belt and hopefully help him transition into the All-Star catcher we all know he can be.

If there’s not V-Mart? Sign Buck.

Unless he figures to make a killing off his contract year. In which case, ta Hades with him.

Talk about Buck to lower the interest/bidding price on V-Mart? Eh, probably not.

An Ianetta trade still works best IMHO.

Victor is very important for this team. I think people have no idea how much he will be missed if he is not back.

Do:
1. Sign a great 3B – This should be the 1st among equals of priorities (Beltre is the clear choice and we should be able to overspend)
2. Pay for Bullpen Upgrades
3. Sign a Catcher and go for the best value on offense and defense
4. Stand pat in the OF if the prospects aren’t there by the end of 2011 then sign a FA in 2012

Don’t:
1. Overpay for V-Mart as much as I love him (let him go unless he is willing to sign a short deal not very likely)
2. Go after Werth or Crawford (please pass on them) it just is not a big need as Ells, Cameron, Drew, and Kalish,and the other OF minor leaguers should do the trick. Cameron and Ells should recover – even without them we were ok in 2010 – why commit to a free agent when we should be ok in 2011? If we need to overspend then do it at 3B not OF we have enough depth there and should be fine – unless the ghost of Ted Williams comes back from the dead and wants to play we need to leave this alone
3. Move Youk to 3rd – he is our 1B answer
4. Let Beltre go he can anchor 3B for many years to come and has a very good bat

I would agree with this if we had V-Mart coming back. But I don’t think Ells/Drew/Cameron/DMac makes up for the lost offense of Vmart and the inserted black hole of Buck/Salty/Tek/Scrub