Boston Red Sox Player Previews: Catcher Blake Swihart
By James Carson
Last season was a lost year for Boston Red Sox catcher Blake Swihart. How can he bounce back to have a successful 2017? We’ll preview that here.
After a move from catcher to left field in 2016, Blake Swihart suffered a severe ankle sprain and underwent surgery in August that ended his season with the Boston Red Sox. It’s safe to say it was a lost year for the young Swihart.
As 2017 rolls around, Swihart is healthy and ready to contribute to the team again. Considering the Red Sox outfield is currently comprised of a bona fide superstar and two stars in the making, the logical move would be for Boston to abandon the attempt to convert Swihart to a new position and let him work out the kinks behind the plate. He will have to compete with Christian Vazquez and Sandy Leon for the starting role.
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Defense Wins Championships
Vazquez is undoubtedly the best defensive catcher of the three, as Baseball Prospectus’ framing runs metric shows Vazquez saving pitchers 7.0 runs by getting more called strikes.
Swihart is a step behind on defense, considering that he actually allowed 6.0 runs by the same metric in his 84 games in 2015. The issue of defense is under more scrutiny at Spring Training with Swihart’s re-conversion behind the dish. According to MassLive.com’s Christopher Smith, Swihart “has thrown some over the pitcher’s head and some wide. He also has double-clutched at times.”
Where He Has the Advantage
Swihart’s advantage comes from a place where every Red Sox batter will need to step up this season: with a bat in his hands. Vazquez is known more for his glove (he only hit .227/.277/.308 with one home run last season) and Leon is certainly going to be streaky (he hit .310 with seven homers last year, but only .213 with three extra-base hits over the final month).
Swihart was not hitting well in 2016, but the sample size of nineteen games is too small to tell anything significant. In his 84 games in 2015, however, Swihart hit .274 with five home runs and seventeen doubles. He has good gap power and is capable of turning it on for a hot streak, like when he hit .373 with a .931 OPS in August of 2015. He simply needs to work on a consistent and more patient approach, which he actually did display in 2016. His 77/18 strikeout to walk ratio was too high in 2015, but he clearly showed signs of discipline with a 17/11 ratio in his brief 2016 season.
Swihart simply needs to work on a consistent and more patient approach, which he actually did display in 2016. His 77/18 strikeout to walk ratio was too high in 2015, but he clearly showed signs of discipline with a 17/11 ratio in his brief 2016 season.
How To Make it Work for Red Sox and Swihart
The wrinkle in all this is that Swihart still has minor league options left. Both Leon and Vazquez have exhausted their options to be sent to AAA and it does not make sense to carry three catchers. It’s likely that the Boston Red Sox would have Swihart in Pawtucket, to begin the season at least. With pitch framing becoming big part of a catcher’s value, he will at least have genuine work to do down on the farm.
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An interesting experiment would be to use Vazquez and Swihart in tandem. With pitchers like Chris Sale and David Price striking out 200 or more batters regardless of their catcher, it might make sense to use Swihart for more run support. When Rick Porcello or Eduardo Rodriguez (good pitchers but not known for major strikeout numbers) are on the mound, Vazquez’s framing could have an extra benefit. The risk would be that neither catcher could get into a real offensive rhythm, but the idea is intriguing based on the framing metrics.
When he does get the call, and he will if the catcher spot becomes an offensive black hole, expect Swihart to get back to his sweet-swinging ways. It will depend on his playing time, but he should use his gap power to rack up a doubles total in the mid-twenties and could reach the mid-teens in home runs as well. There should be plenty of opportunities to drive in runs batting at the bottom of a high powered lineup, so Swihart’s 2017 season would be called a success if he can keep an average somewhere in the .275-.285 range.
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Swihart and the rest of the Red Sox have begun spring training, and are just over 40 days away from the start of the 2017 baseball season.