Philadelphia Phillies: Three free agent options at catcher if J.T Realmuto leaves

2. Wilson Ramos

2020 Team: New York Mets

2020 Salary: $9.25 million

For the next name on our list, we will once again stay in the National League East with New York Mets catcher Wilson Ramos. It is worth nothing that Ramos currently has a $10 million dollar option for 2021. However, I fully expect the Mets to take advantage of the $1.5 million dollar buy-out on this contract, as they gear up to pursue… J.T Realmuto.

Of course, we are familiar with Ramos, as he spent the second half of the 2018 season with the Philadelphia Phillies after being acquired at the trade deadline that year. In his brief stint in red pinstripes, Ramos battled some injuries. When he was on the field, he was really productive as he slashed .337/.396/.879 with only 1 home run but 17 RBI’s in 33 games.

The thing is though, I don’t believe Ramos can be trusted to stay healthy in a full time gig behind the plates, as it seems year in and year out he is dealing with some sort of ailment. In a platoon role though with Knapp (again, yikes) it could lead to some solid production.

Now at 33 years old, the idea of a multi-year deal is rather non existent for the veteran backstop. A lot like Suzuki, he would be much more of a band-aid or a “stop gap” option; and not someone you can count on for a few years moving forward. With that said, you could do much worse than Ramos in terms of replacing Realmuto (again, there is no replacing J.T)