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Post by thelavarnwayguy on Aug 12, 2014 17:17:19 GMT -5
I think we should project Swihart to be better than Veritek. Offensively and defensively. He's much more of a premium guy. No disrepect to Veritek, who made himself a real solid player.
Swihart is a premium athlete. He seems to be doing much better in his splits, hitting like a full timer. He is terrific defensively and he keeps getting better as he advances. I seem to see improvement even during the year, with him seemingly finishing strong every year. That guy is on a completely different level to me than Vasquez.
I think Posey started a trend and the sox just picked up on it. It makes perfect sense to put an athlete at catcher. If you want a stud. I bet we see more and more of it. And Swihart is SO ATHLETIC, I bet he keeps improving for years to come.
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Post by klostrophobic on Aug 12, 2014 17:25:57 GMT -5
Better than Varitek as a projection? Are you serious? I mean, I think Varitek is the most overrated player to come through Boston since Jim Rice retired but at his peak he was pretty damn good. If we're projecting Swihart to 120 OPS+ as a catcher in his peak, sign me up.
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Post by jimed14 on Aug 12, 2014 17:53:15 GMT -5
I'm going with Carlton Fisk. He'll have a 22 year career with a career 117 wRC+
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Post by brianthetaoist on Aug 12, 2014 19:08:14 GMT -5
I'm going with Carlton Fisk. He'll have a 22 year career with a career 117 wRC+ Hater. Swihart=Mike Piazza's offense + Johnny Bench's defense
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Post by thelavarnwayguy on Aug 12, 2014 20:17:12 GMT -5
Yes. If we could take a Veritek career right now all of us would but Veritek wasn't that great defensively and other than longevity his offensive numbers were not off the charts. Career 99 wRC+. 3 time all star at catcher. And Veritek didn't really make it to the majors much at all until he was 26. Swihart is 22. If things break right Swihart can be a better player than Veritek. Edit: Veritek's career CS percentage = 23%. www.baseball-reference.com/players/v/varitja01.shtml?redir
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Post by jimed14 on Aug 12, 2014 20:19:20 GMT -5
Is Veritek sarcastic?
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Post by klostrophobic on Aug 12, 2014 21:03:39 GMT -5
VARITEK
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Post by jmei on Aug 12, 2014 21:55:55 GMT -5
Varitek was one of the better two-way catchers of the past couple decades. He was not highly regarded defensively when he first came up, but he quickly became one of the better defensive catchers in the league, with excellent blocking, good framing, and a reputation for leadership. He was lousy with basestealers, but that's mostly on the pitcher anyhow, and the Red Sox have long been an organization that's been bad about teaching pitchers to hold runners. A career 101 wRC+ (at catcher) is also nothing to sneeze at-- it's top twenty for catchers with 2000+ PAs over the past two decades, and that career total is dragged down by his later years when he just muddled along. He had a five-year peak (2001-05) with a 118 wRC+, which is pretty great for a catcher (catchers averaged an 85 wRC+ during that period). In other words, projecting Swihart to be better than Varitek seems highly optimistic. Varitek is probably a better realistic ceiling for Swihart. Varitek. Varitek. Varitek. Varitek.
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Post by thelavarnwayguy on Aug 12, 2014 23:51:33 GMT -5
No doubt, as I said, we would all take Varitek's career from Swihart right now, and be happy about it, but I for one don't think it defines Swihart's ceiling. Given the failure rate of prospects it's a safe bet to feel that way, but Swihart has the potential to be better IMO. For a lot of obvious reasons such as much better atheticism, speed, minor league numbers, age advancement and I would add Swihart's trend line of near constant improvement every year he has been with the team. He is already a great defender with zero passed balls this year I think was noted the other day, as compared to Tek's first 3 years of mlb with 18, 25 and 14 passed balls at ages 26, 27 and 28. The CS rate is more than double Varitek's this year, when generally it is easier to steal in the minors. He is a guy who might actually get significant PT away from catcher to keep his bat in the lineup. With some health and luck, he has a good chance to have a better career than Varitek.
I know it appears to be an outrageous thing to say but if you look closely at Swihart's potential and proven track record of improvement, I really think he has a chance to be one of his generation's best catchers.
