Swihart v. Vazquez: The Value of Framing
- Thread starter dhappy42
- Start date
So Hanigan is on the verge of returning. What is the future of Red Sox catching (short/long term)?
The conservative answer is that things go back the way they were. Leon sent down. Vazquez the primary receiver.
Leon has been brought in as a pinch hitter for Vazquez. That's a damning occurrence. He's also got something of a defensive reputation.
The conundrum is that Vazquez has shown himself to be a really good receiver of Wright's knuckleballs. Still, he hasn't shown an ability to hit and he hasn't appeared to be the reputed vaunted defensive wiz, particularly with pitch calling and pitcher management.
Everything I read says that the pitchers love Hanigan, but it's cruel punishment to put him behind the plate for Wright.
Oh, and then we have Swihart. Remember the days when Swihart was batting and hitting 8th, with JBJ 9th? Remember the production of that lineup? Holt / Swihart / Bradley / Betts?
WTF is going to happen with the catcher's spot, assuming Swihart comes back this year and two of Leon, Vazquez, Hanigan are made expendable...
The conservative answer is that things go back the way they were. Leon sent down. Vazquez the primary receiver.
Leon has been brought in as a pinch hitter for Vazquez. That's a damning occurrence. He's also got something of a defensive reputation.
The conundrum is that Vazquez has shown himself to be a really good receiver of Wright's knuckleballs. Still, he hasn't shown an ability to hit and he hasn't appeared to be the reputed vaunted defensive wiz, particularly with pitch calling and pitcher management.
Everything I read says that the pitchers love Hanigan, but it's cruel punishment to put him behind the plate for Wright.
Oh, and then we have Swihart. Remember the days when Swihart was batting and hitting 8th, with JBJ 9th? Remember the production of that lineup? Holt / Swihart / Bradley / Betts?
WTF is going to happen with the catcher's spot, assuming Swihart comes back this year and two of Leon, Vazquez, Hanigan are made expendable...
While I tend to agree with you, maybe the evaluator came to the conclusion that Blake Swihart is not a major league catcher. Hopefully that isn't the case, because Christian Vazquez is looking more like a back up. If they did come to that conclusion though, they failed by having a decent backup plan.
Well there was a stark choice at the time:
- Send Swihart down to Pawtucket to refine his catching skills (or maybe learn a different position to make him more valuable)
- Send Vazquez down to Pawtucket to learn how to hit (despite everyone coming all over him as the next great Molina)
- Dump Hanigan and his toolbox (despite a clear need for a veteran experienced backup catcher that the pitchers seemed to like)
A case could have been made for a Swihart/Hanigan tandem, but man - giving up on the wunderkind Vazquez (hurting his trade value in the process) is a tough call to make when the team was hitting the shit out of the ball.
Christian's stock has definitely taken a hit, but it's a long season and most catchers suck.
- Send Swihart down to Pawtucket to refine his catching skills (or maybe learn a different position to make him more valuable)
- Send Vazquez down to Pawtucket to learn how to hit (despite everyone coming all over him as the next great Molina)
- Dump Hanigan and his toolbox (despite a clear need for a veteran experienced backup catcher that the pitchers seemed to like)
A case could have been made for a Swihart/Hanigan tandem, but man - giving up on the wunderkind Vazquez (hurting his trade value in the process) is a tough call to make when the team was hitting the shit out of the ball.
Christian's stock has definitely taken a hit, but it's a long season and most catchers suck.
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Yeh. The only issue is Vazquez' seeming ability to catch Wright (small sample size)
Hanigan did okay most of the time. More to the point, Wright did okay most of the time when throwing to Hanigan.
Hanigan gave me heart failure when "catching" Wright. I think he was so stressed out that it affected his hitting. If our catching duo is Hanigan and Vazquez I would assign Vaz to Wright. The knuckler gives him relatively few problems.
I am perfectly okay with giving you a heart attack as long as we win some fucking games.
Mind you, I'm perfectly okay with giving me a heart attack as long as we win some fucking games.
Been there. I too am willing to go through it again. It would be worth it.
Just make sure the Red Priestess is nearby.
Just make sure the Red Priestess is nearby.
Whoever was assigned the task of evaluating Vasquez recovery point from TJ was using rose tinted glasses. In the mean time you injured the ankle of a valuable catching prospect costing him development time. Vasquez should have stayed in Pawtucket until his arm was all the way back.
The Yankees didn't opt for Girardi over Posada.
