Colorado Rockies: Should they sign Jonathan Lucroy for a second go-around?

According to Thomas Harding of MLB.com, the Colorado Rockies are looking into a possible reunion with catcher Jonathan Lucroy.

There are many things that the Colorado Rockies needed to address this offseason and one of those things that the Rockies desperately need to address this offseason was their catching situation. It has been a weakness, frankly, for most of the entire franchise’s history.

Currently, the three options the Rockies have at catcher are Tony Wolters, Drew Butera, and Dom Nunez, who combined to a -1.6 fWAR last season.

Recently, Thomas Harding of MLB.com reported that the Rockies are looking at a number of different catchers on the free agent market. Those include Matt Wieters, Welington Castillo, Elias Diaz, John Ryan Murphy, and former Rockies catcher Jonathan Lucroy.

However, would Lucroy or any of the other four, for that matter, be worth it?

Last year, Lucroy, 33, spent the season split between the Angels and Chicago Cubs. He was injured for part of the season after a home-plate collision with Astros outfielder Jake Marisnick.

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Combined, he played to a -0.5 fWAR while hitting .232/.305/.355 with a 77 wRC+. Offensively, that would still be an improvement for the Rockies but the overall fWAR would be on par with what the Rockies already have.

However, his projections with Fangraphs project a 0.6 fWAR season with a .254/.320/.394 season. That would obviously be better than the Rockies have currently but I have some skepticism on that. That projection only has him playing around 60 games and the last time Lucroy posted a 0.6 fWAR season was in 2018 with Oakland, when he posted a 0.6 fWAR season in 126 games. The last season of a 0.6 fWAR season before that was in 2016. Can he actually post those numbers again? I doubt it.

Of the four other catchers Harding mentions, the only catcher that had a fWAR above replacement level was John Ryan Murphy, who posted a 0.2 fWAR in only 26 games.

Personally, I think that the Rockies would be best served signing catcher Robinson Chirinos (and I made the case for the Rockies signing him two weeks ago in this article) or trading for a catcher. But, as I alluded to in the article, are the Rockies willing to pay for Chirinos? I doubt it.