A 2 year contract to Varitek? Oh my god no. I'd rather just go with Cash as the starter.

I don't know who they'll go with, but hopefully it's not Varitek. Just get a good defender and say fuck it with the bat. When Lugo and Crisp are gone that'll more than make up for whatever offense they lose with Varitek (which isn't going to be much anyway).

Maybe they'll draft Posey or trade for one of the catchers who is blocking prospect, or the prospect himself. Who knows.

But I'll throw a name out--A.J. Ellis of the Dodgers. He's definitely old for his league (26 in AA last year, now in AAA), but damn this dude can walk to first base. Since 2006, about 15% of his PA have ended in walk. His K:BB ratio is essentially 1:1. And it's not like the Dodgers need a catcher any time soon. Ellis strikes me as a guy who will make the major league level and never really get a shot. There seem to be a lot of average-ish catchers out there.

Why invest 20-30 million dollars in Varitek, a guy who has little chance of being much better than average and a huge chance to be a complete suckhole when you can go get someone like Ellis or Jason Jaramillo (Phillies), or Chris Stewart (Rangers), or Landon Powell (Athletics) or Curtis Thigpen (Blue Jays) or someone like that. None of them are worldbeaters but they could be pretty decent in the right situation. Surely these guys aren't untouchable commodities or else they wouldn't be in AAA at ages 26-28 and most of them are at least somewhat blocked at the MLB level.

Maybe get someone to platoon with Kottaras? Kottaras hits against righties and you get one of the, I'm sure, multitude of catchers who can hit lefties significantly better than righties. There definitely aren't a lot of lefty-hitting catchers; use it to your advantage that you have one.

I think the catcher-pitcher relationship is badly overblown. Not that it's meaningless, but I don't think it's worth keeping a guy at catcher just because he meshes with all the pitchers when there are significantly more cost-effective options out there who will probably be just about as good. But I'm sure I'm wrong because there aren't any catcher platoons in baseball.