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Post by supersquid on Aug 13, 2014 5:42:40 GMT -5
Varitek was one of the better two-way catchers of the past couple decades. He was not highly regarded defensively when he first came up, but he quickly became one of the better defensive catchers in the league, with excellent blocking, good framing, and a reputation for leadership. He was lousy with basestealers, but that's mostly on the pitcher anyhow, and the Red Sox have long been an organization that's been bad about teaching pitchers to hold runners. A career 101 wRC+ (at catcher) is also nothing to sneeze at-- it's top twenty for catchers with 2000+ PAs over the past two decades, and that career total is dragged down by his later years when he just muddled along. He had a five-year peak (2001-05) with a 118 wRC+, which is pretty great for a catcher (catchers averaged an 85 wRC+ during that period). In other words, projecting Swihart to be better than Varitek seems highly optimistic. Varitek is probably a better realistic ceiling for Swihart. Varitek. Varitek. Varitek. Varitek. Long time reader, first time poster. As you touched on, I think Varitek's game-calling was elite. I do believe he holds the record for having caught the most no-hitters in history. The guy was a leader on the field and frankly If either Swihart or Vazquez can even approach Varitek's consistency in handling the pitching staff full of youngsters I'd be ecstatic.
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Post by okin15 on Aug 13, 2014 16:43:25 GMT -5
Varitek was one of the better two-way catchers of the past couple decades. He was not highly regarded defensively when he first came up, but he quickly became one of the better defensive catchers in the league, with excellent blocking, good framing, and a reputation for leadership. He was lousy with basestealers, but that's mostly on the pitcher anyhow, and the Red Sox have long been an organization that's been bad about teaching pitchers to hold runners. A career 101 wRC+ (at catcher) is also nothing to sneeze at-- it's top twenty for catchers with 2000+ PAs over the past two decades, and that career total is dragged down by his later years when he just muddled along. He had a five-year peak (2001-05) with a 118 wRC+, which is pretty great for a catcher (catchers averaged an 85 wRC+ during that period). In other words, projecting Swihart to be better than Varitek seems highly optimistic. Varitek is probably a better realistic ceiling for Swihart. This just goes to show how hard it is to put a number on a C, and we were even worse 5 years ago. We may well be over-estimating Swihart partly because we are starting to understand how much a good catcher contributes, and we can see Swihart may contribute in some of those ways. We may also be conflating what we hope he will be (good pitch framer and game-caller) with what we know two other recent Sox' C prospects to be (Vasquez and Butler). I don't expect Swihart to be Tek's equal behind the plate, and I think it's very tough to project him to outperform Tek at the plate. I do think he has a ceiling greater than Varitek, if only because he may peak for longer. I'm still torn on the durability thing. Would it be better if he were bigger because he could take the "pounding" that a catcher takes, or does his light-weight and agility actually make it easier for him to crouch, and move around and block pitches, etc.? I sure don't know, but I wouldn't disagree with that statement.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Aug 14, 2014 9:15:49 GMT -5
Varitek was one of the better two-way catchers of the past couple decades. He was not highly regarded defensively when he first came up, but he quickly became one of the better defensive catchers in the league, with excellent blocking, good framing, and a reputation for leadership. He was lousy with basestealers, but that's mostly on the pitcher anyhow, and the Red Sox have long been an organization that's been bad about teaching pitchers to hold runners. A career 101 wRC+ (at catcher) is also nothing to sneeze at-- it's top twenty for catchers with 2000+ PAs over the past two decades, and that career total is dragged down by his later years when he just muddled along. He had a five-year peak (2001-05) with a 118 wRC+, which is pretty great for