The Red Sox are in agreement with catcher Juan Centeno on a minor league contract, tweets MassLive.com’s Chris Cotillo. The Magnus Sports client figures to receive an invite to Major League Spring Training.
Centeno, 28, appeared in 10 games for the Rangers this past season and joins the Boston organization with 111 games of MLB experience under his belt. He’s a career .227/.278/.331 hitter in 353 trips to the plate between the Mets, Brewers, Twins, Astros and Rangers. Centeno has shown a knack in terms of hitting for average at the Triple-A level, where he’s a .286/.330/.352 hitter in 1147 PAs, and he’s only struck out in 12.3 percent of his plate appearances at that level.
From a defensive standpoint, Centeno has thrown out 39 percent of would-be base thieves throughout his minor league career, but he’s at just 13 percent in that regard in the Majors. Baseball Prospectus gives him poor marks for his pitch-framing and blocking skills.
Christian Vazquez, Sandy Leon and Blake Swihart top Boston’s depth chart at catcher right now, though Swihart was rarely utilized at the position in 2018 while Leon’s anemic offense at least raises the question of whether the Sox will tender him a contract. Nonetheless, the addition of Centeno figures to be merely a means of adding some upper-minors depth for Boston in the early stages of the offseason, as there’s no clear path to the big league roster for him at this point.
Cue the jokes about “this signing makes them repeat.”
More like “the stove is hot, fellas!”
Dan Butler’s replacement has arrived. Now Red Sox Nation can sleep well tonight knowing that Dan Butler leaving in FA won’t cause the entire organization to collapse!!!
Butler will end up a minor-league manager fairly soon. He’s bright and I’m sure has accrued a lot of knowledge in his years in the minors.
He’d have to have learn something about the game because he certainly has not learned to hit….
Are you an idiot every day of your life or just today?
I agree even though he barely ever played for the Sox I’m sure he had a positive impact along the way on their young pitchers. It can only help to have them pitching to someone with as much experience (and presumably knowledge of the game) as Butler did.
Former Mets great!
This earth shattering news is just preparation to trade Vazquez and Swihart (and other assets) for Realmuto.
They will probably trade Swihart but I doubt Centeno figures into that equation much other than AAA depth for no matter what the ML catching duo is.
If he’s bad defensively he’s not much of an asset. Leon and Vazquez showed up defensively in a big way and both called games very well, especially Leon. I doubt it would be a bad thing continuing with them going forward and go for a mid-season acquisition if they hit below the Mendoza Line again (hard to be as bad offensively as they were last season). Realmuto should not be a priority, we need two relievers and a starter if we lose Eovaldi.
Sox need a catcher who can hit…
Realmuto