Red Sox catcher/outfielder Blake Swihart will undergo ankle surgery in the coming days, manager John Farrell told reporters following tonight’s game against the Yankees (Twitter link via Evan Drellich of the Boston Herald).
The operation figures to end Swihart’s sophomore season with just 19 games and 74 plate appearances in the books at the big league level this year. Early on, the 24-year-old former top prospect had a chance to cement himself behind the plate for the Sox but eventually found himself optioned back to Triple-A to work on his defense. Upon his return to the Majors he played exclusively in left field prior to suffering a severe high ankle sprain that ultimately led to the upcoming operation.
Swihart’s season will conclude with a .258/.365/.355 batting line. He collected three extra-base hits — bizarrely, all triples — and will head into the offseason with a cumulative .271/.321/.386 slash in 383 Major League plate appearances across 103 big league games. While Swihart was near-universally considered one of the game’s top 20 prospects prior to the 2015 season, he’s yet to tap into the potential that made him such a coveted component of the Boston farm system. With both Swihart and Christian Vazquez failing to definitively seize the catching job in Boston — Sandy Leon and Bryan Holaday are currently splitting catching duties for the Sox, with Ryan Hanigan on the disabled list — the long-term outlook behind the plate in Boston remains somewhat muddled.
Swihart has spent the bulk of the 2016 season either in the Majors or on the Major League disabled list and as such will accrue more than enough service time to take him past one full year of service. He’ll still have a minor league option remaining next season, so the Sox could give him further time to work on his game in the minors if he doesn’t grab hold of a roster spot in Spring Training. Boston controls Swihart through at least the 2021 season, and depending on how his time is divided between the Majors and minors next season, he could end up in Super Two territory, making him arbitration eligible four times.
Wow I remembered when the cheap Red Sox wouldn’t give up this guy in a package for hamels. I’m glad our trade with Texas worked for both sides. The Red Sox could’ve had hamels and price not to mention porcello, wright and pomeranz
From what I’ve read from Amaro’s statements is he demanded Betts or Bogaerts as part of any trade for Hamels. He also said the best Red Sox offer never topped the best Rangers offer. So I have no problem with the Red Sox not getting Hamels. With those conditions, I think the Red Sox made the right choice.
Rationalization is good for you. For a team in such desperate need of pitching to make the jump from wannabe to serious contender, this is a tremendous statement.
But Betts has more value then Hamels so your statement is pretty absurd.
Wanting to keep the better, cheaper, more cost controlled player isn’t rationalization, it’s common sense.
Hope you’re able to get that foot out of your mouth sometime soon, Valkyrie. Best of luck for a speedy recovery!
Mookie Bettts is still with Boston as a consolation prize for not trading for Hamels. Not bad, right?
What’s easier to find in trade or free agency? Outfielder or Ace Pitcher?
…ace pitcher. And it’s not even remotely close. Is this a real question? Finding a 23 year old star outfielder under team control for years or finding an over 30 TOR pitcher?
Are we seriously on the Betts should of been traded gig he is a star player his war is probably going to 7ish this year hell that is a superstar and trading guys like that are cost controlled is just silly to talk about.
Betts is easier to replace than Hamels?? Really??
Chris Sale, Jose Quintana, Chris Archer, Julio Teheran, and Zack Greinke are all possibilities to be traded this offseason, and Rich Hill is a free agent. All of them are as good as or better than Hamels.
How many outfielders in baseball are as valuable as Betts? Mike Trout, Kris Bryant, and Bryce Harper are the only ones that are even in the conversation.. And the latter two sure as hell aren’t going to be traded anytime soon, and even if the Angels wanted to, the package for Trout would be so massive it’s unlikely he’d ever be traded.
So there are half a dozen pitchers that are as good as or better than Hamels that can be traded for/signed. There are no outfielders as good as Betts.
Holy Zombie thread revival, Batman!
I wouldn’t want Hamels in Fenway Park to begin with, he’s out performing his FIP(4.08) by a large margin while featuring a below average 3.99 SIERA, a 14.5% HR/FB and already given up 18 HRs. Leftys do not age well at Fenway, especially ones with a below average fastball. He’d be eaten alive with the Monster looming behind him.
You’re using way too much hindsight to make a reasonable argument. Swihart getting hurt doesn’t mean his value back then should have been any different. He was a potential star catcher who was near MLB ready. As others pointed out, if all it took to get Hamels was Swihart then it would have happened.
