Blake Swihart is entirely justified in seeking a trade for an opportunity to succeed or fail as an MLB player. I have little confidence in Swihart but I hope he proves me wrong.
In terms of Swihart's trade value, I posted this recently:
Blake Swihart is a year older now than Jarrod Saltalmacchia was in June 2010 when the Texas Rangers traded the switch-hitting catcher to the Red Sox for Chris McGuiness, Roman Mendez, Michael Thomas and cash. SoxProspects has never ranked the three prospects among the Top 20 in the organization. McGuiness and Thomas apparently are out of organized baseball while Mendez is a 27-year-old toiling at Double A.
Saltalamacchia peaked at No. 18 on Baseball America's Top 100 prospect list while Swihart peaked at No. 17.
At the time of the 2010 trade Saltalamacchia was back down at Triple A, much as Swihart had spent much of his age 25 season at Triple A after being a starter at the MLB level.
With Saltalamacchia as his optimistic ceiling, Swihart has limited trade value.
https://www.talksox.com/forum/thread...78#post1140378
He looked okay when rushed into duty a few years back, but he really has not done anything in the minors to show he deserves another long look. Apparently, his defense does not look good to Sox management, so he really needed to show a big plus bat over the last couple years. He did not.
With the few spots left for bench players on the modern 25 man, moving Swihart would be a favor to us as well as him. With so few bench players available you simply can't have a guy on the bench that you won't use. How do you think we ended up with Wright pinch running? How did that work out for us?
The Red Sox have known for at least a year that the club had a logjam at catcher. I suspect the Sox have been shopping the catchers for a long time but have declined multiple offers. Perhaps the Sox need to lower their sights in what a trade will return.
Pedroia will be back shortly. Then a roster move will be made. We have enough utility guys , and we don't need three catchers. Either Swihart or Leon has to go. Cora seems to prefer Leon. There is no sense keeping Swihart if you are not going to use him. Trade him for whatever you can get. Of course , this could be rued because Swihart has a chance to be better , while Leon will never be more than what he is. But that's how it goes. I'm sure Dombrowski understands this.
I think the sox moved on from him as a catcher just as soon as they started to improve. A team with high aspirations cannot be bringing along a catcher who is still being taught the position. I think Swihart gets snapped up by a team like SD or TB and moves right back behind the dish
Hal sucks
I question the market for a non-catcher whom ZiPS, Steamer and FanGraphs Depth Charts project with rest-of-season wRC+ of 58, 68 and 63.
https://www.fangraphs.com/statss.asp...176&position=C