Javy Lopez: Unemployed

Source: AP

The Red Sox released Javy Lopez in order to add Ken Huckaby to their roster. Huckaby sucks, but he did attempt to remove Derek Jeter's arm from his body once, so he's got that going for him, I guess.

Plus, Lopez sucks too. Javy's Baltimore career was a big disappointment, and not because of his play. Lopez's first season with the O's was outstanding, as he hit .316/.370/.503 with 23 homers and 86 RBI, coming in off a career year from Atlanta. But he complained that he was catching too much. To be totally fair, he was probably right. Still, it was the first of many instances of Lopez's whining, which eventually just became an annoyance.

It didn't help that his 2005 saw his OPS drop 93 points, and that he was hurt for a decent portion of it. 2006 saw the Orioles sign Ramon Hernandez to catch, and Javy couldn't learn to play first base, which left his role as a DH and backup catcher, something else he complained about. He caught too much, he didn't catch enough, his hot career was going to be ruined.

Thankfully, Javy can never really blame the Orioles for his career going down the tubes without coming off as simply bitching again. His act grew stale, so we traded him to Boston, a contending team in need of a catcher. Then he hit .190/.215/.270 with no home runs in 63 at-bats. Now he doesn't have a job.

Sucks to be him, I guess. Lopez turns 36 in November, and after a terrible season (.251/.297/.386 overall), it's going to be tough for him to find work that isn't in a backup capacity. If Lopez has saved his money well and has no burning desire to play anymore, I could see him simply hanging them up. I don't want to make it sound like Javy Lopez is a totally bad guy, because for all I know he's a nice dude that just didn't enjoy playing for Baltimore, and for as annoying as he did get to me, his gripes were legit a lot of the time. He did catch too much in 2004. His value was being hurt by not playing in the field this year.

But all that aside, a 36-year old catcher whose offensive skills look to be dead is just not going to attract a lot of attention. If he were to hang 'em up, or even if he hangs on for another season or two somewhere, it's been a pretty damn good career for Javy Lopez. He wasn't a Hall of Famer or anything, but who knows, with better health at parts of his career, he might well have been one.

            AB     AVG    OBP    SLG    HR   RBI
J Lopez         5319   .287   .337   .491   260   864
Y Berra         7555   .285   .348   .482   358  1430
J Bench         7658   .267   .342   .476   389  1376
C Fisk          8756   .269   .341   .457   376  1330
G Carter        7971   .262   .335   .439   324  1225
I Rodriguez     7672   .304   .342   .483   275  1108
M Piazza        6547   .309   .380   .552   417  1283