The Red Sox announced that catcher Kevin Plawecki has agreed to a new contract for the 2022 season, thus avoiding salary arbitration. The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier reports that Plawecki signed for $2.25MM, which tops MLBTR’s projected for a $2MM salary in Plawecki’s final year of arb eligibility.
Entering his third season as Boston’s backup catcher, Plawecki has hit .305/.364/.414 over 262 plate appearances with the Red Sox, an unexpectedly big step up from the .636 OPS he posted over his first 978 PA and five Major League seasons with the Mets and Guardians. While Plawecki hit better than 2020 than in 2021, his bat helped prop up production from Boston’s catching position last season in the wake of a down year from starter Christian Vazquez. Baseball Prospectus’ numbers rate Plawecki’s defense as pretty average across the board, while Fangraphs’ catching metrics give him -4 Defensive Runs Saved over his two years with the Sox.
Ryan Brasier also agreed to a deal with the Red Sox yesterday, so Boston has six players remaining (Rafael Devers, Hunter Renfroe, Nick Pivetta, Alex Verdugo, Christian Arroyo, and Josh Taylor) left on its list of arbitration eligibles.
Boston might need 2 new catchers next season
What does that even mean? The same two catchers are under contract for next season. If they can’t swing a trade for Vazquez, there won’t be a desperate need for a catcher next season.
good. now extend him
How can you not love this guy? The pitchers liked his game-calling smarts, and it seemed like he was putting the ball in play every time he came up. As the season wore on and Vasquez looked increasingly lost, I was hoping he’d be given a bigger role based on his offense alone. Good no-brainer call by the brass. Sometimes it’s the fringe guys who make the difference.
rake – Everyone hoped Plawecki would get more playing time, but Vazquez is a huge favorite of Cora so it didn’t happen. It’s a shame the Pirates backed out of a deal with the Red Sox for Stallings, him and Plawecki would have been awesome.
I didn’t see the Stallings thing until this morning – you’re right; that would have been a fantastic move for Boston to make. I agree that Cora seems to love Vaszquez (I like him, too), but maybe their willingness to seek out Stallings is a signal that the shine is coming off the Vasqky apple (or whatever that phrase is).
rake – When Vazquez first came up I liked him too, he had a rocket for an arm. Then in 2019 and 2020 he became a very good hitter as far as catchers are concerned.
But his gamecalling has always been poor, pitchers don’t like throwing to him. This is why they hung onto Sandy Leon despite his awful hitting. I think that is the most important part of a catcher’s job, how he handles the pitching staff. Eovaldi is just one example, he doesn’t like Vazquez catching him and he has much better numbers when his catcher is not Vazquez.
This year Vazquez also made several glaring catching errors, didn’t challenge the ump on blatantly bad calls, and was not good at pitch framing.
I do think some of his poor play this year could be attributed to Cora overworking him, as he led MLB in Innings Caught. But still, he was clearly out of shape and his poor hitting no longer warranted overlooking his poor defensive skills.
Trade Vasquez and a minor league chip for a quality reliever and bring up Wong to pair with Plawecki
Too soon to rely on Wong.
Love this concept
The man gives what is described as a professional at bat seemingly every time. I like everything about him. Never bitches, always does his job and the pitchers love his preparation. What a great combo the Sox have.
Stallings and Plawecki would have been a much better combo.
Now that what I said months ago was made official about the Sox looking to dump Vazquez, I expect them to continue looking to swing a trade for a less expensive catcher so they can trade Vazquez.
Cora will NOT be successful in trying to keep Vazquez. I think Vaz will be gone by this time next year.
Great backup catcher. Depending on what kind of shape Vazquez shows up in, I wouldn’t extending both a couple of years.
Joe – You say he’s a great backup catcher and then say you wouldn’t extend him? That makes no sense.
But I’m glad you finally see the light on Vazquez, he needs to be replaced next year.
* I wouldn’t *Mind*.
I try to not make too many typos, but I also try to make them in the worst possible spot.
I support the reason for team name changes, but that nullify the status of players who played for the team before the name change? Plawecki never was a Guardian.
phenom – You are 100% correct, it’s pure woke BS to say Plawecki was a Guardian despite never, ever wearing a Guardians uniform. The writer could have said “with the Mets and then-Indians” or even better “with the Mets and Cleveland”.
