Every Single 2020 Free Agent the Blue Jays could be Interested in

Alex Avila

You might find it crazy that any catchers would interest the Blue Jays. They already have a young trio in Danny Jansen, Reese McGuire and Alejandro Kirk. Not to mention, they have Riley Adams in their minor league system that had an estimated time of arrival (ETA) of 2020, but has yet to make his major league debut.

Simply finding playing time for a catcher with this many in the organization would be extremely hard. My colleague and co-site expert Chris Henderson recently wrote a piece on how you can bank on the Blue Jays trading a catcher this offseason. The Blue Jays very well could as they have tremendous catching depth that they could use to acquire players that play in a position of need for the team.

Even if they trade one, a catcher still isn’t really needed, but could still make sense in the right situation. While they don’t need or should want a guy like Yadier Molina or Wilson Ramos, a veteran catcher on a minor league deal is definitely something the Blue Jays should look into.

Catcher is a very important position in the game that only very few can play at the highest level. If a Jays catcher were to get injured, that depletes their depth. Also, a veteran catcher has experience calling games and working with multiple kinds of pitchers. Experience isn’t something that Jansen, McGuire or Kirk have. While all three can call games and work with different pitchers, there are catchers that can do this better than them at this stage of their careers, and a veteran can help them work on that skill as well.

One option the Blue Jays could look into is Alex Avila. He’s 35 years old and aside from the Detroit Tigers who are in need of holdover player at the catcher position and the fact that Al Avila, Alex’s father, is the general manager of the team, he won’t get a major league deal.

Last season with the Minnesota Twins, he appeared in 23 games. While he hit a paltry .184, he got on base at a clip of .355.