The Mets announced that they have signed catcher Austin Barnes and right-hander Craig Kimbrel to minor league deals with invitations to major league springing training. Barnes, an ACES client, would lock in a $1.5MM base salary with another $500K in incentives if he makes the team, reports Jon Heyman of The New York Post. The Kimbrel deal was reported last week.
Barnes, 36, has spent his entire big league career with the Dodgers thus far. Over parts of 11 seasons, he consistently graded out as a strong defender behind the plate. His offense was never his carrying tool but was generally passable for a long time. From 2015 to 2022, in 1,357 plate appearances, he hit 32 home runs and drew walks at a strong 12.1% clip. His .225/.333/.358 slash in that span led to a 93 wRC+. That indicates he was 7% below league average but that’s pretty decent for a catcher, especially a backup.
But things declined more recently, with Barnes producing a .217/.283/.272 line and 57 wRC+ from the start of the 2023 season to the present. That drop in offense came as he was getting squeezed by other players. Will Smith took over the full-time catching job in 2020. Freddie Freeman and Shohei Ohtani were later signed to cover first base and designated hitter, respectively, leaving no ability to move Smith elsewhere. The Dodgers wanted to promote catching prospect Dalton Rushing last year and nudged Barnes off the roster. He landed a minor league deal with the Giants last June but was released in August.
The Mets have Francisco Alvarez and Luis Torrens set to be their catching duo at the big league level. Hayden Senger is on the 40-man but still has options, so he’s likely ticketed for a depth role at Triple-A. Barnes will likely head to Syracuse with Senger and give the Mets an experienced veteran to potentially call upon if the big league catching group is thinned out by an injury or two.
Photo courtesy of Matt Marton, Imagn Images
They could use him in the clubhouse.
And hed make a good coach or veteran role model for the younguns give his penchant for oh behave
They could even get Framber and have Barnes catch all his games. There would be no shenanigans.
Love this: what started as a meme is becoming like a recurring telenovela series of who catches Framber
Barnes would be a positive veteran presence. He’ll be a great coach and/or manager in the future.
Mettys don’t hurt em!
Please hammer
No more Kershaw for LAD no spot for Barnes it seems
Maybe Kershaw is next to sign with the Mets!?
That would be wild!
I imagine you’re joking. But Kershaw has stated that he wants to retire a Dodger.
He can sign with them next year!
Absolutely joking.
Good luck Austin!
I hope he gets to the bigs and does well. Always one of my favorite Dodgers.
Invite him to spring training for the kids to learn from and make him your final cut
Age old way to gain Intelligence about the opposition. Mets really planning to challenge the Dodgers this year and gaining insight about the opponent in addition to the usual scouting reports is quite useful.
Yellow: Inside information about a rival team extracted by signing their discarded veteran backup catcher. Never heard of it, but sounds interesting and you learn something new every day, they say. Tell me more about this subject, can you?
This is such a weird comment Joel
MetsSchmets: Let me clarify, The poster says there’s an “age old” practice wherein a team will grab a veteran catcher from another team, hoping to gain inside information about that team. Never heard of it. Have you? Either the poster was being fanciful or I know less about baseball than I think I do.
I didn’t say catcher . Where does it specifically say catcher ? I pointed out that teams frequently pick up long tenured players from opposing teams to gain opposition intelligence .
Yellow: Presumably a catcher will know more details about the opposition than another position player, but that’s fine. Can you post a reference about engaging in this “age old” and “frequent” intelligence-gathering practice? I’ve been following baseball for a year or two. Since I never heard of it, I could use some education. Surely it’s been written about before YellowCleats posted on MLBTR in January 2026. And I’m eager to learn.
Decent playoff performer in his early career. I think he often caught in lieu of Grandal (2017-8) and Smith (2020) in crunch time. Good luck to him.
Mets won’t be able to use that attribute
I nearly forgot that Grandal was a part of those dodger teams in the mid-late teens. Doesn’t seem like a decade ago
I am also afflicted with a case of declining things, so I can relate.
The story is discusses Barnes and not Kimbrel?
That’s two time World Series champion Austin “Sam” Barnes (and he will get a third ring for 2025).
He also is only one of two players in World Series history with a sac bunt RBI and a home run in the same Series. He did it in the same game, I believe.
Looked it up. One of two to do that in a single World Series game. Barnesy also stole a base that game.
Needs roughly a full season for the 10 years service time. Here’s hoping he gets it but it’s a long shot.
Do they still get a pro-rated pension with less time that 10 years?
Barnes is really the last of a dying breed: A personal catcher. Which he was for Kershaw. The last I remember aside from the knuckle ball catchers like Josh Thole who caught RA Dickey and whoever caught Wakefield, was that the Braves pitchers didn’t like throwing to Javy Lopez especially Maddux. His caddie was Eddie Perez. With the way rosters are built nowadays there is no room for these guys. I don’t know how I feel about it. I liked seeing these guys have jobs.
Maddux also famously called his own game. Eddie Perez was just there to set up a target for him.
Its not dying, it was just never common to begin with. Maybe its a little rarer today since there are no knuckleballers.
Its also a practice that was always frowned upon. And it has been done more recently, but clubs are inclined to deny they are doing it. There is nothing about roster construction today that would prevent it from happening. Teams still carry a back-up catcher. There is no reason he could not double as the personal catcher of a particular starter.
Lastly, with starters, even good ones, no longer going 7 innings or more, is it warranted to give him a personal catcher? I’m quite confident that if a freak talent like Skubal or Skenes said he liked catcher B better than catcher A, his club would accommodate him.
Your absolutely right about Skubal or Skenes. It just seems to me that in the 90’s it was a job. It isn’t one anymore. It’s not carrying 2 catchers often times it’s a 3rd catcher and that’s frowned upon as it should be. 200 innings is a horse nowadays. In the 90’s every team had at least 2 pitchers with 200 and 220 wasn’t uncommon. If you threw 90mph you were a hard thrower. So much changes in 30 years. I’m just getting old.
Chris: You may even remember when all players ran hard down the line on a grounder. You may even remember when only certain Latin players made the sign of the cross when they hit a homer and then (seemingly) all Latin players made the sign of the cross and then eventually it got taken up by players that weren’t Latin. You may even remember when only a few jerks stood at the plate and watched their homers land, which is now normal practice. Change is good…sometimes.
Anybody who knows how to catch will be scoffed up this time of year, as the team’s need a boat load of catchers for spring training.
fenwayfrank: “scoffed up”, a Britishism on MLBTR! Thanks.
Jolly good