Nobody says Pedro Martinez or Tim Raines or Gary Carter or Vlad Guerrero Sr played for the Nationals even though it is the same franchise. That’s because they didn’t, they played for the Expos.
Add Wacha’s $7M, Paxton’s $10M and now Plawecki’s $2..25M and the cap is now less than $10M away. Bloom promised to lower costs yet his affinity for low talent low cost guys that are over-paid has shifted the payroll from top and bottom heavy under DD to top and middle heavy under Bloom.
2 less at the top has allowed for a half dozen not so great middle payroll guys to be added in place of Mookie and Price consequently leaving the team right back where it was when Bloom arrived except with less talent and far more over pays!!
The Plawecki contract is the best one since the off season started. Yes, Bloom’s claim to fame so far this off season is correctly signing a cost effective back-up catcher.
The elusive division title under Bloom should be a lot easier to win now!!!
Hey Bloom don’t let that remaining $7M burn a hole in your pocket. There has to another worthless $7M man you can contract!!! Shoot Kluber is gone. Need to check the hospital records to see who else had TJ recently and can be gotten for $7M. Maybe a reliever this time!!!
Well at least the farm system rating went up thanks to Mayer!! That was a very strategic move tanking to raise the farm system rating. Too bad guys like Downs are moving in the wrong direction and reducing the farm system rating because it’s going to take another tanking to raise it again since trades don’t seem to improve it!!!
Can’t say enough about the GM!!!
You might be missing the big picture. Under Bloom the Sox reached the ALCS without the benefit of their ace for most of the season.
dombrowski – That has nothing to do with anything. Eovaldi replaced Sale as the ace of the staff, and he did a darn good job finishing 4th in Cy voting and even got MVP votes.
All five Red Sox All-Stars this year were players who Bloom had absolutely NOTHING to do with obtaining. At best I would say Bloom had 40% to do with this year’s success, and I’m probably estimating too high.
DD made a MESS of the Red Sox. He took over a team with the #1 ranked farm system (Aug ’15, mlb.com midseason rankings) to worst farm system (bleacher report, future power ranking, Aug ’19), when the Red Sox got rid of him. DD took a team under the Salary Cap and pushed it over almost every year. To the point the tax penalty was killing them. He was thankfully FIRED, before he screwed up more.
Baffled how he is so popular here among Red Sox fans. Fans of every other teams he’s GMed are thankful he’s gone., and soon Philly will be too.
Bloom is just rebuilding the mess he was left, and he’s done very well. The farm system is rebuilding and the salary cap mess is fixed. Not only that, he took this mediocre team to ALCS. Give credit where credit is due.
denny – There are online classes you can take to help teach you about farm systems.
I’ll give you a brief summary: When teams have very bad records, they get to draft very good players. When they have very good records, they get the worst draft positions.
In the 5 years prior to Dombrowski, the Red Sox missed the playoffs 4 times including two last place finishes. So they had very good draft picks because of those bad seasons.
Under Dombrowski, they made the playoffs 3 out of 4 years including a World Championship therefore their draft positioning was not good.
Also let’s look at that 2015 farm system you praise. Rusney Castillo was rated the best, obviously calling him a top prospect looks comical now.
Moncada was the 2nd-best, and Kopech was 17th-best. DD traded them for Sale. Are you seriously going to deny that was a great trade by DD? Sale was superb before the injury.
Swihart and Owens were ranked 3rd and 4th. Again, it’s quite comical to say these two guys were top prospects.
ERod , Devers and Barnes were ranked 5th, 6th and 9th. They blossomed into very good ML players, What did you expect Dombrowski to do, force them to stay in the minors so his farm system will be ranked higher? ROFLMAO!!!
Even despite the prospects traded by DD to win a championship in 2018, DD still left several players in the farm system that have turned out to be good prospects.
Now PAY ATTENTION here denny:
DD drafted Triston Casas.
He drafted Jarren Duran.
He drafted Tanner Houck
He drafted Bobby Dalbec.
He drafted Jay Groome.
He drafted Kutter Crawford.
He signed Daniel Flores, a highly regarded prospect who died from cancer.
You are blaming DD for Flores dying? Seriously? Shame on you!