Dojji

I disagree. but I think you could be right. My disagreement is actually predicated in my faith in Porcello to solidify his position in the lower middle of the rotation, E-Rod to be effective once healthy, and actually the growing confidence I have in Stephen Wright who has been a very very pleasant little surprise so far this April. If we get this version of wright or something like him for most of the season, we're actually good for starting pitching pending what we get out of ERod. If the rotation looks like: Price Erod Wright Porcello Buchholz/Kelly ... where do you put the other starter? much less the guy you're wanting to acquire? You don't get rid of Wright until he proves you should get rid of him, right now Wright is pitching like that #2-3 you wish you had. Kelly is vulnerable, but he's already likely to lose his job when ERod is healthy. Unless Wright regresses to the mean or someone gets hurt there's no gaps in this rotation that you would be particularly desperate to close. We don't have an elite rotation, but we do have a complete rotation thanks to Stephen Wright. Wright's performance is better news for this franchise than I think people recognize, if he keeps it up, you could be looking at our rotation becoming a strength rather than a weakness, especially if we get good the good version of Buchholz as the season warms up.

I'm sorry, those statements may be unkind, but I disagree strenously with "unfair." When the guy promised to come into camp 20 pounds lighter and came in 40 pounds heavier, busted a belt buckle with a swing, completely unable to field his position, and got hurt twice within a month when he tried, clearly has no control over his agent, and the team has tens of millions of dollars sunk into the guy, you just can't expect people to keep biting their lips. Someone is going to say some unkind words. At this point I think it's clear that someone needed to say some unkind things to Pablo much earlier.

Why not? All "8 games into the season" means is that the decision probably wasn't predicated on Swihart's performance at all, because as you point out, he hasn't had time to come down on one side of the fence or the other yet. that should be enough to convince even you that there were clearly other factors in play.

Myself included.

Wright through 6, good stuff. Not bad for a #5 starter. :D

Right is pitching very very well right now. Please get him some runs guys!

A lot of people missing the point. Christian Vazquez was the starting catcher in the minds of the Red Sox organization for the entire time Blake Swihart was called up. He was in their plans as the starting catcher as soon as they moved away from Saltalamacchia. Pierzynski was a 1 year thing to get us to Vazquez. Vazquez is a player the organization has had their minds on for years and his lack of experience aside the team never had any indication of Blake Swhiart's callup being anything other than 100% temporary. This was not, at all, a knee jerk spur of the moment move by the organization. If it were, I'd agree 100% with Kimmi, but she's lost sight of the fact that as far as the entire Red Sox organization is concerned Christian Vazquez is the incumbent, not Blake Swihart. there is no known dissent on this subject. Swhiart wasn't sent down because of anything he did. He was sent down because the starting catcher (which he is not and never was) got healthy and there was no further need for his extended callup, so he can now go back to the minors where he still belongs and finish learning how to be a big league catcher. it's just that simple.

If by "blather" you mean a brilliantly accurate commentary on the team and its fans.

I am amazed at how well he's reclaimed his college position considering how little he'd played it in the meantime. He was a little rusty in the Spring but seems to have shaken that off completely now and is probably playing better 3B than he did in college. He's clearly worked hard on that, and I'm pleased. That saaaaaaaaid... those who are too quick to congratulate themselves over Shawo do head over to fangraphs and check out his BABIIP. I think there still may yet be trouble in the wind... hopefully he just adds more walks, cuts down on the strikeouts and starts flashing his power again, and keeps his numbers up while BABIP normalizes. that would be nice.

Actually I think he might have been sent down anyway. you're the one who's frequently saying an 8 game sample size means very little. It might have improved his trade stock a bit to have a better start to the year under his belt but he really was only up as an injury replacement, he'd have had to kill the ball and show substantial improvement in catching fundamentals to Wally Pip a guy with the defensive luster of a guy like Vazquez. the whole Red Sox analytics department has been drooling over the impact of CV's defense. that's a high freaking bar for Swihart to try to clear in 8 games. Even if he destroyed the ball, unless the franchise just doesn't see him as a catcher at all anymore, and they've made it clear that they do, the place to be is the place where Swihart can get the maximum reps to build proficiency. Right now that's AAA where he can be a starting catcher rather than at the MLB level where he can't because Vazquez is the starting catcher -- and at the moment seems to be paying for himself bigtime in runs prevented. That's not a good environment for a one position player trying to break into the league, especially one who's clearly thinking about plays that should be automatic for a big league catcher..

