Peace Out, Matt Treanor?

Jon Paul Morosi is reporting this afternoon that the Dodgers are "making progress" on a one-year deal for free-agent catcher Matt Treanor, which is likely going to end up being in the $1 million range. Given the language used there, one is led to assume that he'll earn a slight bump over his $850,000 salary from the 2011 season.

Treanor did, of course, end up finding his way back to Texas when the Rangers acquired him just before the August 31st waiver-period trade deadline, but came to the plate only 12 times over the final month of the regular season, and didn't record a single post-season plate appearance. For all of the praise that Treanor drew a year earlier vis-a-vis his game-calling and ability to handle the Rangers' pitching staff, he had clearly ceded his previously high spot in the backstop pecking order to Mike Napoli and Yorvit Torrealba, and thusly found himself relegated to more of an emergency catching/pinch-hitting role.

Now, this clearly isn't much, if any, of a loss where Texas is concerned, as there is still an abundance of backup catching types on the open market, and Torrealba/Napoli are still under team control through at least next season ... where you might be looking at a problem, though, is if you elected to move Torrealba for bullpen help (as has been suggested by a few different parties, including T.R. Sullivan), and had to begin digging around for a viable backstop who could chew up lots of innings behind the plate in relief of Napoli. If the Rangers had/have any sort of designs on going in that direction, they're about to lose somebody that you would think would be relatively high on their option list.

But then again, I just can't see much point in screwing around with a catching arrangement that seems to be working pretty well already.