I hope Blair's story on Barajas is the Jays using the press to put pressure on Zaun.  However, at this point I suspect it's not - the Jays have been pretty public about their interest in Barajas for at least a week now.  It seems like the Jays said 'we're going to pay $3 million for the best catcher we can get'.  You get what you pay for and these days $3 million gets you a well below average catcher for that price.

Even assuming Zaun is out of the picture for whatever reason I can't imagine Barajas is the best option.  For example, I would have preferred the Jays trade for Jason Larue to a Barajas signing.  The Royals gave a PTBNL and will pay him about $2.75 million this year.  And the Royals certainly aren't trading a real prospect for a 30-something catcher so the PTBNL isn't anyone of value (think the SS Loogy deal).  Larue hit like garbage this year and still managed a OBP of .317.    That's above Barajas' ceiling.

In Barajas' favor, he does seem to control the running game better than Zaun, although it's tough to know what's on the catacher and what's on the pitcher.  Barajas allowed 0.4 SBs/game and Zaun allowed 0.9 SBs/game (FWIW, Molina was 0.7).  But even with that Zaun is the better player, and the better fit with all the RH batters on the team.

The double whammy is that it would seem likely that the Red Sox or Yankees would be the ones that end up signing Zaun which will be a big improvement over the backup catchers they ran out last year.

 

Of all positions, JP has done best at FA catchers. I do very much trust his judgement here.

I would hope that by going bargain bin on a catcher, that still leaves the possibility of acquiring talent at the deadline. If LaRue is considered valuable now, surely, he'll be similarly available by July (no offense to KC fans meandering through this site).

The upside of his rather rough treatment of Zaun is that I hope this means that he's committed to not overspending just because everyone else is. That's very heartwarming even if Zaun does deserve a lot of credit for having been good for the Jays. 

Personally I don't think Top Prospects really has any credibility to be rating prospects... I mean they ranked League and he's not even a rookie. Cannon certainly isn't a top 10 prospect either. Their other lists aren't much better.

The prospect list looks pretty standard, but I don't think League is rookie-eligible anymore and should be excluded from the list on that basis. I'd probably put Ryan Roberts in there at #10.

Cannon is a defensible choice - there aren't that many decent prospects in the organisation now.

Rosario should be on that list if he is rookie eligible (?).

Speaking of catchers, Arizona just traded Johnny Estrada, Greg Aquino and Claudio Vargas to Milwaukee for Doug Davis, Dana Eveland and Dave Krynzel.

The Doug Davis for Johnny Estrada deal makes sense in theory.  It'll pay off handsomely for the Snakes if Davis regains his form.  Montero-Snyder should be just fine behind the plate. 

I think you're either underrating Chacin or overrating a No. 4 starter. Chacin makes a great No. 4... A lot teams would love to have a left who can win double digits and throw 200 innings when healthy in the four hole.