Is there concern that his arm isn't perfectly functional at this point? They certainly haven't babied him over concerns about his elbow. His biggest problem isn't behind the plate, it's in the batters' box. One can argue that he could have spent more time in Pawtucket, but his elbow would not be the reason to keep him down there.
The specific point about the arm is nonsense, but the larger point about him being not quite ready to be a major league starter isn't. Vazquez was brought up as soon as he was ready, but before he was game ready. Eduardo Rodriguez was brought back as soon as he was healthy and before he was ready. I read something that suggested Holt was still having symptoms, which means he's back before he's ready.
It's understandable, but it's a very bad trend.
I've never understood this. The guy has a long track record of having a long adjustment period offensively when moving to a new level. He has a long history of hitting decently after that adjustment period. At the beginning of the season he had a grand total of 200 major league at bats, all of which were at least twelve months in the past.
Let him to to AAA and get his feet under him. Bring him up in September. Maybe he'll be ready to be the every day guy in 2017. Or maybe he won't, and Swihart should be the guy. Right now, they both have things to work on.
Hey, I hope you're right. A good possibility he's not a great hitter also very much includes a possibility that he gets a lot better. Although just because Vazquez has made adjustments in the past doesn't mean he'll necessarily do so at the big league level. Guys stall out and plateau at various development levels all the time. I tend to think of non-stop improvement as an optimistic take. As a prospect, Vazquez was never really touted as a guy who was going to add a ton of value with the bat. It wouldn't surprise me if he improved to be a good enough hitter to start, but it wouldn't surprise me if he were a career backup, either.
Well sure, nothing is ever guaranteed and he's probably never going to be a great hitter, but he can certainly be a good hitter and much better than the 55 OPS+ or whatever it is he's currently sporting.
You guys are focusing on the viability of his bat, which is a huge concern when we assume he's an elite defensive talent. Does he look like an elite defensive talent to anyone at this point? Asking honestly--I don't see much that's better than slightly above average, and he doesn't make the pitching better, clearly. If he was Johnny Bench, Jr. out there I'd be happy to speculate if he'll ever hit enough to justify playing time. But this bat with what he's shown defensively this year is clearly a backup, at best.
I guess he could "develop" more defensively, maybe it's the domino effect of his arm getting back to 100%--I'm not trying to damn the guy forever. But yeah, P91 absolutely nailed it. Panicking on Swihart and setting all those dominoes in motion was just a total organizational fuck up.
I guess he could "develop" more defensively, maybe it's the domino effect of his arm getting back to 100%--I'm not trying to damn the guy forever. But yeah, P91 absolutely nailed it. Panicking on Swihart and setting all those dominoes in motion was just a total organizational fuck up.
more than anything Vaz's defense isn't quite what we hoped - it has to be excellent to offset that .600 max OPS.
thanks for filling in and see you at some point Vaz.
thanks for filling in and see you at some point Vaz.
I imagine Hanigan is really looking forward to his first task catching Wright on Wednesday.
(I guess he had to be called up? Otherwise it would have been nice to have Vazquez catch on Wednesday before optioning him)
(I guess he had to be called up? Otherwise it would have been nice to have Vazquez catch on Wednesday before optioning him)
What if the impetus for activating Hanigan tonight rather than a couple days from now is because they want him to catch Price tomorrow, with Leon getting knuckleball duty on Wednesday?
Surprised they optioned CV but it was absolutely the right move when a guy like Leon is ripping the cover off the ball.
Vazquez has been catching Wright, so I could have seen waiting for the off day after CV caught the knuckler, as I think Hanigan hurt himself looking for all those passed balls!
I *do* think one of those Wright games is when Hanigan first reported soreness. So I could see him catching Price and Leon Wright.
Or maybe Leon gets them both and Hanigan just watches the Joe Hardy impersonation for a few days.
From Leon thread, I checked 2015 AAA box scores and I didn't see Leon catching Wright at all last year, nor has he caught him up here yet.
I don't know who I'm more pissed off at right now, Dave Dombrowski or the ownership group, but it is very frustrating that the long-term outlook at catcher was pushed aside because everyone is running around with their hair on fire and acting like the 2016 Red Sox MUST WIN NOW!!! If they wanted to bring Vasquez up in April and send Swihart to Pawtucket, fine, but Blake should have then been charged with working on developing his receiving skills and getting ready for the day when either he'd share the Boston catching duties with Vasquez or be available as a blue-chip asset to trade. Turning him into a left fielder was a stupid idea back then and it's come back to burn the team both in the short-term and long-term.