a catcher (catchers averaged an 85 wRC+ during that period). In other words, projecting Swihart to be better than Varitek seems highly optimistic. Varitek is probably a better realistic ceiling for Swihart. Varitek. Varitek. Varitek. Varitek. Long time reader, first time poster. As you touched on, I think Varitek's game-calling was elite. I do believe he holds the record for having caught the most no-hitters in history. The guy was a leader on the field and frankly If either Swihart or Vazquez can even approach Varitek's consistency in handling the pitching staff full of youngsters I'd be ecstatic. Game-calling remains the one aspect of catcher performance that's we don't really know how to evaluate. Furthermore, all the previous work that was done on it, we now realize, was confounded by pitch-framing; even if you could accurately determine a "catcher's ERA," before pitch/fx we wouldn't have known how much of it was pitch-framing and how much game-calling. Varitek did have a reputation as an elite pitch-caller, and his last Sox contract seems to have been predicated on the belief that he was. I know that the Theo / Jed Hoyer F.O. believed it was a real skill, e.g. Jed dismissing a seemingly OK backup catcher candidate because he was lousy at it. I don't know if they had an internal metric for it or not. Pitch sequencing in general is a huge untapped area. I've been meaning to write Dan Brooks and ask him to add a filter by previous pitch to BrooksBaseball.net pitch/fx player cards, so we can get some idea of general trends. And here's a conceptually simple methodology that would in theory measure pitch-calling quite accurately. Get every hitter's average results given a pitch's type, velocity, movement, and location. (In other words, complete one of the Holy Grails and fundamental tools of sabermetrics.) Now look at all the pitches that were called by a catcher, as executed. Compare the actual results to the expected results, based on who the hitters were and what the pitches actually did. Any difference must be because of a) luck or b) the sequencing of the pitches. If you're getting guys out on pitches they ordinarily hit, it must be because they were unexpected, or weren't picked up because of a change of eye level, etc. If guys are hitting pitches they ordinarily can't, they must have been looking for them. (Pitch velocity will have to be adjusted for deception, among other necessary tweaks. But in fact this methodology will identify pitchers who are getting better or worse results than expected, after adjusting for their catchers, and it would be easy to test if they had above or below-average deception by simply seeing what change in velocity would eliminate the discrepancy.) The challenge is to derive the hitter models from limited data. Lots of sophisticated bucketing and smoothing would be involved, which means that there is no one "right" answer. You can bet that there are teams working on this.
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Post by thelavarnwayguy on Aug 14, 2014 11:30:44 GMT -5
There are some who think pitch calling is almost a non factor when the pitcher can overrule everything a catcher calls anyway, and one would hope they know what they are doing on the mound. To me the biggest benefit is maybe just speeding up the pace of things with a very slight benefit to reducing the amount of thinking a pitcher has to do. With beginning pitchers obviously the benefits could be more with a better pitch caller, helping to phase a rookie into mlb, as Varitek did so well with Buchholz early on with his non hitter.
Regarding how many no hitters a guy catches, that could also be to a degree small sample size noise and catching a staff with above average talent levels. I'm sure Nolan Ryan's catcher was better at that than most also.
As much as people think CS percentage just reflects on the pitcher, I think it's pretty clear the catcher has a little to do with holding that guy on first as well as in throwing him out. To me, possibly more than the impact of pitch calling. If I'm wrong, they should make it a top priority to put a stop watch on pitches from day one to increase the pace ( which I would do anyway with a lot more emphasis ). If the pitcher can overrule the pitch calls then it should not be that important except in the instances noted above.
