The Red Sox have Chris Snyder on their "down-the-road hit list," a source tells Ken Rosenthal and Jon Paul Morosi of FOX Sports. With Miguel Montero on the disabled list for about another month, Snyder is not currently available, but the Red Sox may be interested in the backstop when Montero returns.
The FOX duo notes that before the Sox acquired Victor Martinez last season, they offered flamethrower Daniel Bard to the Diamondbacks for Montero. Now that Martinez's and Jason Varitek's troubles containing baserunners are compromising Boston's defense, the Sox could once again look into acquiring a Diamondback catcher. For his career, Snyder has thrown out 25.9% of opposing basestealers.
The Diamondbacks had worked out a trade over the winter that would have sent Snyder to the Blue Jays, but it fell through due to injury concerns. Given his back problems and his $11.25MM price tag over the next two years, Snyder will be difficult to deal. However, if the Sox keep allowing stolen bases at a 97% rate (34-of-35), they could be forced to make a move.
As a Rockies fan I think I’m ready to see Ianetta get shipped to Boston.
The DBacks should have taken Bard when they had the chance.
26-year-old power-hitting catcher versus a 24-year-old hard-throwing reliever… I’ll take the catcher any day. Montero’s got decent plate discipline, can hit for average, and has plus power. That’s not even mentioning the fact that he’s also thrown out 30% of base stealers in his career. Finding those attributes in a catcher is far more difficult than finding a young, hard-throwing reliever.
No chance I deal Montero for Bard if I’m Josh Byrnes.
Completely agree. While it’s fun to have these types of relievers, remember that a catcher has WAY more influence on a game-to-game basis–especially one who is good defensively, and can actually hit the ball.
Definitely agree as well, a good young catcher like Montero has huge value. A ~3 WAR player like Montero should return more than an enigmatic flamethrowing relief prospect.
Care to explain why?
You must be joking.
Montero is an above average player at a premium position who is one of the best offensively at his position, and isn’t bad as a defensive catcher either. Bard is a freakin’ reliever. It doesn’t matter how good he is. Really good catcher >>>>>>>>> really good reliever. And it’s not close.
What happened to everyone saying “Victor throws better as he gets consistant playing time at catcher”?? Guess that goes away when he isnt hitting .330
Thats not everyone Thats the east cost media. Trust me i’m a whitesox fan, Vmart had never been good at throwing runners out. Plain and simple, his value will sky rocket if he is moved to 1st full time. Which is pretty much what the indians did when they had him and shoppach at the same time. When he was traded to boston the Media and their east coast biased said that he was this GREAT catcher when in all reality he is a great HITTING catcher but nothing more than a below average defensive catcher…and now they are realizing that all they got was a switch hitter who should be at first when they have wayy to many 1st basemen on their team as is
I always seem to read on here that the sox are loaded with players that are 1st basemen, would someone mind listing all of these “1st basemen” all the haters claim
Good point. Really it’s Youkilis, Lowell and V Mart – a converted 3B, a converted 3B and a catcher, the latter two somewhat defensively compromised in their preferred positions. Even in inter league play, Ortiz is barely a 1B nowadays. Heck he’s barely a DH. After that you’re looking at Lars Anderson, probably.
Lars is not looking to pan out either.Rizzo would probably be the next 1b.
Yes, Rizzo is pretty good, despite having a bun in the oven from Kenickie.
hah!
should probably include the link in case someone is confused or thinks that Travolta is the new sox head of player development.
soxprospects.com/players/rizzo-anthony.htm
Well, the point is not as much that they are filled with first basemen, but also that they are completely blocked right now for adding any more 1Bs (this all stemmed from the AGon rumors). Before adding Beltre, there was still the option of moving Youk over. But now that doesn’t work. And DH isn’t open for Youk, because of Ortiz, Lowell, and now Martinez. 1B and DH, the two spots you can dump an extra offensive player, are being filled by four different guys right now (assuming Martinez starts getting less catching time). And that’s where this comes from; they’ve got a logjam of older, or defensively challenged guys, all competing for two slots in the lineup
But Vmart,Lowell,Beltre,Ortiz and Tek aren’t signed for next season if I recall correctly.
So it really is possible that they are about have a shortage of 1B in the near future. They theoretically (yet I pray hope they never move youk to 3rd) could actually be in dire need of 1B,DH and catcher next season.
True. Next year could very exciting. I think most of the logjams that Boston is currently dealing with will be figured out by next season. Beltre I can see returning, if there is no other big third basemen in Boston’s sights, and if he does return to his stronger numbers. He hasn’t hit a home run yet, but it’s early still.
