On XM this afternoon Ken Rosenthal said that the Padres catchers collectively were 2nd in the NL in OPS BEFORE the trade, and thus he found it hard to see how this was much of an upgrade. However, he pointed out that Barrett is clearly having an off year, and that they would probably have considered that 2007 is an anamoly in evaluating what he could do for them. He also thought that management may have done the deal just to try to do a deal that appeared to help the offense, ie the bowed to pressure to do something, anything.
Obviously we know why the Cubs did the deal.