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Post by rjp313jr on Aug 15, 2014 16:07:33 GMT -5
I don't know. Pitch calling has to do with intelligence and critical thinking skills. How to mix and match is important. Having a catcher who is good at it eliminates the need to have 20+ other guys who are good at it. Not every pitcher is going to have that ability and even those who do won't necessarily want to have that on their minds. Free the mind and execute. It's easier to have one it 2 people good at something than it is 20
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Post by ramireja on Aug 15, 2014 16:54:03 GMT -5
Long time reader, first time poster. As you touched on, I think Varitek's game-calling was elite. I do believe he holds the record for having caught the most no-hitters in history. The guy was a leader on the field and frankly If either Swihart or Vazquez can even approach Varitek's consistency in handling the pitching staff full of youngsters I'd be ecstatic. Game-calling remains the one aspect of catcher performance that's we don't really know how to evaluate. Furthermore, all the previous work that was done on it, we now realize, was confounded by pitch-framing; even if you could accurately determine a "catcher's ERA," before pitch/fx we wouldn't have known how much of it was pitch-framing and how much game-calling. Varitek did have a reputation as an elite pitch-caller, and his last Sox contract seems to have been predicated on the belief that he was. I know that the Theo / Jed Hoyer F.O. believed it was a real skill, e.g. Jed dismissing a seemingly OK backup catcher candidate because he was lousy at it. I don't know if they had an internal metric for it or not. Pitch sequencing in general is a huge untapped area. I've been meaning to write Dan Brooks and ask him to add a filter by previous pitch to BrooksBaseball.net pitch/fx player cards, so we can get some idea of general trends. And here's a conceptually simple methodology that would in theory measure pitch-calling quite accurately. Get every hitter's average results given a pitch's type, velocity, movement, and location. (In other words, complete one of the Holy Grails and fundamental tools of sabermetrics.) Now look at all the pitches that were called by a catcher, as executed. Compare the actual results to the expected results, based on who the hitters were and what the pitches actually did. Any difference must be because of a) luck or b) the sequencing of the pitches. If you're getting guys out on pitches they ordinarily hit, it must be because they were unexpected, or weren't picked up because of a change of eye level, etc. If guys are hitting pitches they ordinarily can't, they must have been looking for them. (Pitch velocity will have to be adjusted for deception, among other necessary tweaks. But in fact this methodology will identify pitchers who are getting better or worse results than expected, after adjusting for their catchers, and it would be easy to test if they had above or below-average deception by simply seeing what change in velocity would eliminate the discrepancy.) The challenge is to derive the hitter models from limited data. Lots of sophisticated bucketing and smoothing would be involved, which means that there is no one "right" answer. You can bet that there are teams working on this. This seems to make sense except for one thing that thelavarnwayguy brought up......the pitcher does not always throw the catcher's called pitch. In the end it would be impossible to know if each pitch thrown was the catcher's call or the pitcher's call. Not to mention, a catcher may call for a fastball away but the pitchers misses in over the plate. In other words, the catcher might call the perfect game but its up to the pitcher to execute the pitches. That might be an issue that is mitigated by a large enough sample size but anyways, something else to consider. It may just be a truly impossible construct to quantify.....
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Post by ericmvan on Aug 15, 2014 17:52:10 GMT -5
This seems to make sense except for one thing that thelavarnwayguy brought up......the pitcher does not always throw the catcher's called pitch. In the end it would be impossible to know if each pitch thrown was the catcher's call or the pitcher's call. Not to mention, a catcher may call for a fastball away but the pitchers misses in over the plate. In other words, the catcher might call the perfect game but its up to the pitcher to execute the pitches. That might be an issue that is mitigated by a large enough sample size but anyways, something else to consider. It may just be a truly impossible construct to quantify..... Great points. I think that for the time being we have to ignore the "who actually called it?" dilemma. In theory, it's the catcher's job. If he is handling a veteran staff that is always shaking him off, and they are actually making him look better than he is, we have to live with that. However, if we get to this point, then people will start to notate pitches where the pitcher shook off the signal! That data would be fascinating, if you could collect enough of it. Over 2 or 3 years you might find that pitcher X was worse when shaking off catcher 1, versus accepting the sign, but better when shaking off catcher 2 than when accepting. There are ways to handle the pitcher missing his spot, but obviously they would be estimates (until we start notating where the catcher set his target). You can start by assuming that pitches called to be in hitters' hot zones will be quite rare (although I bet they can be effective if very unexpected and hard-thrown or with nasty movement). You can then measure each pitcher's hot-zone-avoidance skill (pretty much a measure of command) and correlate it to their control. And then boost the catcher-calling rankings accordingly in proportion to the lack of hot-zone-avoidance skill by the pitchers. You can furthermore divide hitters' hot and cold zones into typical and atypical. And look at the pitchers whose command seemed to be unusually good or bad relative to their control. With those two breakdowns, you can start to measure the apparent catcher knowledge of hot and cold zones, which of course is a big part of pitch-calling skill. Is the pitcher / catcher combo generally effective against hitters with typical hot and cold zones, but ineffective against those with odd ones? That would show up as the pitcher having bad command relative to his control, but it would obviously be the catcher's fault for not knowing the actual hot and cold zones of the odd hitters. Since control and command are usually well correlated, it might be safe to assume that they were the same for a whole staff taken together. Therefore, hot-zone-avoidance relative to control might be a very good measure of a catcher's knowledge of hitters. And then the sequencing skill would be measured by the hitters' performance relative to expected performance based on pitch location and quality. And if all the catchers for a team over a couple of years had really good sequencing skill (indicating general smarts) but bad hot-zone-avoidance skill (ordinarily suggesting dumbness), we might conclude that in fact they were getting crappy scouting reports on hitters!
