moonslav59

A lot of these projections strongly rely on last year's numbers. Also, projections for 2017 might have little to do with long term projections. Zunino is a year older and has 25% more professional experience catching than Swihart. That's reason enough to expect a slightly better 2017 season than Swihart. Yes, scouts can be wrong. They've been more wrong with catchers than probably any other non-pitching position, but I do think most scouts would pick Swi over Zun despite 2017 projections..

One year younger and about 1,000 innings less catching at the professional level. I don't know Zunino's amateur record, but my guess is he had more than 1 or two years catching in HS.

Just curious why they haven't DFA'd him yet. I guess they'll give him one more ST'ing to make a go at it. If an OF'er gets hurt before opening day, I guess he has a chance at a short fill-in role. Maybe, they are just waiting for their next acquisition to cut him loose.

He made it up to #18 as a very young pitcher, so he must have some hope.

Swihart had 6 PAs in 2011 but never caught an inning. Hes' essentially played in 5 professional seasons (2012 to 2016). He only caught in 4 seasons before 2016. His first "real" season saw him catch only 546 innings: his last season only 182. Swihart has 3275 total innings behind the plate (minors + Majors). Zunino broke into professional baseball the same year as Swihart (2012). He has 4,146 innings behind the plate in his 5 professional seasons combined (minors+ majors). That's about 25% more than Swi.

My bad. I meant junior year in HS. He played SS and pitcher beforehand.

Notes from soxprospects.com... Christopher Acosta has reported to the Red Sox Dominican Academy...a former top-20 prospect in the SoxProspects.com rankings, did not pitch last season after being placed on the restricted list in June. It is unclear what the plan will be for Acosta going forward... According to a report last June by Alex Speier of the Boston Globe, Acosta got in trouble during extended spring training in Fort Myers and left Florida for the Dominican without permission, resulting in the team placing him on the restricted list—in other words, suspending him. After returning to the Dominican, he did not report to the Dominican Academy as directed, and he missed the rest of the 2016 season. Acosta was one of the top prospects in the 2014 international free agent class, signing with the Red Sox for $1.5 million out of the Dominican Republic during the same signing period as Anderson Espinoza and, much later, Yoan Moncada. MLB.com ranked him as the top pitcher in that class and sixth-best prospect overall, while Baseball America ranked him as the 11th-overall prospect in the class (and behind Espinoza). Before the Red Sox suspended Acosta, he reached as high as number 18 in the SoxProspects.com rankings...hopefully in Spring Training [he'll show] the once-projectable three-pitch mix that made him look like a potential mid-to-back-rotation starter down the line. However, after a year off, it is unclear what condition he will be in returning to the mound.

Remember, Swihart did not become a catcher until his junior year in college, so his age/growth curve should be given some slack. His injury last year prolonged that curve. Vaz's injury set him back a big notch. Leon has been around a lot, but he hasn't gotten many long looks over recent years. Innings as a catcher (minors + majors): Leon 2012: 509 2013: 819 2014: 360 2015: 490 2016: 839 (~560/season over the last 3 years) The median MLB starting catcher got about 900 innings last season. Vaz 2012: 847 2013: 837 2014: 911 2015: none 2016: 790 Swihart 2012: 546 (first year in professional baseball) 2013: 868 2014: 845 2015: 835 2016: 182 (Injured) and 205 in OF As you can see, other than the injury seasons, Vaz & Swi were catching more innings than Leon since 2012. I think Leon has room for growth, even though he's 2-3 years older than the other two. (Again, I still like Vaz and Swi better in projected future overall value.)

Yeah, without Brentz, there's really not much on the farm, in terms of ML ready OF'ers. I wouldn't be surprised, if we sign another OF'er to a minor league deal. I wonder, if we can get a low level prospect by trading Brentz.

Vaz looked lost all season. Like I said, I think all our 3 catchers have a close to a 50-50 chance of becoming a plus catcher someday. I feel Vaz is already a plus on defense. Leon is probably a plus as well. Swihart needs growth on defense. Swihart looks to have the best hit tool and should be better than the other two right now on offense, if given a chance. Overall, hey are probably all close to average- maybe a little below, but I think all are young enough to expect improvement. Remember, the Catcher OPS in MLB last year was .702. Out of the top 30 catchers by OPS last year, here are some of their OPS numbers: .568 Carlos Perez .583 Derrick Norris .587 Dioner Navarro .629 James McCann .629 Travis d'Arnaud .630 Saltalamacchia .631 Chris Iannetta .684 Jason Castro .684 Miguel Montero .699 F Cervelli .702 Tucker Barnhart You only had to hit .631 to get out of the bottom quintile (5th) last year among starters.

He probably can't be any worse than Brentz, so if we need a roster spot, we can DFA Brentz and still have minor league OF depth not on the 40 man roster until or if needed.

