Blake Swihart is latest Red Sox prospect at mercy of John Farrell’s impatience

John Farrell in the dugout prior to Tuesday's game at Fenway Park. Charles Krupa/AP

May 12, 2016

5 minutes to read

COMMENTARY

One of the reasons that we make such a big deal out of position player battles during spring training is that if a position player earns a spot on the roster to start the season, he generally gets to hold that spot for awhile. In most cases, he’ll be in the majors for at least a month. This has not been the case in Boston since John Farrell came to town. The latest victim of the manager’s itchy trigger finger was catcher Blake Swihart, who was demoted last month despite having a .391 on-base percentage.

According to ProSportsTransacations.com, there have been 21 instances of a position player being sent to the minors after playing in major league games since the John Henry/Tom Werner group took control of the Red Sox in 2002. Ten of those instances came from 2002-2012:

2002-2012

This is a pretty normal list. Nearly all of these players weren’t in the lineup before heading down, and were squeezed out due to roster construction concerns.

Here are the 11 instances in which it has happened since 2013, when Farrell took over as manager.

2013-2016

Not only have there been more players demoted in a much shorter window of time, the players on the second list are a different type. The average age of the players here is a full year younger (26.1 vs. 27.1), and these players were mostly significant contributors. In other words, many of them had been starters, who suddenly two to three weeks into the season were deemed unfit for play. This sort of reactionary decision-making is how you set prospects back. You’ll notice Brock Holt on that list. Holt eventually became a Farrell favorite, but in 2014 he had to come up and go back down twice in April, even though he had been hitting well.

Even if the players aren’t hitting well, April is too early to be sending down potential studs. Take another player on this list: Jackie Bradley Jr. There was much debate over whether he should have made the major league roster in 2013, and when he hit poorly after he did, it sent him spiraling on a two-year stretch of poor play at the plate. Farrell learned to not trust him. Even in 2015, when Bradley hit well in Triple-A, it wasn’t Farrell who showed faith in Bradley. Here are Bradley’s splits before and after Farrell left the team on August 14th.

Jackie Bradley Jr.

This is a stark difference. Now, Bradley is established, and could be on his way to his first All-Star campaign. Would he have got there if bench coach Torey Lovullo hadn’t been the interim manager for the final month and a half? I have my doubts. Farrell didn’t play Bradley regularly in 2015 until he was forced to when the team traded away Alejandro De Aza.

This brings us back to Blake Swihart. Swihart was a more touted prospect than Bradley. Whereas Bradley was a consensus top-50 prospect in his final minor league season, Swihart was a consensus top-20 prospect. And after being rushed to the majors last season, Swihart adjusted well: In the second half, he was one of the best-hitting catchers in the American League.

This season, he posted a .391 on-base percentage in the six games he played. He was the Opening Day starter, and he reached base safely in all six games he played. But he made a couple of defensive mistakes, and was sent to the minors to work on them. There are many problems with this.

The first, as I’ve said, six games are not nearly enough to evaluate a player. Second, the team has started letting him play left field. Third, the catchers playing in his stead – Christian Vazquez and Ryan Hanigan – can’t hit.

The first and second points are related, and again show Farrell’s itchy trigger finger. I’m reminded of players like Gary Sheffield, Melvin Upton Jr., Troy Tulowitzki and Xander Bogaerts. When they came up, all were plagued by calls to move to different defensive positions. All four were given chances to prove they belong at their original positions. Sheffield was allowed to make 15 errors at shortstop and 88 at third base before being moved full-time to the outfield. Upton made 34 errors at various infield positions before he was moved to the outfield. Both were given multiple seasons in the infield before moving to the outfield. Tulowitzki and Bogaerts both proved their doubters wrong and learned to play fantastic defense at shortstop, because they were given the opportunity to succeed or fail on their own.

Swihart hasn’t been given enough playing time to succeed or fail on his own. The shift to left field, robs him of realizing his full potential as a catcher, and also his trade value at that position. The only way Swihart plays in left field regularly is if an infielder gets hurt and Brock Holt moves back to the infield. Otherwise, Holt is going to be playing left field, and now that he’s an All-Star, Farrell isn’t going to bench Holt for Swihart. Swihart’s only path to normal playing time in Boston is behind the plate, except now they’ve cleared him out in favor of Vazquez and Hanigan. Which might be OK if Vazquez and Hanigan could hit.

The problem is that the things that Vazquez does best – his defensive abilities – are not as important as they’ve been made out to be. This winter at FanGraphs, Jeff Sullivan showed how quickly any advantages from pitch framing are eroding. This is backed up by how little teams value defense-first catchers. All-time pitch framing king Jose Molina never made more than $2.75 million a season. Vazquez is good at pitch framing, but he needs to excel at something else.

The most obvious thing to excel at is hitting, and he just plain isn’t there. For the season, he is hitting .241/.290/.379, which equates to a 75 wRC+. What that means is that he’s hit 25 percent worse than the average hitter. And as we discussed, he’s been one of the worst-hitting Red Sox catchers in the Henry/Werner era. Ryan Hanigan, meanwhile, has been much worse – .143/.234/.190, for a 14 wRC+, or 86 percent worse than the average hitter. Among the 45 catchers with at least 40 plate appearances, Hanigan’s wRC+ ranks 41st. This isn’t new. In the National League, Hanigan hit .262/.359/.343 – not great, but acceptable. Since coming to the AL in 2014 though, he’s hit .222/.318/.313, which isn’t acceptable, even for a catcher. To say the Red Sox need Swihart’s bat is a dramatic understatement. The team is scoring plenty of runs at the moment, but that won’t last forever, and there is little reason to forfeit one spot in the lineup.

Farrell has made a habit out of shunting young players to the side before they’ve had a chance to prove that they do or don’t belong. He marginalized Jackie Bradley Jr. after his slow start in 2013, and he pushed Xander Bogaerts off of his natural position in 2014 so that he could play the abysmal Stephen Drew. Now he is doing the same thing to Blake Swihart, in seeming deference to keeping Ryan Hanigan on the roster and Christian Vazquez as the starter. Hanigan might be a great presence on the team, but he can be just as great of a presence if he retires and becomes a coach. It’s time for the Red Sox to dump Hanigan and stop pretending Blake Swihart is a left fielder, and let Swihart prove conclusively that either he can or cannot be a major league catcher.