Dojji

.804 OPS in Portland last year before moving up and struggling in Pawtucket. The potential for a better hitter is there if he can combine the decent patience with a little more contact and line drive power. He has shown it in flashes. Besides I mean... he's a plus fielding shortstop, how much does he actually need to hit?

I'm kinda intrigued by Devin Marrero, is he taken? That guy could do good work for us if one of our big league IF's gets hurt. If we didn't have Holt Who Is Awesome, Marrero would be an ideal backup, and he definitely seems to have the upside of a decent starting SS option if someone is interested in a trade. Kinda hoping he gets a chance to play at some point but the infield situation here is crowded. maybe he's deadline bait. I kind of hope so for his sake.

1Tools were on display last night and no mistake. Amazing play to take the HR away, then great speed to steal second followeed up by good alert baserunning to grab third by ambush, and it might just be me but IIRC not too many righthanded hitters clean up that inside fastball the way he did, that usually seems to be a very high percentage pitch nd he just lost it in the stands and made it look real easy, so his hitting hands and bat speed seem top notch too. May just be beginner's luck of course, we'll need to see how he handles his first serious slump before it's time to get really excited, but I think this is just one of those situations where Sox brass struck pure gold. This kid is for real and I'm glad he'll be around awhile.

you know once upon a time this thread had an actual topic. First time through the rotation, 4-1, with the one loss still technically a quality start. I'll take that.

Kelly came up huge tonight. No doubt about it. 5 games, 5 quality starts. I'll take it.

This game was def worse for NYY than it was for us. We just won a 19 inning game, they just blew their entire bullpen on a defeat.

With Masterson, I'm a lot more worried about his movement than his velocity. When he's got that sinker dancing right it doesn't matter if it comes in at 85 or 95, though of course as the season warms up I do expect the velocity to improve.

because it's a long season, of course. I'm reasonably confident in Porcello, but that doesn't mean it makes sense to stake anything on it. It's baseball after all. Anything could happen, and for nearly any reason.

Don't forget, Iglesias was hurt last year. The Tigers had issues at shortstop as a result.

Porcello has FIP and xFIP of below 4 each of the last 3 years FYI.

Hanigan 1 for 3 with a walk also, nice to see.

July 31, 2011: Traded as part of a 3-team trade by the Boston Red Sox with Juan Rodriguez (minors) and Stephen Fife to the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Los Angeles Dodgers sent Trayvon Robinson to the Seattle Mariners. The Boston Red Sox sent Chih-Hsien Chiang (minors) to the Seattle Mariners. The Seattle Mariners sent Erik Bedard and Josh Fields to the Boston Red Sox.

Just for the record, what do people think would be the cost to scoop up Tim Federowicz from the Dodgers? He's got two catchers ahead of him, he's got to be low on options, and we have a history of trading with LAD, including obviously Fed himself. I'm glad we have Leon, but Fed would be a definite upgrade with some real offensive upside.

Yeah, that's one of the reasons I tend to have a strange perspective on things. I don't have a TV, and don't watch cable sports. At all. So I have to learn this stuff for myself with independent research and that leads to odd things like me forming my own opinions based on research rather than basing my opinions on whether I do or do not agree with what the pundits are saying.

Leaving aside the fact that Swihart hasn't proven he can hit big league pitching either yet, Vazquez should hit well enough to hold his own as a defensive specialist if he can put in the reps. If he can get his average up into the .260 range he's fine at the bottom of a batting order as long as the glove holds up.

So now we have two catcher threads. OK

Thanks. It's me and one other person for a supervisor position. I think I have hearts and minds on my side, but the other person has a whole heck of a lot more practical experience. We'll see how it goes.

Are you trolling or did you really honestly underestimate Crisp this badly?

Ahh, sorry. I'm dead tired today, on the cusp of a promotion at work and trying reallllly hard to get myself over the top, and reading comprehension isn't up to par as a result.

Did anyone here have any problem with Coco Crisp being out there everyday in center? No? Of course not. He did his job, and was an elite defender while providing enough stick to justify his place in the everyday lineup. With that in mind I think we can put the idea that racism played any role in JBJ's role or lack thereof in the big league team completely to bed. Racism isn't keeping JBJ out of the lineup. JBJ getting a chance to play everyday and puking on his own shoes over the course of the 2014 season kept JBJ out of the lineup. We were all excited to see what he could do before that happened. Do you guys realize we gave a guy who was hitting below the Mendoza line over 400 PA's to figure it out last year? If anything, that was the team being unreasonably generous And the fact that with a glut of outfield talent this year this sub-200 hitter gets a third string assignment is in any way racist? Please. He has the role on the team he earned, no more and no less. That's how it works in the big market.

