Diamondbacks sign Rod Barajas for some reason

Former Pirates catcher Rod Barajas has signed a minor-league deal with the Diamondbacks that will pay him $800,000 if he makes the team. He'll apparently compete with Wil Nieves to back up Miguel Montero. That's a competition Nieves should win, but the Diamondbacks have become increasingly hard to read lately, so who knows. They wouldn't be the first team to take too long to figure out how bad Barajas is.

Barajas played the first five years of his career with the Diamondbacks and wasn't very good while he was there -- he had a relatively late peak, and played his best years (so far!!!!) with the Rangers, Phillies, Jays and Dodgers. Obviously, he now appears to be completely washed up and unusable, and one wouldn't think a very slow 37-year-old catcher would have much more than dead-cat bounce-back potential. But if he did put up a weird 12-homer, 250-plate appearance type of season, it wouldn't be the first time a backup catcher did something surprising in a small sample.