Too bad he's insisting on being a starter, I can't imagine too many teams interested in him that way. Along the same track, I can't imagine too many teams couldn't use him as a backup C, 1B with an occasional DH. My first thought was, 'Gee, I hope JP calls him. And I hope he listens!'.

Clearly, he's tired of baseball in a sense or he'd want to 'catch on' somewhere.

Yea, but Colorado was one team I thought could have used him. If they don't think he has anything left in the tank, shouldn't that tell you something?

So...where does he rank all time among catchers?

Well, the Rockies want to play Ianetta, and you can't blame them for not starting a semi-washed up Javy. It's not like they're competing this year, so they may as well play the rookies.

I think he's clearly a butcher defensively at this point, but you can hide that by playing him at C against certain teams and so on. I can't believe his bat has dropped off that quickly. He was an above average hitter as soon as 2005. I guess that's the question, can his bat be relied on still?

Looking at his comps, it's littered with HOF players. I've thought he was pretty good, and he was 5th in MVP voting in 2003, but I never thought of him as a that calibre of player. I wonder how much talk that will generate on the slow news days.

On day you're making $9 million per, the next day you're just hoping for an opportunity. Baseball's a funny sport.

The Rockies have Iannetta, and they also have Yorvit Torrealba, who shouldn't be too bad as long as he's healthy. At any rate, Yorvit should be better than Javy Lopez. The question isn't so much why the Rockies released him as why they took him on in the first place.

Javy would have generated more news if Piazza wasn't around at the same time, heck same division

For some reason, I thought the headline was refering to this Javier Lopez...

Its players like this that when they fade away make me realize how old I am(33). Had cups of coffee in 92 and 93? I had no idea he had been around that long, maybe I didn't watch enough TBS in the 90s or I didn't realize who he was till they joined my boys in the NL East. I always thought he was just a late bloomer.

Honestly unless the Rocks moved Helton I never understood why they signed him in the first place, maybe they had flashbacks of Jayhawk Owens and JD Closser?

That comp list at b-r is somewhat misleading. Lopez's OPS+ is 112, the HoFers on that list (Fisk, Hartnett, Campanella, Lombardi) are around 125. Among HoFers, Gary Carter is probably a better comp than any of those guys but Carter's career is much longer (in terms of games) and he had a strong defensive rep with Lopez doesn't.

The guys on that list who are also pretty good comps are Lance Parrish, Terry Steinbach, and Darrell Porter and they were basically done at this age too.

Lopez can be a backup with almost any team he wants, but his days as a starter are almost certainly over.

Hall of Very Good. Hard to get in when you only have 5300 ABs, unless your name is Roy Campanella,
and when the likes of Ted Simmons drops off after just one year on the ballot, you know Javy has no
chance for the Offensively-Minded Catchers' Wing...

Don't let the door hit you on the way out, you self-important blowhard. Maybe if you didn't sulk and play at 1/4 effort when you don't get your way, someone would give a rat's fanny.

Lopez singlehandedly won me my mixed fantasy baseball league a few years back (2003?) when I picked him up as a free agent after the draft and he hit 40+ homers. Thanks, Javy. He sucked as a loogy tho...

At this point in my career, I was looking for an opportunity. Money is not an issue, thank God, in my life.

Can't say he doesn't get it.

Interesting question: Who was better, Javy or Jason Kendall? Almost exact contemporaries, but very different styles of play.

Kendall's still going strong, of course.

I'd say Kendall, but it's pretty close.

You know, I was looking at his bb-ref page again this morning and he seems to have a bit of an odd career arc. He's a pretty good player for several years, peaking around 1999, then starts to go into what I would think is a normal descent curve for a C. He bottoms out in 2002 then has this bizarre, wtf type of career year in 2003 then slowly declines again.

Honestly, if I was that type of guy, I would be checking his pee faster than you can say 'kevin'!

Anyone familiar with career arcs have something to say on that? Am I way off? I mean, in 2003 his SLG was up over 130 points over his previous career high.

I thought the headline was refering to this Javier Lopez...

I saw the headline and thought "It didn't take long for them to get tired of Rodrigo Lopez".

I thought Lopez came off well here. Compare this reaction to Damian Jackson, for example. He wishes everyone well and acknowledges that he's been lucky.