I think there could be some blank spots next year in the catcher, DH, positions. However, I think those positions will be simple enough to fill. Catcher, if Martinez doesn’t get it together, might be filled before the end of this season. If not, I could see them promoting someone from within, like Wagner if he gets his bat together, or making a trade for a strong defensive, with average bat, catcher. DH is one of the easiest positions to fill, because it seems every year there are another five guys who have run out of their time playing 1B, but can still hit. Adam Dunn is one possibility for that position. The point is, I think next year, having some deficiencies will give Epstein plenty of opportunities to upgrade the team. Right now, with this glut of well-paid, 1B/DH type players, it’s very difficult for Theo to try to step around players like Papi, or Martinez, and try to make the trades or moves necessary to improve the team.
I know, I was making fun of those media members
Actually, before this year, Martinez has been average in throwing guys out. And he’s had a decent reputation for calling games. Besides, I don’t see his value going up much at first base. There are so many good first basemen already, he almost looks like he’s middle of the pack there. The only reason Youkilis is so highly valued there is because he’s a combo of great defense and strong hitting. AGon, Teixeira, Fielder, Howard, Pujols, are just a couple of the great first basemen already out there. It’s probably the strongest offensive position right now. And as not a pure power hitter, he won’t be immediately sought after as a DH. If he can stay an average defensive catcher, that’s his highest value, because of it being such a weak position.
Just throwing it out there if the Tigers are out of contention at the deadline…Gerald Laird to the Red Sox? He is an offensive black hole, but has excellent defense and has thrown out a career 37% of base stealers.
No real reason for Laird. Sox already have prospect in AAA like that in Mark Wagner. He has been…. inconsistent…. in the minors hitting though to say the least.
Gotcha, I’m not really familiar with the Red Sox farm system
Yeah, but Wagner isn’t really much of a prospect anyways. He’s at best their third-best catching prospect behind Luis Exposito and Tim Federowicz, and there’s almost no chance that his bat will be playable at the MLB level. Wagner is a best-case scenario back-up catcher.
The point he was making was simply that if we were looking for a purely defensive catcher (ala Gerald Laird), we have a guy, Mark Wagner, ready in the system to be just that. He’s very strong defensively, but can’t hit (which is why you’re right about him being their third-best catching prospect). If that’s all they wanted, then Wagner is their best option, because Laird would cost them something, and both Federowicz and Exposito are not as close to Major-League ready as Wagner. Sure, Wagner can’t hit. But he is MLB-ready defensively. Besides, if he only hits .220, and Martinez moves to DH to replace Ortiz, it’s still looks like a small upgrade offensively. Especially if you assume that Martinez’s numbers may go up slightly if he doesn’t have to catch.
It kills me that using a .220 hitting catcher will upgrade the offense by removing the DH with a .146avg. This is really getting pathetic.
I totally agree. Actually, lately I’ve been hoping Ortiz -doesn’t- figure this out, because with the other issues we’ve got going on it’ll be really nice to have the DH slot open. If he starts to hit well, then Martinez is stuck at catcher, and this whole rumor page means nothing. Plus that limits Lowell’s time even more, if Ortiz becomes dominant, which makes his high salary even more painful. If Ortiz is bad enough to get a release, that clears the spot for Martinez to move over, if they decide to make a trade for another catcher. And I think that’ll make the team better as a whole, even if the new catcher can barely hit.
The Red Sox have a pretty decent group of young catching prospects. Unfortunately they’re all a good couple of years away yet.
So really, 2 years of Snyder would probably be a good move.
You know what i find funny. Before the season started everyone was gauging over the Redsox Defense. Everytime I go on Gameday to see how the Sox are doing I see an Error everyday. Anyone know if they lead the majors in errors?
A Yankee fan taking a jab at the Red Sox. Shocking.
They don’t have the most errors, they have the seventh most. But they have a team UZR/150 of 11.7, which is good enough for fourth best in the majors. And UZR is a much better stat for fielding than errors. Errors don’t really mean much.
By the way, Yankees have the fourth worst UZR in the majors.
We are about 15 games into the season. Using UZR right now is about as useless as errors this early in the season, as it needs a much bigger sample size than other stats.
Red Sox are a good defensive team, but UZR is really quite useless right now.
15 games for a player might be a tiny sample size, but 15 games for a team isn’t “useless”. I’d value it more than errors.
My reasoning is that 15 team games = 105 of an individual’s games (15 games x 7 position players = 105 games). So it’s not all that small for the entire team. The Red Sox have been in the field for 148.0 innings. Multiply that for 7 players (because catchers don’t have UZR), and it equals 1036 innings fielded combined. For comparison, Ellsbury was in the field for 1302.2 innings last year. So the sample size for the Red Sox this year is almost equal to that of an individual’s for an entire year.