Maybe it was the Curse of Allard Baird striking once again, but this is ultimately on Dombrowski. I'm still waiting to see the magic with DD's hiring.
Maybe it was the Curse of Allard Baird striking once again, but this is ultimately on Dombrowski. I'm still waiting to see the magic with DD's hiring.
You don't think his 54 OPS+ is indicative of a player who is not ready to be a major league starter?
It wasn't and it hasn't.
If you're expecting an executive to produce magic, your disappointment is your fault, not theirs.
A far more valuable catcher, Yogi Berra, played the outfield early and late in his career. Same with Elston Howard. Buster Posey plays a significant number of games at first base, where a runner could step on his foot and put him out for a lot of games. I think the Sox were trying to leverage Swihart's offense potential. It's unfortunate that he got hurt, but it's not as though they asked him to play linebacker.
I think the bottom line for those of us who were skeptical of the decision is that none of us were convinced that Vazquez's bat would be good enough even with his superlative defensive reputation, especially after missing a full year of development to injury. His offense was terrible. We also wondered how much of that superlative defensive reputation was real given the vagueries of the new catching statistics and his injury rehab. While clearly still an above average defensive catcher, he did not justify those comparisons to generational talents.
There was no need to rush to demote Swihart, who'd caught everyday on their 27-20 stretch last fall, to promote Vazquez. Yet they acted as if there were. We trusted the Red Sox brain trust to get that decision correct. They got it as wrong as wrong can be, misevaluating both Vazquez's readiness with the bat and his fundamental level of defensive prowess,at leadt in the current phase of his recovery from serious arm surgery.
Other then Leon being super-human, the real on the surface surprise in the catching situation is that Hanigan is being put on the major league roster. Hanigan, the same player has looked like a deer caught in headlights when catching Wright, and whose batting line (.186/.250/.229/.479) actually makes Vazquez' batting statistics look relatively good.
So the hope is that Hanigan regresses positively toward his career numbers at the plate and gives us more than Vaz even when you factor in the downgrade in defense. I think the upgrade in offense is extremely unlikely to balance off the downgraded defense. I think the RS know this and Hanigan is being put on the roster to show he is healthy, and show he can hit more in line with his career OPS of .683. In that case with his team option for 3.75M next year, he has some positive trade value at least to a team whose starting catcher goes down. Maybe with some other minor piece, he can fetch a 7th inning reliever type.
To me, the move is not because Hanigan is such an upgrade over Vaz, but rather doesn't represent a tremendous fall off, allowing Vaz to be stashed and hope that Hanigan can establish some trade value.
So the hope is that Hanigan regresses positively toward his career numbers at the plate and gives us more than Vaz even when you factor in the downgrade in defense. I think the upgrade in offense is extremely unlikely to balance off the downgraded defense. I think the RS know this and Hanigan is being put on the roster to show he is healthy, and show he can hit more in line with his career OPS of .683. In that case with his team option for 3.75M next year, he has some positive trade value at least to a team whose starting catcher goes down. Maybe with some other minor piece, he can fetch a 7th inning reliever type.
To me, the move is not because Hanigan is such an upgrade over Vaz, but rather doesn't represent a tremendous fall off, allowing Vaz to be stashed and hope that Hanigan can establish some trade value.
If the Sox didn't think Vazquez needed some AAA time to recapture some of what he seems to have misplaced, Hanigan would be gone. While I can see keeping a lesser player on the roster short term to keep organizational flexibility -- something you seem to reject here -- I dont think good teams use "increasing trade value" as a reason to do so. I hope not, anyway.
As someone who has never been sold on Vazquez's bat and isn't as high on the value of catcher framing as some, I'm still okay with the decision to get Swihart playing a second position. Even as the starting half a catching pair you will want to keep his bat in the lineup every day and not being forced to use the DH slot to do it has a lot of value.
That would have been fine if Swihart was a polished defensive catcher, but he isn't yet. Even in a best case scenario the Red Sox decided to delay his development behind the plate in a year when Hanigan's contract will be up and Swihart would hopefully finish his apprenticeship and be ready to be a full time MLB catcher by spring 2017. This was a questionable decision even when the team was hot in the spring and has only looked even worse now that their flaws are so readily apparent. Unfortunately we got the worst-case scenario of minimal 2016 production and a catcher who will likely need more time at Pawtucket in 2017, thus in all probability forcing the team to exercise the 2017 option for a declining Hanigan.
