Continuing the current theme of “Uninspiring Free Agent Acquisitions”, the Red Sox have reached an agreement with catcher Josh Bard. Bard, as you might remember, was the guy the team hastily jettisoned in 2006 after he had some initial trouble catching Tim Wakefield’s knuckleball. With the catching situation (as well as Wakefield’s status) very much up in the air, there’s no telling what type of role Bard will have in 2009 at this point.

Anyway, I’d like to try something new here.  Nothing ground breaking, just a new template for brief player analysis projects. Bard will serve as the canary in this virtual coal mine.

Josh Bard
Catcher
Bats: Both
Throws: Right
Age: Turns 31 on 3/30/09
Last Season Performance: .202/.279/.270 in 198 plate appearances.

• Contact: For a guy who hit only .202 last year, Bard has a decent ability to put the bat on the ball. Much more so than a certain other catcher we’ve seen lately. Bard only has 202 Ks in 1467 career plate appearances. His lousy 2008 campaign can be somewhat chalked up to bad luck (or stadium effects); Bard’s batting average on balls in play was only .230.
• Power: Bard doesn’t have much pop at all.  His career slugging percentage is .395.  He’ll hit some gap shots away from Petco, but he’s not a guy who can be counted on to automatically crank a hanging breaking ball.
• Baserunning: He’s a catcher, and runs like one.
• Throwing arm: Going by anecdotal evidence, he doesn’t have a bad arm. However, runners have been stealing against him at will. Last season he threw out only 14.5% of attempted thefts, and only 6.2% (!) the year before that.
• Pitch handling: Some people are still aghast over the handful of knuckleballs that fluttered away from Bard’s grasp, prompting one of the most ill-conceived trades ever made by the Theo Epstein regime. However, all indications I can find from past teams paint Bard as a solid backstop, a guy who is praised for his tenacity. Sayeth Eric Wedge: “Josh does everything you want in a receiver as far as calling a game, handling pitchers or blocking balls in the dirt..We have a lot of young pitchers and we want Josh working with them. He’s got that knack of knowing when to get a pitcher pumped or when to get him relaxed.“  Since the trade from Boston in 2006, Bard has had only 3 passed balls in roughly 2,000 innings of catching.
• Other notes: Without turning this into a full blown Varitek-bashing session, I’ll just add that Bard’s switch hitting abilities seem to mirror those of the captain; he’s much better from the right side of the plate against left-handed pitching than vice versa.  In other words, Varitek would not make an ideal platoon mate for Josh.  Is the writing on the wall for #33?

My take: Like the Penny acquisition, this is a guy coming off an abysmal season and all indications seem to point to at least a slight improvement in 2009.  I think Josh would be an excellent fit…as a backup catcher.  Someone who can face tough lefties, and take away from the workload of someone like (ideally) Jarrod Saltalamacchia – someone who hits right-handers very well.

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