I can assure you that is not how UZR/150 works. The biggest criticism of the stat has always been that in many cases, you need more than one season even to determine a players defensive worth.
EDIT: I see your team point, but I don’t think that makes a difference. Individual players are the ones that make the UZR, and since it is such a small sample size of the stat for them, you still can’t trust the stat this early in the season. Adding their innings together doesn’t make it a bigger sample size for individual players, which is what you would need.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure I got something wrong there. But my point remains the same. I’d still trust that small sample size with UZR than errors. And the same point could be made if I supported using errors as a meaningful stat: you need a bigger sample size. Although, not as big of a sample size as you need for UZR… Sample size didn’t come to my mind until after I posted that comment. That was my bad.
And another point remains the same: don’t take shots at other people’s teams when using stats like errors, RBI, etc.
except if you knew what you were talking about, you’d know that UZR data is not accurate for three weeks of baseball. Even Dave Cameron admits this, that it takes many many months maybe years to get an accurate representation of team defense using UZR or UZR/150.
True it does, but his main point that errors are meaningless in such a small sample size is totally correct.
Though one must admit they are embarrassingly ugly. I mean seriously. Ugg. Two errors on one play? Throw the ball past 1B into the outfield, then let guys advance because the 3B can’t catch a ball on the hop? Horrid.
True, it’s pretty gutting to watch that sort of ineptness. You could wince and bear it if you had a team of beastly sluggers, but this isn’t that team.
Doesn’t help when 2 of the projected starters are out hurt.
Seems like the Sox have been banking a little heavily on assumptions that Mauer and/or Gonzo will inevitably fall into their lap…
Laird is the best fit in my eyes. Sure he can’t hit, but he should have won the Gold Glove last year.
I think errors mean a lot. Look at Scutaro’s 2 errors (1 @ Minn. and 1 @ hm. vs. TB). Both cost us wins. Thats -2 WAR right there.
Snyder would be a fine temporary solution to our defensive woes behind the plate. We need 2 years to get Exposito ready. Expo has so far shown he can do it all at the AA level. Some refinement on the defensive end with Gary Tuck, and game-calling training with Varitek, and he should be as good an all-around catcher as you can find, short of Mauer. If the A’s fall out of contention, we might try go after Kurt Suzuki. He’s not a super-star defensively, but he’s at least adequate and can hit some.
I don’t recall any of our local media touting Martinez as having a gun for an arm. I recall them touting his game-calling skills. After all, he did catch some fine games in Cleveland for CC. That said, I’m afraid that our front office doesn’t want to lock in to Martinez for the long-term. He’s not the long-term catcher solution, we don’t want to tie up first base in case we can land a power-hitter, and V-Mart probably wouldn’t be content at this stage to become a DH.
I’m not sure how much Snyder helps. While the SB suck, the Red Sox aren’t ever going to be GOOD at dealing with them due to many of their pitcher’s styles. Against good runners, like Carl Crawford, no catcher is going to stop them unless the pitcher is helping. The issue with the Red Sox is stopping bad runners. I’d like to think that V-Mart can unhitch his arm and be able to stop Vlad from running on them, at which point they’re better off just keeping him behind the plate.
In answer to BoSoxSam all I can say is I guess you have not followed Adam Dunn since he started his career coming up with the Reds. I have and he is NOT what the Red Sox would want at first base or anywhere else. This guy had so much potential, but seldom works out and has never come close to the player he could have been…he either hits the home run or strikes out…It is time Boston wakes up and stops dreaming. They have some great players, but trade them and bring in old players that are over the hill. Could anyone tell me what Beltre was doing going after the ball that was clearly Jacoby’s? and now after Jocoby complains the team finally does a scat on him? Boston is not the team to play for like it used to be. I have been a fan for 65 years and beginning to wonder for how much longer? Not a team fan but a player fan on the Red Sox till the head office gets their act together.
In answer to BoSoxSam all I can say is I guess you have not followed Adam Dunn since he started his career coming up with the Reds. I have and he is NOT what the Red Sox would want at first base or anywhere else. This guy had so much potential, but seldom works out and has never come close to the player he could have been…he either hits the home run or strikes out…It is time Boston wakes up and stops dreaming. They have some great players, but trade them and bring in old players that are over the hill. Could anyone tell me what Beltre was doing going after the ball that was clearly Jacoby’s? and now after Jocoby complains the team finally does a scat on him? Boston is not the team to play for like it used to be. I have been a fan for 65 years and beginning to wonder for how much longer? Not a team fan but a player fan on the Red Sox till the head office gets their act together.