Red Sox Option Rusney Castillo And Blake Swihart To Pawtucket, Call Up Christian Vazquez
The news that Rusney Castillo had been optioned to Pawtucket was made after Wednesday night’s victory over the Baltimore Orioles. The following day, we found out that it would be catcher Christian Vazquez who would be the corresponding move.
With the off-day on Thursday, the Red Sox didn’t have to rush to make a decision as to whether or not they’d carry three catchers with Blake Swihart and Ryan Hanigan already on the 25-man roster. It doesn’t make sense to carry three catchers. I speculated that if they did, it wouldn’t be for long. Turns out, they won’t even carry three catchers for one game. So the decision was made to option Swihart to Pawtucket and call up shortstop Marco Hernandez, who will now give manager John Farrell a left-handed bat option off the bench with Pablo Sandoval on the disabled list.
My initial reaction is that I kind of feel bad for Swihart here a little bit. On one hand, I don’t think he performed at a level that merited a demotion. But at the same time, it makes no sense to have three catchers, especially when two of them should be playing every day. If you want to give Vazquez a look up here, Swihart should be playing every day in Pawtucket.
In regards to Swihart’s performance this season, he was getting KILLED on Twitter for that dropped fly ball that led to a monster home run by Mark Trumbo off of Clay Buchholz earlier this week. Some fans were even giving him grief for not being able to catch knuckleballer Steven Wright, which is ridiculous. It’s one of those things where the catcher can’t win, really. If the pitcher gets rocked, the catcher called a bad game. If the pitcher throws seven shutout innings, the pitcher’s filthy and had all his pitches working for him.
Will substituting Vazquez for Swihart behind the plate help out the pitching staff? I’d like to think it will. For one, in 54 games in 2014, Vazquez threw out 52% of would-be base-stealers, while Swihart only threw out 28% last year. In addition to that, Vazquez is a top 3 catcher in the game in framing pitches, but are we really going to blame Swihart for these pitchers missing the target that he sets up? Not quite sure how that’s fair.
We need to keep a few things in mind here in regards to Swihart. He was a shortstop and an outfielder all through high school. He’s relatively new to the catching position, and he’s already improved drastically from where he was just a couple of years ago. But perhaps the most important thing to remember here is that Vazquez was supposed to be the Opening Day starting catcher last year until he needed elbow surgery. There was no competition. He was the guy, and Swihart was starting the year down in Pawtucket. People forget that.
Swihart was called up to the major league level a lot sooner than the Red Sox would’ve liked him to be up here, and he still performed admirably, hitting .274 with a .712 OPS. But his defense needs work, and that’s not a knock on him at all. I also think, to some degree, that fans are a lot harder on him and his defense because they know who has been waiting in the wings, and that would be Vazquez, who many consider to be one of the top defensive catchers in the game already — and they’re not wrong.
So we’ll see how this goes. Vazquez isn’t known for his hitting ability, but that’s okay, given the torrid pace that the Red Sox have been scoring runs this season. I’ve always said that catcher and centerfield are the two positions that you can sacrifice a little bit of offense if you’re getting elite defense, and that’s exactly what the Red Sox are doing with Jackie Bradley Jr. and now Vazquez. Defensively, it’s indisputable that the Red Sox have made a significant upgrade behind the plate.
But like I said before, Vazquez can’t make these Red Sox pitchers execute their pitches. At some point, we’re going to have to stop blaming the guy behind the plate, and start looking at these guys on the mound, who are getting lit up like a friggin’ Christmas tree almost every night.