Dojji

Because we didn't learn our lesson from Adrian Gonzalez? This is a very similar situation here.

I think that depends on your definition of "should." Swihart "should" be so talented that he forces the issue, knocks the door down, and makes himself the obvious choice to start at catcher, even in the presence of Vazaquez. He absolutely should NOT be simply expected to be our starter and have the way paved for him to come in by getting rid of veterans and other promising talents at the catching position.

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Swihart is not yet a legitimate starter. When will people stop failing to make the distinction between ceiling and present level? A ceiling can very easily never be reached in the lifespan of a prospect. Right now, Swihart is a guy with a great ceiling who has not yet reached it. Vazquez is a high floor catcher and worth holding on to until you know what you're going to get from Swihart, which we won't really know for at least 3 seasons. Keep Vazquez. Worry about what happens when Swihart beats him, when that actually happens.

What they're getting from Guthrie isn't difficult to understand. He's a pitcher to contact whose calling card is the innings he consumes. He's doing as well as he does because he pitches the contact and the defense of the team behind him has been a focus of the Royals. Dayton Moore wasn't trying to get the best pitchers possible, he assembled a bunch of highly durable starters and then built a high level defense around them. This had the effect of magnifying what those pitchers did well and allowing his team to contend. Very shrewd in this era of diminishing offense. Put the same pitchers on a team like the Red Sox where the focus is about getting offense out of positions where defense is at a premium, and he would fare much less well.

Guy like Vazquez isn't losing a lot of his value as a backup, and when a rookie catcher is your starter, your backup will get a chance to earn some playing time. I'm fine with making it a competition. I just hope that when the Sox do this, they have some aging guy in AAA they can slot in if both young catchers lose.

Now see, I almost agree with this except I have an issue with the idea of fixating on one guy who's your go to catching prospect when a roster can have 2 catchers. I see a distinct and important role for potentially both Vazquez and Swihart on this team and I'd be reluctant to deal either one. I would have no problem starting Vazquez next year even if the ultimate goal is to ease Swihart into the role, because a roster can have 2 catchers and Vazquez is an ideal backup catcher type anyway.

Would love it if the team went to the wall for Lester and James Shields. Shields has issues in the playoffs, but we need to get to the playoffs again before we have to worry about that, and an innings horse like Shields will play a big role in us getting there.

Oh, HELL to the no. Didn't we learn with the Lavarnway debacle that there's no such thing as a surefire prospect? NEVER give away all your prospects at a given position less one, then murder your veteran depth to "make room" for a prospect. Not unless you're a farm team with a budget of 5 bucks and whatever Aunt Judy can dig out of her sofa.

He's very young and playing at a very high level. Let's see him get at least a few reps to settle down and get used to the league before waving the "choker" label around. Bogaerts is still one year younger than Nomar was when he debuted, and 2 years younger than Nomar was when he broke out. A little time and patience is in order.

A .700 OPS is actually really good offensive numbers for a catcher. This year CV was .240/.308/.309. There is no power there and precious little potential for any. The fact that he's a catcher doesn't make him Doug Mirabelli. This man is not in any way shape form or means going to hit for any kind of power at all, ever. He's not going to slug .400. Ever. His career slugging in the minors is .392. He never slugged over .400 at the AA level or higher, no matter the sample size. Power is just not part of his makeup as a player. He can't do it to save his life unless he gets a lot better at hitting line drive doubles. What he can do is hit for a bit of average and get on base a little. He may be able to refine those skillsets into a decent gap hitter in the later-years Jason Kendall mold. A guy who can put up a good at bat, dink some singles and plug a few gap doubles. If he ever develops into a really good hitter, it'll be based on that combination of skills, and even there he doesn't have the gap to gap power of a Pedroia, or the speed to really exploit gap hitting well. If Christian learns to hit, what you're going to get is a guy with a decent BA with on base and slugging both in the mid .300's and an OPS in the upper .600's. I'd call that adequate, if he can get there, and with some experience that's a level he can attain.

Vazquez' track record suggests minimal power and only adequate-at-best plate discipline. Him learning to hit is a distinct uphill struggle because he's never demonstrated a serious mastery of the art in the minors. Now there is a precedent -- Yadi Molina's minor league numbers look a lot like Christian's. But Yadi beat some serious odds learning to hit the way he did. I just think we need to count on Vazquez's glove and let whatever offense happens to happen be a pleasant surprise based on experience and adjustments at the plate. And even in the early years, Yadi would run into one more often than Vazquez has so far. A light hitting catcher with a semi decent OBP is the offensive ceiling I see from Vazquez -- a shortstop bat with a top of the line glove is acceptable to me.

