Captain Intangibles...

[BrewerBall13]

I was listening to a Boston-area sports radio station recently and someone said "Varitek is an automatic out." It's beginning to make me wonder why so many people these days are expecting great offensive production out of catchers. In 2007, the league batting average for the MLB was .268 AVG .336 OBP .422 SLG and .758 OPS. At .267/.367/.421/.788 he's a solid option, offensively and defensively, especially for this year. Not to mention the fact that Varitek was 5th in baseball last year in VORP for C's. Sure, the old days are gone... but he's still a good catcher. He also still walks fairly frequently as well. I haven't looked it up yet, but I'm pretty sure he was near the lead for MLB Cs in isolated discipline.

I have to admit that in the Oakland series Varitek did look completely outmatched in almost every at bat, but a lot of people don't seem to understand that there are only a handful of catchers better than him in the game today (Mauer, Martinez, Martin, Posada, McCann.) It can be argued that at least 2 of those catchers (Martinez and Posada) aren't better then Varitek defensively. So, while he isn't as good as he was between the 03-05 stretch offensively, he's still better than most alternatives.

With that said, what are peoples' thoughts on Varitek both this year and for the near future?

[HollywoodLeo]

At the risk of taking the thread off topic, are you a Brewers fan or a Red Sox fan?

[BrewerBall13]

I'm a Red Sox fan...I played ball in college and my school's nickname was the Brewers...and I was #13...hence the screen name...

[realmofotalk]

Varitek's bat may have slowed but he still retains discipline at the plate and that's what you want from your older hitters: draw walks to make up for the hits lost due to slower bat speed.