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2008 During the first half of the 2007 season, Dioner hit more like Jamie Navarro, but the Rays stuck with him-not that they had much of a choice-and in the second half, he was one of the more productive catchers in the league, batting .285/.340/.475 after the break. He's a strange hitter in that he hits junk, using his excellent hand-eye coordination to turn on hanging curveballs or take hard sliders the other way, but his bat is a little slow, leaving him behind on good fastballs. It's hard to seem him putting up an 815 OPS over the course of a season, but it's easy to see him being productive enough to be in the middle of the pack among starting catchers. 2007 The Devil Rays acquired Navarro in a mid-season, four-player, C-grade challenge trade with the Dodgers that mercifully released Toby Halls`s grip on the catching position and banished Mark Hendrickson to the other side of the country. In Navarro, they picked up a player that still has some upside, though for the moment it all seems to be tied up in his plate discipline. His defense in Los Angeles was problematic, and his power simply hasn`t materialized. Still, he`s just 23, and even if that .265/.341/.402 PECOTA is his limit, that`s more than the Rays have ever gotten from their catchers in the club`s nine-year history. Navarro didn`t hit much after the trade, but he can be excused as, just days after he arrived in Tampa, his SUV--which also contained his wife and nine-year-old son, both of whom have survived serious illness in recent years--was rear-ended and flipped twice. Fortunately, Navarro and his family were unharmed. 2006 Acquired in the Shawn Green deal, Navarro`s performance in his first extended taste of big-league action was a rare positive in the Dodgers` otherwise dismal season. Not only did he hit for average, he took a big leap forward in the plate discipline department, almost reaching the golden ratio of one unintentional walk for every ten PAs. It`s important to remember that all of this happened in just 199 plate appearances after an altitude-inflated half-season in Las Vegas, and to note that despite an otherwise acceptable defensive performance, he struggled to control the running game (21.4 percent kill rate). But as 22-year-old catchers go, he`s a keeper, especially on a team that wasted over 400 PAs on Jason Phillips. 2005 Very young, he burned a year with a case of bigleagueitis. His reputation rests entirely on 110 games at A-ball and Double-A in 2003, and there is the possibility that he had a minor league catcher/Daffy Duck "I can only do this trick once" season. His offensive game is centered entirely around batting average, so until that comes up there's really no point in getting excited. Dealt to Arizona in the Randy Johnson deal, then flipped to the Dodgers, where he'll have a much clearer path to the majors.
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