For Swihart’s sake I wish he was traded. The Red Sox have done nothing but jerk him around. I’ve never seen them so badly mishandle a prospect
Daniel Bard begs to differ… @natesp4
The Red Sox remain too enamoured with their own prospects. Swihart’s work behind the plate is well below acceptable and, as an outfielder, his bat is far less appealing. The Sox blew it with Jon Lester far more than with potentially landing Hamels. It’s a Jon-John problem – not having Lester, still having Farrell. What does Farrell have to do to get fired? Between mediocre pitching and a clueless public relations hack for a manager the Sox remain only almost good enough.
Disagree.. They made the correct decision to hang onto Lester when the Twins were demanding Lester for Santana many years back and probably were right to let him go now this time, rather than give him 7 years. which he later got.
The Lester deal later worked out to Porcello, which has turned out to be what is probably the best pitcher the Sox staff has and that is a 27YO staff ace signed for 3 more years at 20m a season.
Swihart alone was never, ever going to be enough to get Hamels, yet every Sox hater here continues with that wrongly proved fallacy… It’s long since time to get off that wagon and move onto another.
Porcello is an ace?
All you have to do is look up Porcello’s numbers and see for yourself how he has performed this year.. Exactly how many in the league have done better?
Not saying he will put up 15-3 and a 1.084 WHIP numbers to start off the next 3y, but that’s near tops in the league this year and been the Sox stopper for 2016.
Let’s clarify this 1 good year doesn’t make u an ace!
I think he meant resigning Lester, which would’ve been smarter then the Price contract. Porcello is not an ace, he is more like Kyle Hendircks, a good number 2 or great number 3. And that’s only if this is the real porcello, not the 2015 one
JF understood my point, resigning Lester was key. The Sox low-balled Lester. Porcello over Lester? No way, not on my ball club. Porcello seems low key and competitive, but is no where near an “ace.” Ace is a grossly over used term, there are maybe 6-8 “aces” in baseball (Kershaw, Bumgarner, Scherzer, etc). Porcello is a good #3. Lester was replaced by Porcello, not Price. Price-Lester is a nice 1-2, more so than Price-Porcello.
Lester signed for 6 years + team option
Instead of lester, they ended up getting david price. I’m not sure if that is an overall win.
In a vacuum, Price is objectively the better pitcher. He’s having a poor season, which nobody could’ve predicted based on logic and common sense, but statistically, Price has always been a better pitcher than Lester (And I say this as someone who dislikes Price’s general attitude and has always been a massive Lester fanboy) and was younger when he hit FA to boot.
Yeah, totally too enamored. They’ve gotten burned so badly holding on to duds like Bogaerts, Betts, Benintendi, and Bradley. I’m sure the prospect of potentially having one of the best starting nines in baseball next year, one that by year’s end could be made literally entirely of people they drafted and/or developed (A 1-9 of Betts, Pedroia, Bogaerts, Ramirez, Bradley, Benintendi, Shaw, Moncada, and one of Vazquez or Swihart wouldn’t feature a single player who didn’t make their MLB debut with the Red Sox) is killing them.
maybe if they spend another half billion dollars they could have a decent rotation
Can you point out what is so bad with the current rotation? Wright & Porcello are having great years, then we got an Ace having a bad year in Price, it happens, then We have Erod & Pomeranz. Not a bad rotation to me.
Too delusional to argue with your teams starting pitching ERA is worse than the Yankees and Orioles and the worst in the AL east
And they have the best offense with the best run differential. Too delusional to argue to be wasting anymore time with you.
What numbers are you looking at?
2016 Starting Rotation ERA:
Toronto – 3.64
Boston – 4.22
Tampa – 4.26
New York – 4.44
Baltimore – 4.72
And it’s not just ERA – no matter what stat you look at, Boston had one of the best rotations in the American League in 2016:
ERA – 3rd
CG – 1st
BAA – 3rd
WHIP – 3rd
K/9 – 4th
K/BB – 3rd
oSLG – 2nd
And when your offense leads baseball in batting, OBP, SLG, and runs scored, you don’t need a perfect pitching staff to win.
You’ve got rose colored glasses on. I did not say the Red Sox have a horrible prospect system, I said the Sox are too enamoured with their prospects. My point remains. For every Betts and Bogaerts, there’s a Will Middlebrooks and Lars Andersen. Remember the untouchable Casey Kelly? I’m a sox fan, but next to many teams, I think the Sox overvalue their prospects. Pedroia and Hanley are a while back, Moncada/ Benintendi are just beginning, Shaw looks overmatched, and neither Vazquez/Swihart is a lock to land a job. Bogaerts/Betts? Sure. I would have shipped JBJ for pitching. Marrero, Hansen, Owens, there’s just as many misses. The system is working, but to win in timely fashion, trades should be made including “untouchable” prospects. Too enamoured.
