[myasu]

I just have to wonder if the horrible performances from our SPs this season (Not just Matsuzaka, but also from Beckett, Lackey) have something to do with V-Mart catching most of the games.

I knew he was not one of the best defensive catchers out there when we got him last year, but watching him closely this season made think about it.
Maybe it is more like "being comfortable with a certain catcher" rather than "Varitek is way better than Martinez", but all of our veteran SPs (Beckett, Lackey, Matsuzaka) seem to be comfortable pitching to the captain rather than to V-Mart.
If that is the case, we have a big problem going forward.
Varitek is in his last year with the team, and V-Mart is (if my assumption is good) not the catcher we want to keep at the end of the season. (But an important part of our offense)
I am pretty sure keeping V-Mart will require the salary for the catcher, not the DH if the team wanted to keep him.

We may end up either

1) Lose Varitek, and keep V-Mart for a lot of money, and still need to look for a good defensive starting catcher, so that we can start V-Mart as DH most of the time. Still, the new catcher has to be pretty good offensively, too, as he will be our starting catcher most of the time! (And, Mauer will not be available anymore) We can bring one of the catching prospects up to Boston the next year instead of looking for FA, but all the better prospects down there seem to be one more year away from playing in the Majors.

2) Let both of them go, and look for a new decent hitting, good defensive catcher. The problem is, I do not see any one of those being available on the market this winter... (Trading for one would cost the team A LOT)