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Post by ericmvan on Sept 6, 2014 5:47:22 GMT -5
Clay Davenport's Peak Translations for Vazquez, adjusted for position where .265 is average MLB starter:
2010: .250, after promotion from Lowell to Greenville 2011: .287, repeating Greenville 2012: .259, after promotion to Salem, but got 82 PA at Portland 2013: .278, with Portland (just 4 PA with Pawtucket) 2014: .251, with Pawtucket and Boston
He's done much better when he's had familiarity with the league.
Meanwhile, Swihart has gone .254, .275, .286. A point of EqA / TAv is pretty much the same as a defensive run saved (per 150 games), and they seem to be very comparable in terms of non pitch-framing defense (with Swihart having a big edge in preventing WP / PB and being no slouch with the arm.)
So the question will come down to, how good a pitch framer will Swihart prove to be? We can probably find that out in a couple of weeks next July if we want to deal one at the deadline. Right now, Vazquez scores as +33 runs per 120 games. Swihart's edge at the plate projects to be 15 to 20 runs, so Swihart basically has to be half the pitch-framer that Vazquez is, to be the better player.
It seems more than likely that:
a) it will be completely unclear who will be the better player at the point we want to trade one
b) we will want to trade one, because they both look like All-Star caliber players as catchers, and maybe MVP candidates (stealth for Vazquez unless the entire membership of the BBWAA starts reading BP and FanGraphs religiously). And as for using Swihart as just the backup catcher and having him play every day elsewhere, imagine you want to start a business and you need a pickup truck, and you inherit a Porsche and a Maserati. You're really not going to haul lumber in the Porsche. You're going to sell one and buy a pickup.
c) I may have answered my own question, because Swihart will almost certainly have considerably more trade value when you factor in the GM's who ignore or (much more common, I bet) don't truly trust pitch framing.
d) OTOH, hitting often comes and goes, but if you have a 5.0 WAR defensive catcher, you can just bank that year after year.
The best case may be Swihart having such a good 2015 that he becomes the sort of trade chip that you can get almost anyone with, without adding much at all. Except, if he's that good, then maybe you want to keep him after all!
Crap, it's not going to be an easy decision. May we have many such further dilemmas.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Sept 6, 2014 6:15:08 GMT -5
The other major factor here is the Sox view of whether or not pitch calling will become automated and when that might happen. We have a new commissioner coming in and we're basically in the same situation we were in when they lowered the mound, declining offense. Chicks dig the offense. If the Sox feel that we'll go automated, they might want to trade Vazquez before it happens.There are also certainly GMs that value pitch framing.
Agree though that Swihart's trade value will be through the roof.
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Post by mgoetze on Sept 6, 2014 6:29:22 GMT -5
The other major factor here is the Sox view of whether or not pitch calling will become automated and when that might happen. 2018: Red Sox sign Christian Vazquez to $120 million extension. 2019: Joe Torre announces new automated ball/strike calling system.
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Post by ancientsoxfogey on Sept 6, 2014 6:44:04 GMT -5
The question of Vazquez vs. Swihart, to me, doesn't HAVE to have an answer.
Catch Vazquez 90 games a year, Swihart 70, and play Swihart elsewhere for additional games if his bat demands it -- which, given the struggles of some top-flight young players recently, we have no way of being certain of. Delay the effects of wear and tear on both, always have an all-star calibre catcher ready to take over the bulk of the duties in the event of injury, keep them fresh so they can produce at their maximum offensive capabilities, allow one (hopefully Swihart, given his SH) to catch particular pitchers who prefer one over the other - it all seems so clear.
