OK, so I’m being a little hard on Henry Blanco. By all accounts, including Driveline Mechanics’ system for evaluating catcher defense, he’s a good defensive player. Plus, for whatever reason, he has posted his career best single-season OPS+ totals in the last two seasons (with limited at-bats, mind you) at ages 36 and 37.
Essentially, if you’re committed to signing a 38-year-old catcher, you could do a whole lot worse than Blanco.
In fact, if it was clear the Mets were signing Blanco as a defensive replacement, veteran mentor and occasional right-handed platoon partner for Josh Thole, I’d be all for it.
I recognize that Thole needs to improve defensively, but it’s not like he was terrible behind the plate in his limited time last year. And I’d guess, offhand, that Thole’s bat could at least play to the Major League average for catchers — a .254/.321/.396 line last year — while saving the Mets money to spend elsewhere.
But by all accounts, Blanco is not joining the Mets to caddy for Thole, he’s joining them to back up the free-agent catcher they ultimately sign — likely Bengie Molina.
So I apologize for misdirecting my hostility. It’s not Henry Blanco’s fault the Mets signed Henry Blanco, and Henry Blanco is probably still a decent backup catcher.
That’s all he is, though. He’s certainly not likely to get any better, and it continues to bother me that the Mets rarely seem committed to finding bench guys who might become more than that.
Tedquarters 
I gave three reasons why the Mets would sign Blanco, give him a 40-man spot and bring him aboard on my blog. Here they are…
1. The Mets don’t think they will sign Bengie Molina (be it they don’t want to pay or they think they’ll be outbid, we’ll see), and are stockpiling catchers because they don’t fully trust any of them.
2. The Mets are doing this to signal to Molina, “Hey, we don’t really need you, but we’ll sign you for X amount anyway.” Sort of a bargaining chip trying to give the Mets leverage.
3. They are really taking the progression of Josh Thole seriously. Bringing in veteran catchers, no matter their stats, who can give the young Thole tips, tricks and insight to playing in the league for so long. Catchers are considered the most knowledgeable position. Could this be the Mets creating a “Catching High Council” to tutor the future?
I wish for the third to be true. But I know it’s not.
Why would they not give Santos the back up job after he just had a good season for us? I’d think he could play as well, if not better, than Blanco. Santos was tremendous defensively and had his moments with the bat; I would think the Mets could just live with Santos and save some coin, while also rewarding Santos for his very good play in 2009
If they sign Molina and Blanco, it’d be a toss-up between Blanco and Santos for the MLB roster.
It’d be silly to carry three catchers who can only catch, especially three that rarely walk.
I’d rather go with Santos and Blanco in 2010 until the time that Thole shows that he is ready rather then have the Mets overpay for a highly overrated Bengie Molina. The guy is not half the catcher his brother is and he is not a good offensive player. Sure he might hit 20 homeruns but he won’t get on base that much more than his replacement and he’s extremely slow. Use the money for the big hitter in LF and for pitching Omar. Please.
Give Molina 5 or 6 million a yr would be twice as bad as the 2 million already given to Cora.