Many of the Major League teams started with their first round of cuts from their major league camp. A lot of players were reassigned to their perspective Minor League camps, with a few being assigned to their perspective Minor League Clubs. Unfortunately, with these first round of cuts, teams do release players. The biggest name to get the axe yesterday was Colorado’s Javy Lopez.

The team has publicly said that they wanted to release him early enough in Spring Training to where he could get on with another team. Javy in return has publicly said that he prefers not to become a DH for an American League Team.

Unfortunately, I think that’s all he’s going to be able to get. It’s very doubtful he’ll be able to find a starting catching job at this point in his career. Ever since his two career years in Atlanta, where he was able to sign the big money contract with Baltimore, his catching numbers has continually gone down each year. He’s throwing out less batters, and he’s allowing quite a few pass balls for what innings he plays. His playing time has gone way down over the past few years, too. Baltimore picked up Ramon Hernandez via free agency, and won out the starting catcher position. He played in 76 games with Baltimore last season, while only 21 of them, including 19 starts, were at catcher. He DH’ed the rest of the time, with little success.

It’s hard to say if another team is going to pick him up. I think he still does have a little pop in his bat, but as a catcher he’s no better than a backup. A lot of teams are going with their normal starting catcher, and a young pup prospects as the backup to get major league experience. Right now, The Cubs have 5 catchers in camp, and the three who won’t make the team, all have the skills to become the backup for a lot of major league teams.

I’ve always been a big fan of Javy, but unless he accepts a DH/backup catcher role, I really don’t foresee him playing this season. It’s pretty close for him to be hanging up the spikes and continue to be in baseball in the background.