Free Agent Watch: Ramon Hernandez

The Reds veteran 36 year old catcher Ramon Hernandez is headed to free agency, and the Reds seem to be ready to move on. He put up a 2 WAR in each of the last two years, deserving a $6 million a year salary (he earned about 6 million combined in those two years). In 09, his first year with the Reds, he earned just a .1 WAR. This dud year always needs to be remembered because it is possible that he could be that bad again. In free agency, one must always be ready for an underperfoming year, and be ready to account for how much that would hurt the team. He is mainly an offensive catcher, at just 2.1 D-WAR in his whole career. In 2011, he had a .84 PPG, .341 OBP, 788 OPS, and 2.76 PAPP, not bad numbers for a catcher (his Runs per Position Scarcity was 5 each of the last two seasons). In 2010, he had a .364 OBP, however he had a career high .332 BABIP, so its hard to imagine we will see that again. His offensive winning percentage (assumes average pitching and hitting and 9 Ramon Hernandez's in the lineup) was about 56%, not quite enough to make the playoffs, but would be a solid team nonetheless. His Secondary Average was .242, which is not great, but is okay. You would certainly like to see more walks, especially with his rather low number of extra-base hits, and he hits groundballs more than flyballs, and his percentage of home runs to flyballs was much higher in 2011 than it usually is. This more than likely means you can expect less power in 2012. With all this said, there are several teams that could use not just the production at catcher spot, but just the solid bat in itself. I would not go up to the $6 million number, but at 3 or 4 million dollars, he could be a great addition.