We did not want a belly scratcher

Yorvit Torrealba (a/k/a Yorvit Terribleba, Yorvit Horribleba, Youswing Andamissa, The Anti-Clutch), Colorado Rockies starting Catcher, is beginning this season much where he left the last one: in a 3 for 22 rut with goose eggs in every category (although one of his hits was a double). That's zero walks, zero hr's, zero rbi's, zero runs, and zero stolen bases, for those of you keeping score at home. The guy's OPS is .318 for god's sake. A guy in one of my fantasy leagues (who must not have known much about him) actually added him to his lineup - and it only took about 10 days before that sour taste of Torrealba made this manager drop him in favor of Mr. Anyone Else, Catcher. Ok, the season just started. April is typically a pitcher's month and his bat may not be hot yet. That's fair. So let's take a look at his stats from 2007, when he played in 113 games and had over 400 plate appearances:

In 2007, Torrealba hit .255 with 47 runs, 47 rbi's, 8 hr's, and 73 strikeouts. He had only 31 extra-base hits (including his HR's), but then again he had only 101 hits all season. His refined patience at the plate resulted in 34 walks and his OPS was under .700 - although he did steal two bags. Those numbers are pretty bad on their face, but let's break down the numbers to see how he was in certain situations:

With no one on base and no outs, his average rose to a solid .330. He hit half of his home runs (4) with no one on and no one out, and he only struck out 10 times in over 100 plate appearances in this situation. With the bases empty, regardless of how many outs there were, he hit a respectable .283. Of course, as everyone in baseball knows, this situation is one of the least clutch moments in the game.

However, as we'll see in these next stats, the more clutch the moment was, the worse he performed. With runners on base, he hit only .227. With runners in scoring position, he hit only .201. And finally, with runners in scoring position and two outs, arguably one of the most clutch moments for any hitter, Torrealba belted a whopping .151 batting average, striking out 22 times in only 73 at bats. And although we don't have a large sample to pull our stats from his performance in October, his career batting average in the postseason is .238. Now you see why I call him The Anti-Clutch.

Now let's take a look at his supposed defense that was much touted by the national press during the NLCS and World Series, when I'd put money down that Joe Buck & Co. had never heard of Torrealba prior to October '07. Last year, Torrealba ranked 21st among 29 qualifying catchers, throwing out only 17.6% of base stealers. He failed to stop 23 wild pitches and allowed an additional 4 passed balls. His fielding percentage was a solid .991, but 61 runners stole bags on him. Overall, his defense as judged by Range Factor was slightly below average for Catchers per 9 innings: Torrealba's RF was 7.07 while the league average was 7.39.

Memo to Dan O'Dowd: Torrealba has got to go. He's been given plenty of opportunity and done nothing with it. Maybe it's time to give Chris Iannetta a full season to see how he performs. Or maybe the Rox can rip off the Astros again and trade them Jeff Francis straight up for J.R. Towles and Felipe Paulino. Either way, we have a gaping hole at the C position and we need to fix this if we're planning on ever bring a world championship to Colorado in the near future. Yorvit, if you're reading this, I'm sure you're a nice enough guy - but you definitely should have taken that offer from the Mets.