The Pittsburgh Pirates signed 29-year-old catcher Christian Bethancourt to a minor league deal on Monday. He is slated to go to Indianapolis, where they already have three other catchers. He has five partial seasons of big league experience, but he hasn’t played in the majors since April of 2017.
Bethancourt was once a top rated catcher in baseball, three times ranked among the top 100 prospects in the game. He has hit .222/.252/.316 in 161 big league games. Since his final MLB game, he has played 148 games in Triple-A, a partial season in Korea and four seasons of winter ball. This last off-season in the Dominican, he hit .162 in 20 games. He signed a minor league deal with the Philadelphia Phillies for 2021, though he was released a month ago.
Here’s our Indianapolis team preview from earlier today.