Do you think this team needs a new professional free agent catcher, or do we think Cristian Vazquez is the wave of the future behind the dish? Let's call a spade a spade, and a bad hitter a bad hitter. Cristian Vazquez will never be the big thunder in the middle of the lineup, and he may never even get on base all that much. His arm is coming through, he's an amazing defensive backstop, but is that enough on its own to make a good catcher of a player who will, not probably but definitely, struggle offensively for most if not all of his career? If not, what are the alternatives? Finding a good hitting catcher is enough that my opinion is that Vazquez may save more runs than he costs us, especially as he matures as a leader and game-caller. I want to know if anyone else has seen something in Vazquez's game that's a bigger cause for concern or whether some fans think he should be paired with an offense guy like a Salty type. My personal opinion is that the Cardinals won the World Series with pre-breakout Yadier Molina in 2006, and the Royals are riding Salvador Perez, who has some stick but is mostly a D guy, into the World Series. Players with supremely defensive catchers are disproportionately represented in the playoffs and tend to play above their level if they can get there with the offense they can obtain at other positions, as long as the catcher defends at the elite level he's capable of. Vazquez won't hit as well as either of those two, but the primary thing they have in common is the laser cannon attached to their right shoulders, and he could learn to maybe hit just enough not to be a liability while yielding that caliber of D. If that can happen, I think that the starting catcher's job is his to lose, even on a team that favors finding ways to squeeze offense out of premium defensive positions. If traditional team prejudices win out though, we may wind up trying to work with Lavarnway or Swihart and finding a home for Vazquez in the National League by trade. I'd consider that a mistake, since I think the kid's developed nicely and his strengths are extremely valuable. As long as he throws out 50% of would be base stealers, or his CS% only drops because the rate of players trying to steal on his arm goes down like it did for Perez and Y. Molina, that skill is valuable enough that I'd be willing to trade 10 HR's a year from the catcher spot for it easily. Controlling the running game will take a lot of runs off the board over the course of the year, maybe even enough to make up for an offensive deficit, especially as he combines that natural talent with learning how to better control other areas of the defensive game. This kid is worth giving a lot of playing time to to see how far his defensive game can come.

That was probably the best a team has ever played and get swept. I feel bad for the Orioles.

Because if EITHER the Giants OR the Cardinals win, they'll tie the Red Sox for most World Series wins in the 21st century with 3.

Sounds familiar, Roberts steal and Damon's walkoff in The Comeback were both after midnight. The Royals seem to have a strategy of forcing other teams to make mistakes. Put the ball in play, wait for a mistake. Run the bases, wait for a mistake. Scratch a few runs with infield hits, hold the tie or at least keep the game close, and wait for your few power guys to run into one. It's a wierd playstyle, but I'd love to see it work because I'd love to see the sorts of things they're built around (fielding, pitching, and extreme speed) rewarded and perpetuated.

The only way KC can win is the hard way. They don't have high end power anywhere in their lineup, they have to fight and claw and scratch and scrape. They're the exact opposite of a traditional moneyball team but they're finding ways to make it work for them. I wonder if that's how the league and its fans saw the original moneyball teams before the method behind the madness became clear. That lack of top performance is going to come back to bite them eventually when up against a team with some real explosiveness, but I think we've seen that that team may not be LAA.

;);)

Oh, and if we're plundering the Royals, could we also possibly make moves for Jarrod Dyson and Jeremy Guthrie? No one's fooled by Buchholz on the field or in the stands, or very probably in the owner's box anymore. Adding another durable arm to the bottom of the rotation to eat some more innings would be useful, and Guthrie is possibly an odd man on in KC with some talented starting arms in the pipe, and he costs more money than a small market wants to spend on a below average pitcher. And while we don't love being in a position to need a guy like that, he would at be least durable enough to be a good professional #5 and keep the bullpen from going into a death spiral. I could think of worse guys to have in tha #5 spot, starting with a guy whose last name starts with B and his first name is a synonym for the dirt he pitches like. As for my manlove for Dyson? Well, dat speed for one thing. He's one of the fastest ballplayers in the league. Yeah, he can't hit, but neither could anyone else we put in center this year. We could use some help in centerfield and I wouldn't mind adding him to that mix as either the starting CF or as a possible bench option.