We do need minor league depth, but it doesn't make sense to me either. Maybe because they know he can never win a spot on the 25 man roster. I'm thinking, if someone gets hurt, he might have a chance, so why not invite? Here's what MLBTR said... There’s no invite to Major League camp on Quentin’s deal with the Red Sox, reports WEEI’s Rob Bradford, so it seems he’ll head to minor league camp and open the season in Triple-A. Bradford cites a lack of depth in the team’s current minor league outfield options as well as the fact that Quentin has dropped 40 pounds behind the signing.

I doubt anyone thinks Leon will hit like last year or even close to last year, but he could drop 200 points and Vaz gain 50, and he'd still be ahead of Vaz in OPS. Leon has also pretty much proven he's good on defense. I do still think the odds that Vaz or Swi pass Leon in overall value at some point in time-- maybe not this year, but it's just an opinion not based on anything but gut instinct.

Remember Geaorge Kottarus? There's another miss. Lavarnway another.

I do like the odds of Vaz or Swi eventually beating out Leon, but I still include Leon in the mix. I'm just saying "plus catcher" not allstar. I'd say, in general, all three are close to 50-50 for becoming a plus catcher. That gives us very good odds one will make it there. If I had to bet, I'd bet two make it not one.

LMAO! Also, the softy the clown reference to Jake (Jacoby Ellsbury).

According to MLBTR, he's not invited to ST'ing, so there goes that idea.

And, it doesn't mean if they don't have 4 HRs in 60 times up, they are a choke.

That's funny!

We needed some veteran OF depth at AAA. He only has to be better than Brentz, who is needlessly taking up a 40 man roster spot. We can add CQ to the 40 man, if and when we need him.

Maybe he'll be the next "Pudge". On a more serious note, I'm not sure his weight is an issue.

Agreed. I said I felt they needed a number 2, but I'm always saying (until now) we need a 1 or two, but I said they were looking for a "solid #3-4.

You don't spend $11M in 2009 money on a 6th and 7th starter. Wake was 42. Buch was coming off a 15 start 6.75 season. Dice-K had a big 2008 season, but his peripherals were not that good. We had Lester and Beckett. I think the hope was Penny-Smoltz could combine to give us solid 3 starter numbers...maybe 4 behind Dice-K. As it turned out, Beckett improved from 2008 to 2009, Lester gave us a solid year, but Dice-K, Buch and Wake all pitched poorer or missed too much time: Wake 4.58 in 21 GS Buch 4.21 in 16 GS Dice 5.76 in 12 GS We needed a solid number 3 that year, and Penny & Smoltz failed to give us even solid #5 numbers combined.

...Most players are able to keep things within their career norms. Some players are outliers for a brief time, some are outliers for their whole careers yet still have one postseason where their talent shines through ... But, isn't that what you'd expect by randomly taking specific sample size from here and there in any baseball player's history? Baseball is such a fickle sport with so many variables, it's hard to comprehend them all. It's a game of millimeters when bat meets ball. One would expect most players would fall within their norm and some having outlier numbers based on any number of reasons or no particular reason at all other than that stretch just happened to be a hot or cold streak at the "wrong time". There's a chance no mental factors were involved at all, or at least not the ones we think cause "clutch" or "choke" to happen. For instance, a player could be right on his game and have the perfect mental attitude for a particular AB. Normally, (for argument's sake) when he's "zoned in like that", he does better than normal, which might be hitting .400 vs vs hitting .250. However, this particular series, he went 4 for 20. Maybe he hit the ball hard for outs. maybe he faced a tough pitcher. maybe he faced too many lefties. Maybe, maybe, maybe... It's just impossible or nearly impossible to ever know for sure if that .200 (4 for 20) event was a "choke" or not.

We needed a solid #2-3 type starter. We tried for settle on a not-so-solid 3-4 type. Instead we spent over $10M in 2009 dollars to get two "half pitchers" in hopes one would do well or Penny would "bridge" us to when Smoltz got healthy. Together, they were not minor signings. $11M was big money back then. They sucked. It didn't work. One can say, "nice try", but IMO those deals paled in comparison to pre-Nomar trade deals. Penny 7-8 5.61 (1.534 WHIP in 133 IP/24) Smoltz 2-5 8.33 (1.700 WHIP in 40 IP/8GS) They gave us the 32 games started we needed, but the performance level was horrendous. The Matt Clement signing was a "good try". If he hadn't got seriously injured, he might have worked out well. It's hard to fault Theo for that one, but sadly GMs are mostly judged on post-move performance, injury or no injury. We spent almost $26M in 2005-2007 dollars on Matt, and got this: 18-11 5.09 (1.463) 44 GS (256 IP on a 3 year deal) I'm not trying to be critical of Theo's overall body of work. Again, I think he's the best GM in my lifetime. I'm just pointing out my opinion that he slumped towards the end of his tenure in Boston (except for that 2011 draft).