Quote Originally Posted by shoeless joe View Post
AJ calls a better game and recieves the ball light years ahead of bethancourt. However bethancourt is more athletic, has more bounce, and throws better than AJ.

Christian actually costs pitchers strikes with the way he recieves the ball. He takes pitches out of the zone where as AJ brings them in. If bethancourt learns some of these things from AJ, which is why he was brought in anyway, he could be as good a defensive catcher as there is.
Heck no. Bethancourt needs to improve his receiving and pitch framing, but it's not worse than Pierzynski's. AJ has long been among the worst in the league in those categories. He's also late in giving the pitcher a target as well.

In regard to calling a game, who really knows, but the results thus far this year certainly don't support that. There have been several times, the one to Uggla last week being the most noteworthy, where a pitcher has thrown a fastball to a hitter when it was pretty obvious that was not the way to go and been burned by it.

Bethancourt's potential is through the roof, and he should be getting reps. Playing AJ does nothing except potentially increase his trade value, but that probably won't ever be better than it is right now.