Craziness in catcher-land for the A's: Jeremy Brown has retired and Matt LeCroy has signed up on a minor-league deal. Brown, just 28, apparently decided to quit for "personal reasons", which of course could be anything. LeCroy was basically signed to fill the void that Brown's retirement created.

Brown will, of course, always be remembered as the Moneyball guy who didn't pan out, the bad-body catcher who doesn't sell jeans. It's too bad he wasn't able to hang around long enough to join the fraternal order of backup catchers, because it's likely he was a good enough player to at least fill that role for a few years for somebody.

LeCroy, the former Twin, has great power (180 career ISO-SLG), but not much else (.260 batting average, .326 on-base, bad defensive reputation). He's probably not a threat to appear on the major league roster this year, and he might not even be a good bet to push Sacramento toward a championship: he had just a .560 OPS in Rochester last year, playing most of his games as a DH. (Jose Morales, an actual prospect, at least nominally, was the main catcher.)