Having spent much of the winter searching for a veteran backstop, the San Diego Padres have settled on free agent Yorvit Torrealba:
Padres Add Backstop Yorvit Torrealba
The newest addition is free-agent catcher Yorvit Torrealba, who on Friday agreed to a one-year deal worth $1.25 million guaranteed, with a mutual option worth $3.5 million for 2011, according to a source.
The deal isn’t official and is pending a physical.
Torrealba will split time with youngster Nick Hundley, who's coming off a fairly successful 2009. In Torrealba, the Padres get a guy with nearly 4500 innings of Major League experience behind the plate under his belt. The 31 year old has never been known for swinging much of a bat, but he's managed a .704 OPS over the past three years, which is perfectly acceptable from a reserve. That number, of course, came as a Rockie, where Coors Field inflated his offensive statistics, and Petco Park will have the opposite effect. Still, Torrealba fills an apparent need and should be more than capable of picking up whatever games Hundley can't catch.
Torrealba’s arm, which once nabbed 39% of potential base-stealers between 2003-2006, has recently sunk to 20%.
Read along at Padres blog Gaslamp Ball.
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