That's pure speculation though. We have the team acting based on what sounds a lot more like a plan now that we know about the service time thing.

... and the fact that his recovery dovetailed with an opportunity to save a year of service time on Swihart is probably more than a happy coincidence.

Not rash at all. They kept Swihart up until keeping him up woult cost them a year of service time, and that dovetailed nicely with when they expected Vazquez to be fully ready. if Vazquez wasn't fully ready, they'd burn the year of service time and keep rolling with swihart. since he was, they were able to save the service time. It was very rational and calculated, and happened to take place 8 games into the season because that's when the plan called for it to happen. the optics don't look good because the team was having trouble preventing runs when swihart went down, but any executive would tell you that's most likely a coincidence. Unless Swihart was making it abundantly clear exactly why they needed to keep running with him (and probably even if) Vazquez was coming back. (people seem to have forgotten this AGAIN, but the Boston Red Sox never, not once, made any noise that sounded anything like a commitment to Blake Swihart as the starting catcher. He was strictly and only an injury replacement)

he's also pretty small, well shorter than most of the players around him, not sure how that'll play out. you know I have concerns with small players as they age -- but that's years down the road in Vazquez' case.

Swihart has good defensive tools, no doubt about that. His issue is that he was way too green because he was forced up too early. I think other teams recognize this when judging his longterm value. The only reason they have him dabbling in left is so they have enough leverage to say "Yeah, we don't have to move this guy because we have a plan for what to do with him Vaz or no Vaz." That should increase the return on trade not decrease it.

We're not going to know the answer to any of those questions until we have a lot more information.

if they tried to trade Swihart in the winter they were fools. Swihart had his foot nailed to the floor in Boston until we knew whether CV would be back and ready to go. Turns out he was, but this right this very right now second is the first time they could realistically explore moving him.

He's not moving to left, unbunch the pantaloons. He's getting a taste of left field while working on his catching. That's how the team is framing this. if any team saw him as a potentially valuable trade chip 5 minutes ago the fact that he suddenly has left field experience isn't going to change their minds one little bit. The only significance of the move to LF is that it annoys people yet further who somehow still see Swihart as the guy who should be starting at catcher either right now or in 2 years (or in other words those who want catchers that hit and see Vazquez as a backup) despite the team making it clear that Vazquez was the starter and Swihart wasn't, and maybe gives Swihart a little more usefulness off the bench in a couple niche situations. That's it. Cool your jets people. Incidentally I'm reading here and there that Swihart was right on the edge of burning a year of service time, and sending him down, if they leave him down all year, will save them a year of control over him. That's never the only reason to hold a guy in the minors, but with 2 good young catching hopefuls and only 1 that you can commit enough big league reps to to let them develop in Boston, it makes a good tiebreaker.

Vazquez is not Doug Mirabelli. He probably has the best hands of our catchers and I'd expect him to be handling Wright more often than not, but he's here for more than caddying our #5 starter.

I agree, the rotation is a good bet to either stabilize on its own, or be stabilized. The question is can it be stabilized quickly enough to allow the team to compete for the division, or do we lose the season before enough of our starts find their feet to put a good team overall onto the field?

Swihart is not bad, just green. that said a stint to AAA to work on specifically refining his old-man skills on defense (picking up reps and gaining proficiency at things he already knows how to do) outside of the Boston pressure cooker may go a long way.

And just like it'll be someone else's in a few years. No problem was ever solved by figuring out who to blame.

At least the other bad contracts are doing what they can. Porcello isn't a bum, he's just overpaid. Hanley was put in a bad spot last year and may have been hurt. No such excuse for Pablo.

Kimbrel strikes out the side. How badly did we need that win?

Why would you even go there? A single doesn't tie the game, and Davis can score from home. Wow, never interrupt the opposition when they're being dumb.