Ryan Doumit's career likely over

Former Pirates catcher Ryan Doumit now believes his playing career is over, Jon Heyman tweets. Doumit didn't catch on with a team this offseason and remains a free agent. Doumit, now 34, had a horrible 2014 season, and the end of his career might have been hastened by the arrival of pitch-framing statistics, which suggested Doumit was even worse behind the plate than he looked.

The Pirates drafted Doumit in the second round in 1999, and he played with them from 2005 through 2011, frequently serving as their starting catcher in the bleak late Littlefield years and the early Huntington era. Several years of his Pirates career overlap with that of Jeff Karstens, who announced his retirement earlier this month; the Pirates' losing streak appears to be vanishing into history as we speak.

Doumit's was a frustrating career, in that he had a well above average bat for a catcher but frequently was injured as a youngster. And then, of course, there was his defense, which wasn't so hot. One wonders if things might have turned out differently for him if he had been moved to right field early in his career. (He did have a strong arm.) He finishes his career with a .264/.324/.432 line, with 104 homers over ten seasons.