Vazquez may have been the Red Sox’s best option, though. How bad is Swihart’s defense? We are sometimes misled by amateurish sites like soxprospects.com that extolled Swihart’s defensive abilities behind the plate while the reality was something very different. And it is not like Swihart has set the world on fire with his bat--we are looking at the offensive upside of an Alex Gordon in the best scenario with a pretty good chance that he falls somewhere below that. The Red Sox missed a key opportunity to trade Swihart when his value was at a high level in the off-season. Of course, that statement could be an exaggeration as well--maybe other teams were well aware of Swihart’s defensive limitations behind the plate and wouldn’t trade a quality SP for him.
Far more likely that teams who had a high opinion of him before the season (those that would have "bought high") didn't change their view based on the first 2 weeks of the season. That he presently can't play at all might affect his deadline trade value, but I'd be pretty surprised if any team said, in efffect, "Yeah, we woulda traded the world for him in Februray, but after those shitty 6 games in April, no fucking way."
Keeping Leon out of it for the moment, the team had the following iterations this spring:
Vaquez/Hanigan
Swihart/Vazquez
Swihart/Hanigan
They weren't going to let Swihart's bat decay on the bench, so if he wasn't the #1, he'd need to play another position or stay in Pawtucket. People who cry about his injury fail to consider an injury behind the plate.
They ended up (for a time) with Vazquez/Hanigan/Swihart - which seemed pretty sensible
Now, Sandy David Leon is making it impossible to remove him from the lineup. New choices:
Vazquez/Leon
Leon/Hanigan - the winner
...and wait and see on Vazquez and Swihart
What has the team done wrong again? They should have kept Swihart in AAA and relied wholly on Vazquez/Hanigan (with Blake available for injury replacement and riding the bench 3/4 of 5 games)? That's the complaint?
Vaquez/Hanigan
Swihart/Vazquez
Swihart/Hanigan
They weren't going to let Swihart's bat decay on the bench, so if he wasn't the #1, he'd need to play another position or stay in Pawtucket. People who cry about his injury fail to consider an injury behind the plate.
They ended up (for a time) with Vazquez/Hanigan/Swihart - which seemed pretty sensible
Now, Sandy David Leon is making it impossible to remove him from the lineup. New choices:
Vazquez/Leon
Leon/Hanigan - the winner
...and wait and see on Vazquez and Swihart
What has the team done wrong again? They should have kept Swihart in AAA and relied wholly on Vazquez/Hanigan (with Blake available for injury replacement and riding the bench 3/4 of 5 games)? That's the complaint?
We keep talking about Swihart's trade value comparative to the last off-season as if he was on the trade block last off season. Trade Swihart (who was then the starting catcher) and your 3 catching options were a starting catcher with a huge question mark and two #2 catchers at best. Here's what the catching picture looked like for 2016 absent Swihart.
Vazquez coming off TJ.
Hanigan coming off a hand injury and 200 PA's of .247/337/328 (by far his best since 2012)
Sandy Leon who posted 184/238/202 in 2015 and 156/229/219 in 2014.
I doubt the Red Sox were entertaining calls for Swihart in November of 2015. Every move they've made with Swihart has been to increase his value to this club.
Was it? His minor league framing numbers were solid according to BP, he threw out guys at a good clip, and he looked pretty ok in his MLB stint last year.
I posted earlier in this thread:
Baseball America, in naming him catching prospect of the year 2014: "While his defense alone could make him a big league regular, Swihart offers offensive promise as well. "
John Sickels, 2015 "Hitting .259/.301/.345 in 210 at-bats in the majors, not showing any power at this point, wRC+ just 75. However his defense has been quite strong and given his age there is every reason to be optimistic about his future."
Sickels is not a scout but BA usually has a scouting lean. With his athleticism you expect him to improve and they failed by not giving him every single chance to do so as I and others stated the entire time.
How much of the he wasn't polished comes from the team's ERA while he was catching this year, though? Or from the assumption that his demotion was a reaction to his play? Now that CV has failed to turn the staff around, what are we hanging the argument that he's not there yet defensively on? He's not a top of the league defender, but I didn't see anything out of him in his brief time back there this year or his time behind the plate last year to suggest he was a bad defensive catcher. Just because the Red Sox opted to go with CV when he came off the DL, that doesn't necessarily mean that the Red Sox weren't sold on Swihart defensively. Hell, it's possible they wanted him to learn another position well before CV was ready to return and Christian's recovery just allowed them to finally start getting him reps elsewhere on the diamond. If they envisioned him being a catcher 3-4 days a week and a left fielder/DH 2-3 days a week, (or even the other way around) then it made sense to start getting him some time out there. Injuries may have pushed that along a bit faster than was optimal.