But of course, we have to choose one because ...... well, because we have to. Good teams always have a single predominant catcher running the show. That's the way it's done. It just isn't done the other way.
Until it is.
I can understand the argument about trading one because there is more value to be gained from using one of them full time + the value that can be obtained from trading the other than there is to using both of them. But catcher is SO important that having the position taken care of redundantly over the long haul by two very capable players has some real appeal for a franchise whose desire is to be championship-calibre most years. To me, the factor that is most likely to result in one or the other being traded is that sooner or later one of the other catcher prospects shows up well enough that a place of some sort needs to be made for them, and that's when one of Vazquez/Swihart is moved. [Of course, it could be the other nameless catcher that is moved instead.]
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Post by soxfan1615 on Sept 6, 2014 6:58:47 GMT -5
The question of Vazquez vs. Swihart, to me, doesn't HAVE to have an answer. Catch Vazquez 90 games a year, Swihart 70, and play Swihart elsewhere for additional games if his bat demands it -- which, given the struggles of some top-flight young players recently, we have no way of being certain of. Delay the effects of wear and tear on both, always have an all-star calibre catcher ready to take over the bulk of the duties in the event of injury, keep them fresh so they can produce at their maximum offensive capabilities, allow one (hopefully Swihart, given his SH) to catch particular pitchers who prefer one over the other - it all seems so clear. But of course, we have to choose one because ...... well, because we have to. Good teams always have a single predominant catcher running the show. That's the way it's done. It just isn't done the other way. Until it is. I can understand the argument about trading one because there is more value to be gained from using one of them full time + the value that can be obtained from trading the other than there is to using both of them. But catcher is SO important that having the position taken care of redundantly over the long haul by two very capable players has some real appeal for a franchise whose desire is to be championship-calibre most years. To me, the factor that is most likely to result in one or the other being traded is that sooner or later one of the other catcher prospects shows up well enough that a place of some sort needs to be made for them, and that's when one of Vazquez/Swihart is moved. [Of course, it could be the other nameless catcher that is moved instead.] You don't do that because that's a huge loss in value. I agree with Eric's point about the porsche and the Maserati.
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Post by mgoetze on Sept 6, 2014 8:28:02 GMT -5
While the value argument is of course theoretically valid, my feeling is that, in practice, additional years of control are undervalued on the trade market. Most GMs won't give twice the value for 2 years of a player that they would for 1 year of that same player, and they definitely won't give five times the value for 5 years of that player.
Now, some GMs might be ahead of the curve here... but Billy Beane can't afford Swihart or Vazquez anyway.
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Post by jimed14 on Sept 6, 2014 9:23:40 GMT -5
Clay Davenport's Peak Translations for Vazquez, adjusted for position where .265 is average MLB starter: 2010: .250, after promotion from Lowell to Greenville 2011: .287, repeating Greenville 2012: .259, after promotion to Salem, but got 82 PA at Portland 2013: .278, with Portland (just 4 PA with Pawtucket) 2014: .251, with Pawtucket and Boston He's done much better when he's had familiarity with the league. Meanwhile, Swihart has gone .254, .275, .286. A point of EqA / TAv is pretty much the same as a defensive run saved (per 150 games), and they seem to be very comparable in terms of non pitch-framing defense (with Swihart having a big edge in preventing WP / PB and being no slouch with the arm.) So the question will come down to, how good a pitch framer will Swihart prove to be? We can probably find that out in a couple of weeks next July if we want to deal one at the deadline. Right now, Vazquez scores as +33 runs per 120 games. Swihart's edge at the plate projects to be 15 to 20 runs, so Swihart basically has to be half the pitch-framer that Vazquez is, to be the better player. It seems more than likely that: a) it will be completely unclear who will be the better player at the point we want to trade one b) we will want to trade one, because they both look like All-Star caliber players as catchers, and maybe MVP candidates (stealth for Vazquez unless the entire membership of the BBWAA starts reading BP and FanGraphs religiously). And as for using Swihart as just the backup catcher and having him play every day elsewhere, imagine you want to start a business and you need a pickup truck, and you inherit a Porsche and a Maserati. You're really not going to haul lumber in the Porsche. You're going to sell one and buy a pickup. c) I may have answered my own question, because Swihart will almost certainly have considerably more trade value when you factor in the GM's who ignore or (much more common, I bet) don't truly trust pitch framing. d) OTOH, hitting often comes and goes, but if you have a 5.0 WAR defensive catcher, you can just bank that year after year. The best case may be Swihart having such a good 2015 that he becomes the sort of trade chip that you can get almost anyone with, without adding much at all. Except, if he's that good, then maybe you want to keep him after all! Crap, it's not going to be an easy decision. May we have many such further dilemmas. . They can't afford to trade Swihart with the possibility of robot umpires completely removing Vazquez' pitch framing ability. It would probably take away his major league career. Edit - I've been scooped several times. Should have read before replying.
