Gerald Laird

Gerald Lee Laird III (born November 13, 1979 in Westminster, California) is a Major League Baseball catcher for the Texas Rangers. He attended La Quinta High School and then went on to play college baseball for Cypress College. Laird's younger brother, Brandon Laird was drafted by the New York Yankees and is currently in their farm system.

Baseball career

Laird was originally a second round draft choice of the Oakland Athletics in 1998, and was traded to the Rangers before the season, along with Ryan Ludwick, Jason Hart, and Mario Ramos, for first baseman Carlos Pena and pitcher Mike Venafro. Laird won the Rangers' starting catching job in spring training in , but after dislocating his thumb in a home plate collision in May, 2004, ended up on the disabled list and lost his starting job to Rod Barajas. After spending most of the season in Triple-A, Laird took over as the backup catcher for the Rangers in . In , Laird was again given the opportunity to be the starting catcher. The Rangers' new manager, Ron Washington, took a special interest in Laird during spring training, and told Laird that he should "be more vocal and voice [his] opinion on pitches."

Never a holy terror with his bat or glove, in 2007 Laird also had the lowest fielding percentage of all major league catchers, .984, and the lowest range factor among full-time AL catchers, 6.83 (though the statistical significance of these numbers in comparison with the other MLB catchers is not realistic). In any case, these numbers were at least as good if not significantly better than those of his only competition in the Rangers organization at the time (Jarrod Saltalamacchia, a minor-leaguer obtained from the Atlanta Braves as part of a deal for former Rangers first baseman Mark Teixeira in July, 2007) and Laird handled a much heavier workload behind the plate. Compensating for Laird's deficiencies is the fact that he possesses one of the most fearsome arms in MLB when it comes out to tossing out baserunners, gunning down 40% of attempted base thieves, ranking him second only behind the Seattle Mariners' Kenji Johjima in 2007 and well in front of all other MLB competition (base-stealers were successful 84% of the time against Saltalamacchia in very limited action). Additionally, Laird participated in the second most number of double plays among all MLB catchers despite having among the least number of fielding chances.He currently splits time behind the plate with Saltalamacchia.

Future competition

While currently the most polished catcher on the Texas roster, Laird projects to be facing stiff competition for the catching role from the Rangers highly talented crop of young catchers by the season. Saltalamacchia and Max Ramirez, who are both just 23 years of age, project to be well above average at the position offensively while Taylor Teagarden (24) is an exceptional defender. It appears highly probable, if not inevitable that at least one of the three will eventually upstage Laird and possibly even bring about his trade to another organization. There are currently no clues as to which one might have an edge however, although the issue is a hotbutton topic among Ranger fans.

References

External links