Of course, anything is possible since we don't actually get to sit in the front office and listen to the discussions that the staff has about each player. You're making a lot of assumptions about why he was sent to Pawtucket and asked to play in left field, and you're presenting no actual evidence to back up them up. Things went badly. It sucks. That doesn't necessarily mean any of what you seem to be asserting here is true.
Dave Cameron suggests the Red Sox trade for Jonathan Lucroy. His reasoning seems sound enough to me, and as a fringe benefit that he doesn't mention, there's the possibility of Swihart suddenly becoming the trade bait the team needs in order to trade for a pitcher without having to part with Moncada or Benintendi. Or, if you want to keep Swihart and Vazquez, you pick up Lucroy's (reasonable) option while you let the two of them work on their defense and offense, respectively. I like the idea.
It sounds great in theory and Cameron makes a very valid point, but I don't see how it ends up with the Sox having Lucroy and a new pitcher at the end of the day.
Let's assume Lucroy costs you, oh, Kopech and Chavis. What's left? Is an injured Swihart and Devers getting you a pitcher worth spending those assets? Swihart and Espinoza?
Let's assume Lucroy costs you, oh, Kopech and Chavis. What's left? Is an injured Swihart and Devers getting you a pitcher worth spending those assets? Swihart and Espinoza?
Well, it's better than the Yankee fans who want us to trade for Brian McCann
True, we don’t know for certain, but it is called reading the tea leaves. How often does a team uproot and demote a starting catcher who they are pleased with defensively, just to replace that starting catcher with one who can’t hit as well? It makes more sense to conclude that the Red Sox aren't happy with Swihart's behind the plate defense and replaced him for that reason. Such an assessment of Swihart’s defense may contradict various reports from the amateurish Internet charlatans of the world, but maybe those sources shouldn’t be relied on too heavily.
As you point out, we ultimately don't know the Red Sox's thinking on this matter and assumptions are often wrong. Still, the not-so-good defense argument/assumption strikes me as the best explanation for what happened.
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This whole talk about Swihart facinates me and I am really curious into what the Sox do think about his defensive skills. I have not seen anything that suggests to me that Swihart is a terrible defensive catcher. Maybe it was his pitch calling skills that the Sox didn't like or maybe it was the schizophrenic performance by the starters at the start of the season and Swihart got the blame. Vasquez came up and everything seemed better for awhile but in the long run hasn't seemed to help the overall pitching of the Red Sox and now he is sent down because he cant hit.
Now you have a journeyman on a hot streak and Hannigan who I don't think can shoulder a full time job as a catcher. I am wondering when Swihart heals if they are planning to use him as a catcher, at least part time again. I am not sold that Vasquez is ever going to hit enough to be anything but a backup, I hope I am wrong. Do you think the Sox have given up on him as catcher completely? I am pretty sure other GM's around the league still look at him as a catcher and his trade value will reflect that maybe I am delusional in this thought. I guess we will find out down the road.
Now you have a journeyman on a hot streak and Hannigan who I don't think can shoulder a full time job as a catcher. I am wondering when Swihart heals if they are planning to use him as a catcher, at least part time again. I am not sold that Vasquez is ever going to hit enough to be anything but a backup, I hope I am wrong. Do you think the Sox have given up on him as catcher completely? I am pretty sure other GM's around the league still look at him as a catcher and his trade value will reflect that maybe I am delusional in this thought. I guess we will find out down the road.
Journalist Tim Britton's take on Swihart's demotion:
True, Britton may be as uninformed as John Sickels or soxprospects.com when it comes to Swihart's defense. On the other hand, as a sports writer (rather than a charlatan scout on the Internet), maybe he is relying on a source inside the organization? He doesn't say. I'll send him an email if I can locate his address.
What do you have against Sickels et al? That's three pot shots you've taken at "amateurs", we get it. But they don't exactly make things up and scouts can and are wrong a lot too.
What about Baseball America?
There's also the prickly thing of his minor league framing numbers being very good. This changed when he reached the majors; what happened?
I agree with your overall point but you're simplifying things to a great degree.
What about Baseball America?
There's also the prickly thing of his minor league framing numbers being very good. This changed when he reached the majors; what happened?
I agree with your overall point but you're simplifying things to a great degree.