Overlooked Catching Options

It seems like the organization just lost the plot this winter. One of the successful aspects of last season was the depth of the lineup; there were essentially no sink holes. What they did with the middle infield by jettisoning a legit major league duo and assuming some combination of Casilla (pretty much established that he was overmatched as a regular), Nikiosha (unknown), Tolbert, Hughes, and whoever could get the job done is pretty representative of the poor job they did.

Was that a lot of posters here (and a vast majority in the Trib comments) thought Ramos was way over rated. IMO it was a trade made by someone who does not appear to understand baseball very well, or at least the finances of baseball for a smaller market team.

Some of my fave TwinkieTown quotes in the week following the trade…
- “Ramos was worth little to us with Mauer and everyone knew it.”
- “Ramos was a top 5 catching talent in the AL.”
- “You overvalue Ramos.”
- "We trade a minor league catcher, at a position of strength in the organisation… "
- “I do not think that most teams see Ramos as a stud prospect right now. Maybe at the beginning of the year, we might have got more for him. But I think that time has passed. Maybe it is selling low, but I do not think MLB teams value him as high as we thought.”
- "Ramos could be a fine player but I doubt this trade comes back to haunt the Twins. "
- “At first I was a bit upset. But I think like most I overvalue Ramos.”
- “Ramos was nowhere near ready to actually contribute, Morales has a better bat right now.”
- "Just think the myth of Ramos as an elite prospect is bigger than the reality. "
- “Twins fans seem to think waaaaaay more highly of Ramos that other MLB organizations. Ramos has STUNK this year.”
- “All Ramos has to do is be a marginally decent MLB catcher for the years of team control for Washington and this is so wildly unbalanced it’s just sad.”
- “Ramos is completely expendable now and for a long time not only because of Baby J’s extension, but because we have Morales and Butera active anyway.”
- “This trade is a failure even if Ramos becomes just a good backup. It has epic fail potential though since Ramos could turn out to be quite a bit more than that.”
- "Trading Ramos for Capps is the stupidest trade Bill Smith has ever done! "
- “Wil Myers is a better C prospect than Ramos without question”
- “I think the league overvalued Ramos, not us.”
- "I definitely agree that Ramos was worth more to the Twins as Mauer insurance "
- "I think Ramos is way over valued by our fan base. "
- “Ramos was the teams most expendable prospect because of Mauer. Mauer will catch forever. Ramos was never goign to be a Carlos Santana type player. He hasn’t shown himself to special defensively or offensively. Do you really think his value was going to go up?”
- " I do think Ramos’ value was going to go up."
- “Ramos is no Posey or Santana, but guys like that are truly one in a million, and any catching prospect ranked within BA’s top 60 is worth far more than a reliever with a career 4.06 xFIP.”
- “Wilson Ramos. No walk rate, no ISO.”
- “I think Ramos was built up way overrated.”
- “Is Wilson Ramos really at the ‘Stradivarius’ level? I think he’s a good catching prospect, one of our best prospects overall. But I think his ceiling is going to be right around an average”
- "Ramos projects still as a very good catching prospect. "
- “Ramos is an extra piece, a 23-year old catcher whose bat only plays decently as a catcher, and it’s not like he’s a sure thing—we probably over-valued him a little bit.”
- “In sprint training, I thought Ramos was a can’t miss prospect. Since then, I have developed doubts about that. In particular, I think he has a lot of work to do as a hitter to be a major league starter.”
- "I think we got market value for Ramos, "
- “According to the philosophy on these boards after Ramos was traded, we should apparently trade away all of our prospects, because they are having ‘bad’ years.”
- “I am not saying I love this deal. Just saying that trading Ramos is not exactly grounds for freaking out”
- "Justin Smoak is a more prized prospect than Ramos. "
- “You say Ramos has bad numbers Have you seen Smoak stats?”
= “Ramos wasn’t going to play a role on this club in the future, and he didn’t have a role in 2010 either.”
- “It’s hard for us not to overrate Ramos, especially after reading so much about him here.”
- “I don’t think the ‘Ramos would never have a spot’ argument works anywhere.”
- “Relievers are the worst things to trade high end prospects, especially a potential gold-mine like Ramos. Great hitting and fielding catchers are not common in baseball..”
- “Ramos’ value was dropping like a rock.”
- "it’s just opinion that Ramos was a top catching prospect who would have turned into an MLB starter "
- " Of our high end prospects, Ramos was the easiest to part with IMO."
- “IMHO, many teams perceive Ramos as a POTENTIAL starting catcher. I also think that many others don’t think he will be at this point”
- "We needed a second starting calilber catcher to take the pressure off Gardy to overplay Mauer, and Ramos may be the only chance we’ll ever have to get one cheaply. "
- “All the above are are under the impression that Ramos is a great prospect. Some of us feel he isn’t a great prospect. Twins fans who like this trade aren’t as high on Ramos. Those who dislike the trade imo overvalue Ramos. Guess we will find out in 10 years.”

He has no power and poor contact skills.

Butera’s current OPS+ of -13 ranks 15th worst since 1901 of players with at least 50 plate appearances. If it’s still that low when he gets to 100 plate appearances he’ll be 2nd worst. And if it’s still that low when he gets to 101 plate appearances, he will be the worst hitting catcher of all time.

It’s just intriguing, given that Corporan was a minor league free agent and was signed by the Astros, but they’re just leaving him in Triple-A. Why the interest in Butera? I’m not saying we could include Butera in a trade for Corporan now, but its just odd they would have been interested in Butera earlier in the year. I really like Corporan.

But he was still “gritty.” Maybe we should be trying to find a list of decent offensive catchers who like to take naked batting practice and look like they just stumbled out of the woods where they’ve been living with wolves for the last five years. I think we could sell Gardy, Smith and crew on a guy like that.