Blake Swihart: The Red Sox’ Mythical Third Prospect

Sometimes we here at FanGraphs like to zig when others zag. Or there are times when others zag and we zag too and then before they can say “Hey you’re zagging!” we switch back to zigging. Lots of virtual ink has been spilled recently on Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts and both are well deserving of the attention they’ve received for reasons discussed more on this site and others. But [looks both ways] [leans in] they are not alone. There is a third prospect in Boston with a high ceiling who has been overshadowed by Betts and Bogaerts. His name is Blake Swihart. Three days ago he hit two home runs in Yankee Stadium and when a 23-year-old catcher hits two homers in Yankee Stadium, well, that seems like as good a pretense as any to assess him and his season. So there’s our pretense. Assessment time!

Despite his youth, the switch-hitting catcher spent the majority of the season in Boston. But that wasn’t the original plan. Swihart came into the season slated for duty in Triple-A as he’d spent all of 71 plate appearances over 18 games above Double-A, but all of a sudden catchers started going down. First, starting catcher Christian Vazquez needed Tommy John surgery and the organization promoted backup Ryan Hanigan and picked up Sandy Leon from Washington to back him up. Then two months into the season Hanigan broke his hand and the organization was out of options. Swihart got the call.

Add to that backstory the fact that Swihart, though drafted as a catcher, didn’t play the position exclusively or even regularly until after being selected by the Red Sox of high school in first round out of the 2011 draft. And add this also: Swihart didn’t begin hitting from the left side of the plate until his junior year in high school. That means Swihart has been batting left handed for about five years now, and right handed for, well, much much longer than that. This is all by way of saying Swihart should be raw as hell. And he is raw, and that’s the reason he’s raw, but it doesn’t take a scout to see the potential he’s exhibited this season. To wit: two home runs in Yankee Stadium!

We live in an age that values catcher defense so it seems appropriate to start there and note that Swihart grades out well in both FanGraphs’ and Baseball Prospectus’ defensive metrics. BP also tracks catcher framing and Swihart has been above average, if only slightly, there as well (overall he ranks 30th). That’s not to say he’s a finished product behind the dish. Swihart needs to work on blocking pitches in the dirt and keeping pitches in front of him. He grades out very badly in that regard, but it’s something you can forgive someone with his background and youth. Also he wasn’t bad at it in the minor leagues, so we can assume some of these difficulties are adjustment-related.

Perhaps the most notable aspect of catcher defense — and the one that looks like the most fun to me — is throwing out base runners. The average catcher this season throws out potential base stealers just under 30% of the time (29.8%, precisely). Swihart has thrown out 16 of 56 potential thieves which, you’ll note, comes out to a 28.6% caught-stealing percentage. Pretty much the same thing. Average is a nice place from which to start when you’re 23 and just learning the position. Part of the reason Swihart has achieved averageness in this regard are his pop times — that is, the time it takes for a catcher to receive the pitch, jump up from his crouch, cock his arm back, release the ball, and for the defender at second to catch it. Average catchers take about two seconds to do that. Swihart has typically been clocked in the mid- and high-1.8s. This isn’t quite elite (Vazquez has put up pop times in the 1.6s), but it is above average. You can see the potential in Swihart’s minor league numbers as well, where he threw out 46% of base runners in 2014 while splitting time between Double-A and Triple-A. That percentage was up from his previous season, 2013, where he threw out 42% of would-be base thieves in High-A.

You would expect a step back in the numbers here, as dealing with both major league base sealers and the demands of a major league pitching staff make things more difficult on a rookie. Also, the average catcher isn’t working with the Red Sox pitching staff which… kinda yuck. Still, you can see the potential in the numbers and the highlights, and with Swihart’s age and roundly lauded work ethic, further improvement seems likely.

But as much as it’s talked about, no catcher can become great if he can only do half the job. And while hitting two homers is great, it’s only one game. Up through Wednesday’s game in New York, Swihart showed what you might call the expected growing pains of a player his age playing his position with his level of experience. The advantage Swihart has here is that the bar for hitting as a catcher has been set quite low. Major league catchers as a group have hit .238/.302/.378 this season. That’s a wRC+ of 85. Swihart has bettered each of those marks by hitting .275/.320/.394 for a wRC+ of 92. He’s just a few years out of high school, still learning the position, and already he’s an average hitter relative to others who play his position. That’s good!

Swihart has had some difficulty barreling the ball up as a right-handed hitter. Four of his five homers have come batting left-handed. It should be noted that one of those is an inside-the-park homer, though it did go off the center field wall, so it’s not like he didn’t hit it well. The lone right-handed homer came off Tommy Milone of the Twins. Overall he’s hitting just .225/.303/.300 from the right side but .294/.327/.431 from the left. Our batted ball strength numbers support this split, mostly because Swihart has hit many more pitches softly from the right than he has from the left.

Of course we’re talking about a small sample of data here, just a hair over 300 plate appearances during the player’s age-23 season. The point isn’t to say Swihart can’t hit right handed so much as he hasn’t done so yet. Further, I hope the above serves to demonstrate overall ability as well as youth, all with the promise of future improvement as well as current averageness. There are no guarantees of course. Plenty of young players have come into the big leagues, looked promising, and flamed out. But you can only play the schedule they put in front of you, and for now Swihart has looked impressive in spite of average numbers.

The Red Sox are facing what looks to be a tumultuous off-season under new team president Dave Dombrowski. The bullpen and starting staff look ripe for reshaping if not outright rebuilding and the trade market looks like the most viable avenue to accomplish this. Moving Betts or Bogaerts seems highly unlikely at this point given their current and future value and place in the organization. Swihart, though, is another matter. He’s highly regarded within the organization as well, but so is Christian Vazquez, whose potentially elite defense allows his offense to be weaker while still achieving a similar overall value. What’s more, the team still has Ryan Hanigan signed through 2017 if it chooses to exercise a team option for $3.8 million. In short, if Dombrowski is looking to make a big trade, moving Swihart might make sense. For now, though, the Red Sox still have three high-ceiling young players, not just two, and as any mathematician can tell you with a minimum of research, three is more.