I like the idea of bringing in James Shields. He's not the most exciting pitcher but he's a big strong durable innings burner with extensive AL East experience and he did take the Rays to the Series in 08. He's a bit overhyped as the "ace" of the Royals but he's the perfect #2 guy for a big market rotation. If we can get Lester back and supplement him with Shields, they might go back to drumming in the bullpen just for lack of anything to do 2 days out of 5. This is the guy you want to bring in to really add some weight to the starting rotation. We aren't going to have a lot of innings eaten by the bottom of our rotation, it's critical that we have two big durable guys at the top of the rotation -- more critical than two ace caliber pitchers in terms of ERA or WAR, in my honest. Guys like that make bullpen solutions simple. With all the crap we've put up with in terms of injuries I could really go for a skilled starting pitcher with good-to-great command that hasn't missed his turn in the rotation at any point in the last 4 years, and has never failed to pitch 200 innings since he broke into the big league game, couldn't you? Throw in the fact that Mr. Shields is actually also a pretty darn decent pitcher, and you have something an offensive minded club with a decent lineup can use to win ballgames. In fact looking at his track record it's entirely possible that James Shields has literally never missed a scheduled start, which in a 8+ year career would be phenomenal. Yes, gimme some of that.

I hate this line of thinking, because it's so hard to argue with. And I don't mean that in the sense that it's right or logical. More in the sense that it's lazy and shortsighted, and is generally a move suggested based on emotion and frustration rather than analysis. There's a sense after a bad stretch or a bad year that Something Must Be Done, and firing the manager is always the easiest thing. It can have absolutely nothing to with whether any of the ills of the team actually come back to the manager's performance or not. Ownership wants to show they're engaged in the team, and they want to divorce the team for last year's failures, and in that environment the manager is the laziest thing to change. It gives the illusion of a shake-up without ruffling the feathers of all your guaranteed big money contracts. And at the end of the day most of the same cast of characters are running the clubhouse (nothing empowers the clubhouse more than a rookie manager). It's the ultimate low-carb move. Either the new guy gets the credit if the team does well next year, or if it doesn't, then you sacrifice the next goat to the gods of PR and select your new victim. It's a tiresome little dog and pony show when half of the retired veteran ballplayers in this league with any interest in managing would be no better or worse as a manager than each other.

No you don't. A lot of teams have gone deep without a guy who hits home runs playing third base. Heck with 1 year left out Youk wasn't "a guy who hits home runs" but he was a useful 1B/3Bman until injuries caught up with him. Absent 03, Bill Mueller wasn't a HR hitter either. The HR hitting corner infielder is a stereotype, and you'd like power hitters at every position, but 3B is a position you can get away with a defense guy on if you have enough going on in other places. It's a lot harder to find that power hitting 3B than people seem to believe. There's not a lot of them out there. but you *absolutely* can win without one. Heck our best run last year was probably with Iggy at third. That said, with WMB in limbo and Cecchini proving he needs more time, I'd be fine with bringing a guy in for third base if you can find one. I'd be all for bringing in a guy like Casey McGehee if he's available in the offseason. You know, a fella who could hold the position down if he had to but probably isn't so good you couldn't feel comfortable replacing him if a phenom looks ready to go.

Agreed. Time to make Middlebrooks earn his next callup. I see no reason to go back to WMB unless he knocks the doors off. Cecchini, and Holt between them can easily handle 3B better than WMB does until he learns to hit. Bogaerts might yet wind up there too, and the Sox go pick up a glove-first SS. XB has a ways to go defensively, if the team thinks it's go time next year, XB is not ready to be a champion caliber shortstop based on his fielding, so picking up a Johnny Noodlebat shortstop with a slick glove may be the right move. I mean if you have to have .180 in the lineup it might as well be maximizing your defense, right?

I like that range in center. He was very comfortably under some balls he had to move a bit for.

At the moment, yes, but in a fewy ears it's likely that most of them will go the way of the Phillies, which was another team not ashamed to dish out this kind of contract -- and the only reason NYY won't is because they can simply spend their way out of any stupid decisions they make. This run of years was going to happen eventually in Boston. We've been losing star-level core players faster than we can replace them since at least 2008. 2012 was a very nice surprise, but that pattern is going to catch up to us eventually. The thing to do is simply do what you always do with a bad string of years. Live through it and hope the team management knows what it's doing. The way Cherington's trying to rebuild the team is the only way the team *can* be rebuilt. The slow way isn't pleasant or fun in the short term, but the end results on average outstrip the "easy way" by an order of magnitude. Going hogwild on big contracts feels good in the short term but over the long run does more damage than it repairs, especially if you try to build a whole core squad out of it. It's a great way to supplement a strong, established core, but without those central pieces it won't work out, and our core pieces are either a) aging, showing some serious injury problems, or c) not here anymore.