Apologies for the long post here....this is the article that convinced me that Swihart's time has come. First, some excerpts, then a link to the full article:
"This brings us back to Blake Swihart. Swihart was a more touted prospect than Bradley. Whereas Bradley was a consensus top-50 prospect in his final minor league season, Swihart was a consensus top-20 prospect. And after being rushed to the majors last season, Swihart adjusted well: In the second half, he was one of the best-hitting catchers in the American League.
This season, he posted a .391 on-base percentage in the six games he played. He was the Opening Day starter, and he reached base safely in all six games he played. But he made a couple of defensive mistakes, and was sent to the minors to work on them. There are many problems with this.
The first, as I’ve said, six games are not nearly enough to evaluate a player. Second, the team has started letting him play left field. Third, the catchers playing in his stead – Christian Vazquez and Ryan Hanigan – can’t hit.
The first and second points are related, and again show Farrell’s itchy trigger finger. I’m reminded of players like Gary Sheffield, Melvin Upton Jr., Troy Tulowitzki and Xander Bogaerts. When they came up, all were plagued by calls to move to different defensive positions. All four were given chances to prove they belong at their original positions. Sheffield was allowed to make 15 errors at shortstop and 88 at third base before being moved full-time to the outfield. Upton made 34 errors at various infield positions before he was moved to the outfield. Both were given multiple seasons in the infield before moving to the outfield. Tulowitzki and Bogaerts both proved their doubters wrong and learned to play fantastic defense at shortstop, because they were given the opportunity to succeed or fail on their own."
"Swihart hasn’t been given enough playing time to succeed or fail on his own. The shift to left field, robs him of realizing his full potential as a catcher, and also his trade value at that position. The only way Swihart plays in left field regularly is if an infielder gets hurt and Brock Holt moves back to the infield. Otherwise, Holt is going to be playing left field, and now that he’s an All-Star, Farrell isn’t going to bench Holt for Swihart. Swihart’s only path to normal playing time in Boston is behind the plate, except now they’ve cleared him out in favor of Vazquez and Hanigan. Which might be OK if Vazquez and Hanigan could hit.
The problem is that the things that Vazquez does best – his defensive abilities – are not as important as they’ve been made out to be. This winter at FanGraphs, Jeff Sullivan showed how quickly any advantages from pitch framing are eroding. This is backed up by how little teams value defense-first catchers. All-time pitch framing king Jose Molina never made more than $2.75 million a season. Vazquez is good at pitch framing, but he needs to excel at something else.
The most obvious thing to excel at is hitting, and he just plain isn’t there. For the season, he is hitting .241/.290/.379, which equates to a 75 wRC+. What that means is that he’s hit 25 percent worse than the average hitter. And as we discussed, he’s been one of the worst-hitting Red Sox catchers in the Henry/Werner era. Ryan Hanigan, meanwhile, has been much worse – .143/.234/.190, for a 14 wRC+, or 86 percent worse than the average hitter. Among the 45 catchers with at least 40 plate appearances, Hanigan’s wRC+ ranks 41st. This isn’t new. In the National League, Hanigan hit .262/.359/.343 – not great, but acceptable. Since coming to the AL in 2014 though, he’s hit .222/.318/.313, which isn’t acceptable, even for a catcher. To say the Red Sox need Swihart’s bat is a dramatic understatement. The team is scoring plenty of runs at the moment, but that won’t last forever, and there is little reason to forfeit one spot in the lineup.
Farrell has made a habit out of shunting young players to the side before they’ve had a chance to prove that they do or don’t belong. He marginalized Jackie Bradley Jr. after his slow start in 2013, and he pushed Xander Bogaerts off of his natural position in 2014 so that he could play the abysmal Stephen Drew. Now he is doing the same thing to Blake Swihart, in seeming deference to keeping Ryan Hanigan on the roster and Christian Vazquez as the starter. Hanigan might be a great presence on the team, but he can be just as great of a presence if he retires and becomes a coach. It’s time for the Red Sox to dump Hanigan and stop pretending Blake Swihart is a left fielder, and let Swihart prove conclusively that either he can or cannot be a major league catcher."
Here is the link to the full article: http://www.boston.com/sports/boston-...-blake-swihart