According to Soxprospects he was mostly a shortstop in high school, which speaks highly of his athletic skills and certainly suggests that he might go the Napoli/Mauer/Hatteberg route. But if he can play catcher, and it certainly looks like he can, his value there would exceed what he could do in a CIF/COF spot. For the record I've been going over Swihart's numbers and I'm not sure I do see an elite bat there. His hitting looks more on par with a guy like Jason Varitek. Very, very likely to be an offensive asset , but not star level unless other things help carry the overall package, like Tek's glove and smarts did. From what I'm reading Swihart's more of a complete athletic package than he is an elite hitter, and that's fine too, but it does flavor my assessment of the comparison between Swihart and Vazquez. If Swihart is merely a pretty good hitter, then he needs to be pretty close to Vazquez' level DEfensively to overtake him, and I'm not sure he has the experience at catching to get to that level quickly.

Right now Vazquez isn't the underdog. He's the titular starting catcher, and it's up to Swihart to catch up. Calling Swihart the superior player sight unseen when Vazquez is the man who's earned the job right now and will be the starting catcher if he recovers faster than expected isn't reasonable. I don't get why this is so hard for you. Yes, I get that you're excited by Swihart, so am I. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. I've seen guys with every bit of Swihart's potential turn to nothing, and so have you. Heck, just last year Garin Cecchini was the bomb because of his incredible AVG and OBP at AA, where'd that go eh? Most of my schtick boils down to railing against a rush to judgment and trying to kick down prejudices that close people's minds to legitimate possibilities. You're ignoring the very real possibility that Vazquez is the superior catcher overall, despite the fact that we're comparing him to a player that yes, has all the upside in the world, but hasn't played one single second in the big leagues yet. And despite the fact that the Sox brass are raving about Vazquez' defensive skills in a position where defense is far more important than offense. If Swihart is also a good defender and hits 20 HR's, neither of which he's proven conclusively yet (although I agree the potential is certainly there) that's a superior package. But if we find the holes in Swihart's game and there's more of them than we think there are right now, which happens *ALL* the freaking time with minor league prospects, or he doesn't hit like a titan right out of the box which is obviously a very real possibility, then it becomes a much grayer area than you seem to want to admit.

Not to mention that New England in general, which is where the Sox draw their fans from of course, is the whitest region in the United States. Three of the 5 whitest states in the Union are New England states (Maine, Vermont and IIRC Rhode Island). Boston's a major city so they'll have more minorities than some of the countryside states, but the region as a whole is pretty danged white. Can they buy a ticket with no more muss and fuss than any of the rest of us, yes. Do they get the same kind of service in the park as a white man would, for the most part yes. OK, then we deal with any exceptions on a case by case basis and we're done. Next question please. Quite frankly as long as a black man who pays his fare gets reasonable treatment I don't give a damn how many of them there are. Worrying about headcount is the kind of affirmative action BS that's dragging the whole civil rights movement into the gutter and throwing a lot of the Republicans who used to form the backbone of that movement during the Strom Thurmond/George Wallace era of the Democratic Party (IE before the northern Dems told the Dixiecrats to sit down and shut up) away from the movement entirely. This crap used to be bipartisan, and it could be again if the civil rights movements stopped fretting so much over racial and ethnic quotas for everything and worried more about actual, you know, RIGHTS.

55 big league games ain't nothing. It's 55 more than Swihart has at this point

We've thought that about players before who came up to the big leagues and did a grand total of nothing. Ryan Lavarnway probably the most recently example. Vazquez is an acceptable starting catcher right now, or would be if his elbow was healthy. He was on pace for about 3-3.5 WAR over a full season based on his performance last year, that's not just acceptable, that's excellent. Let's let Swihart catch up to that level before starting to label him as superior. It's true of no position more than catching that hitting is NOT everything there is to the position. And even if Swihart hits, if Vazquez is contributing the same number of wins in another area while not actively costing his team wins with his bat, which is quite possible considering the significance of catching defense, it's still a wash despite the fact that Vazquez is a lower third hitter and Swihart has the *ceiling* to be a middle of the rotation hitter.