That was a smart post
See ya next year Blake… Come focused please
Next year have Vasquez and swihart catch. I know hannigan is a free agent. I’m not sure about Leon or holaday next year they would be good for Pawtucket
Next year Sox may have to go with Vasquez and Leon. Swihart was way over hyped, not his fault. Not all “top prospects” pan out. If he can stay healthy he may turn into a reserve outfielder.
He’s 24 years old, a freakish athlete, never been hurt before and doesn’t even have a full season under his belt. But yeah, lets peg him a bust who “if he can stay healthy” might turn into a 4th OF. You’re the worst.
Hey, remember that time Jackie Bradley got rushed up before he was ready because injuries devastated the team’s depth at his position that they had no choice?
And remember how he struggled to an insane degree and how he was a complete bust?
I mean, I guess you might still be able to count him as a dud if you go by the standard of him only being the second best hitter in that outfield, but well…
Moral of the story? Judging any player off of less than a year’s worth of MLB experience is a fool’s errand. Judging a player who was rushed to the majors before they had a chance to develop fully is an even worse matter.
But you include Benintendi as a successful prospect based off 6 games Red Sox fans are just too much. Basically don’t rush to judge unless you are putting them in the hall of fame.
The whole thing was hyperbole based sarcasm. How that went over your head is beyond me.
Including Benintendi’s name with Bogaerts Betts and JBJ yeah sure it was.
Do you live to be snarky or is that some sort of innate talent?
Just trade him next year for Chris Sale
Swihart was hitting at better than league average (Which is way beyond average for his position) by the end of 2015 and the “defensive questions” didn’t happen until a handful of plays that defensive whiz Vazquez had issues on himself.
Swihart got a bad rep primarily from catching Wright a lot. He may not ever be an elite defensive backstop, but if he can come along to average, his bat would make him one of the top 3-5 catchers in the AL. Heck, as it is, he was a top 5 offensive catcher in the AL last year (When he should have been in AAA) by wRC+, OPS, and wOBA. If he comes along at a reasonable pace (Which, by all accounts, he’d been doing; he had the best wOBA, OPS, and wRC+ of any AL catcher in the second half last year once he’d had time to adjust to the MLB), he’ll be a better option than most at C so long as he’s not an outright embarrassment out there..
The defensive questions didn’t happen from a few plays. It happened when scouts who were watching him continued to see questionable defense.
Scouts were pretty high on his defensive potential as recently as last year. There was obvious work to be done, but the idea he might not stick at catcher didn’t become a narrative until the week he was demoted, based on one poorly called pitch to Chris Davis and a dropped pop up.
He has only been a catcher since joining the Sox he will be just fine behind the plate. I don’t think it was scouts it was the poor start by the Red Sox starting staff that got him demoted they needed a scape goat and they sent him down. It couldn’t possibly of been the starters the funny thing is that after an initial rebound in the pitching staff with Vasquez the majority of the staff had the same pitching statistics with Vasquez. The only pitcher that has done markedly better without Swihart behind he plate is Porcello.
He wasn’t overhyped the guy has played 103 major league games after being rushed stop the overhyped stuff if, in a couple of years he isn’t catching and he is a 4 th outfielder then you can call him overhyped silly to think of him anywhere near a bust yet.
This Swihart is a bust makes me laugh as usual people that don’t know making silly comments. He was rushed to the major leagues as a catcher in 2015 due to injuries everyone knew he wasn’t ready he was supposed to have the full year in AAA to hone his catching skills. Upon callup he did Ok defensively and after an adjustment period OPSd over 800 as a catcher. He has only played 103 games in the big leagues. Calling him a bust is just well stupid. The Red Sox were and are in win now mode but I suspect that Swihart will come back as a catcher next year he is far from a bust and will be just fine probably as a catcher. Also the Phillies wanted Betts and Swihart plus for Hamels which is ridiculous probably similar to the Ridiculous overpay that the White Sox wanted for Sale. Saying that Swihart alone or Swihart plus miner pieces is also wrong it was Betts they wanted all along for Hamels.
Please don’t compare Hammels to Sale
They were still asking too much for Sale that was the point.