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Post by chavopepe2 on Sept 6, 2014 10:36:31 GMT -5
Clay Davenport's Peak Translations for Vazquez, adjusted for position where .265 is average MLB starter: 2010: .250, after promotion from Lowell to Greenville 2011: .287, repeating Greenville 2012: .259, after promotion to Salem, but got 82 PA at Portland 2013: .278, with Portland (just 4 PA with Pawtucket) 2014: .251, with Pawtucket and Boston He's done much better when he's had familiarity with the league. Meanwhile, Swihart has gone .254, .275, .286. A point of EqA / TAv is pretty much the same as a defensive run saved (per 150 games), and they seem to be very comparable in terms of non pitch-framing defense (with Swihart having a big edge in preventing WP / PB and being no slouch with the arm.) So the question will come down to, how good a pitch framer will Swihart prove to be? We can probably find that out in a couple of weeks next July if we want to deal one at the deadline. Right now, Vazquez scores as +33 runs per 120 games. Swihart's edge at the plate projects to be 15 to 20 runs, so Swihart basically has to be half the pitch-framer that Vazquez is, to be the better player. It seems more than likely that: a) it will be completely unclear who will be the better player at the point we want to trade one b) we will want to trade one, because they both look like All-Star caliber players as catchers, and maybe MVP candidates (stealth for Vazquez unless the entire membership of the BBWAA starts reading BP and FanGraphs religiously). And as for using Swihart as just the backup catcher and having him play every day elsewhere, imagine you want to start a business and you need a pickup truck, and you inherit a Porsche and a Maserati. You're really not going to haul lumber in the Porsche. You're going to sell one and buy a pickup. c) I may have answered my own question, because Swihart will almost certainly have considerably more trade value when you factor in the GM's who ignore or (much more common, I bet) don't truly trust pitch framing. d) OTOH, hitting often comes and goes, but if you have a 5.0 WAR defensive catcher, you can just bank that year after year. The best case may be Swihart having such a good 2015 that he becomes the sort of trade chip that you can get almost anyone with, without adding much at all. Except, if he's that good, then maybe you want to keep him after all! Crap, it's not going to be an easy decision. May we have many such further dilemmas. . They can't afford to trade Swihart with the possibility of robot umpires completely removing Vazquez' pitch framing ability. It would probably take away his major league career. Edit - I've been scooped several times. Should have read before replying. Do we really think there will be robot umpires in the next 5 years? Maybe in my lifetime we see it (I'm 32), but I would be extremely surprised if it was in the next decade. I've said this many times, but the Vazquez-Swihart decision is not one that will have to be made for a while. There is enough uncertainty with both, that a lot could change between now and when the decision has to be made.
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Post by jmei on Sept 6, 2014 10:57:21 GMT -5
Yeah, I see no chance robot umps are implemented in the next decade. It would require extensive collective bargaining negotiations, and it is the third rail for the umpire's union. Shouldn't even be a factor in this decision IMO.
And, as chavo mentioned, it's still at least a year too early before this decision needs to even be considered. The jury is still out on Vazquez's bat (he might just be a low-power, low-BABIP hitter-- he's always hit a ton of ground balls and he's a slow runner), Swihart's plate discipline (his K and BB rates have declined as he's moved up the system this year), and Swihart's framing. It's just about an impossible decision to make right now given the publicly-available information, though Eric sets up the calculus well above.
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