Today we’ll take a look at the only catcher not on the 40-man to get an invite to Spring Training this year. Catching right now on the Mets is tough. There’s Travis d’Arnaud who is hoping to put together a healthy season and one where he hits. Then there’s Kevin Plawecki who has hit at every level except the majors. There’s Rene Rivera who doesn’t hit at all consistently but is tremendous defensively. Finally, there was the breakout season in the minors for Tomas Nido.
So that leaves Xorge Carrillo with quite the log jam in front of him. He’s in a better position than he was last year where he had to also compete with Johnny Monell, Raywilly Gomez and Nevin Ashley who all got NRI’s with Carrillo.
This also leaves the Mets in an interesting position in Spring because Carrillo right now is slated to be on the Mexican WBC team, so either the Mets have their four 40-man guys split the catching load early (which I highly doubt will happen) or they’ll have to reach into the backfields.
Anyway, Xorge played 80 games for Binghamton and then 5 games in Vegas. In Binghamton he put up a .269/.347/.364 line while he had 5 hits, all singles in 15 ABs.
I’ll be paying attention to Xorge this season because my gut tells me he may be slightly ahead of Nido on the depth chart, who the Mets might want to protect more and call him up in a predictable way.
