As yet another losing season, 2015 has become The Year of the Youths: Part Deux. It has also been one of the rare cases in which the sequel was more impressive than the original, as it followed a horrendous 2014 where we watched virtually every young player on the Red Sox fall on their face. This year, we have Xander Bogaerts and Mookie Betts flourishing. Eduardo Rodriguez and Henry Owens have shown flashes of pitchers who can be a part of the major-league rotation moving forward. Travis Shaw is the best hitter in baseball. Even Jackie Bradley and Rusney Castillo (if he can be considered part of the “youth movement”) have joined in on the party. For as much as the overall season has been tough to swallow, it’s been a blast to watch these guys grow before us.
In a strange turn of events, there is one young player who has been on the major-league roster for most of the year not getting nearly as much attention as the others listed above. I know this will come as a surprise, but I’m referring to that dude mentioned in the headline and shown in the picture above, Blake Swihart.
The fact that he’s been somewhat overshadowed is especially strange considering how much of a darling he became to the fan base over the offseason. In a way, Swihart became the face of keeping the prospects rather than dealing for established veterans, especially in the case of Cole Hamels. Now, after struggling a bit in his first taste of the majors, he’s the forgotten man.
Of course, those struggles aren’t all his fault. The plan was never for Swihart to receive so much playing time in 2015. This season was supposed to allow him to get more seasoning in Triple-A, possibly getting a call-up in the second half if he played well with Pawtucket. Things changed when Christian Vazquez went down for the year in spring training and Ryan Hanigan hurt himself just a couple months later. If there was ever an unfinished product being rushed to the majors — at a position where it shows more than any other — Swihart is it. With all of that being said, he’s been given time to adjust, and it’s time for the Red Sox and their new regime to look forward to next year. Has anything their young catcher done give them confidence that he can be a major part of the 2016 roster?
The plan was never for Swihart to receive so much playing time in 2015.
Swihart has come to the plate 210 times in 2015, and the results haven’t been pretty. Overall, he’s hitting .259/.301/.345 with a .218 TAv. For context, that TAv ranks 266th out of 287 players with at least 200 plate appearances. In layman’s terms: it’s super not great. With that being said, it certainly doesn’t tell the whole story. As I mentioned above, he was rushed to the majors and some adjustments needed to be made. Luckily for the sake of this article, Swihart was hurt a little more than halfway through his season, making it easier to split up his year. Sure enough, he’s been much better since returning from the disabled list than he was before hitting it. To wit, he went from a .241/.279/.323 line pre-DL to a .297/.348/.391 line post-DL.
Now, there are some BABIP issues here that are sure to regress, and his overall peripherals this year don’t paint the prettiest of pictures. Right now, Swihart is striking out in roughly a quarter of his trips to the plate, while he’s walking in a little less than six percent of his plate appearances. He was never one to walk a ton in the minors, but he also never struck out like this. At some point, he’ll either need to strikeout less or walk more. Of course, as I’ve mentioned a thousand times by now, he’s still way ahead of schedule and adjustments will be made. In fact, there is one major adjustment I noticed that has led to his resurgence after coming back from the disabled list, and it involves that plate discipline.
When I see someone striking out a bunch and not walking much, the first thing I look for is how often they’re swinging at pitches out of the zone. However, according to BP’s plate discipline stats, he’s been around league average. Among the 286 batters who have seen at least 750 pitches this year, Swihart ranks 140 in O-Swing%, basically right in the middle. The same goes for his swing percentage, where he ranks 151 among the same pool of players. Once again, he finds himself in the middle of the pack in swinging strike rate, ranking 145 out of 286. So, the major red flags aren’t coming up here.
The problems, instead, lie with a lack of aggression. This is a problem I found with Betts earlier in the year, and one that plagued Bogaerts last season. Swihart is swinging at fewer strikes than 71 percent of the player pool mentioned above. Meanwhile, pitchers are throwing him strikes more often than 85 percent of the player pool. That is a really bad mix, and one that leads to falling behind in counts. The good news is we have already seen that adjustment being made. Once again using his DL stint as a cutoff point, let’s look at which pitches he’s swinging at relative to the strike zone.
That second plot, which shows which pitches he’s been swinging at since coming back from the disabled list, looks much more like a player who is going to succeed in the majors. Swihart, as a player whose offensive value will be driven by making good contact and hitting for a high average, will need to be aggressive on good pitches to hit. In turn, when pitchers notice this trend they will stop throwing him so many strikes. That should lead to more walks, and in turn a higher OBP. There are more adjustments to be made by Swihart, but seeing him get more aggressive on pitches in the zone is a very good start.
The power will still need to improve, the defense could get better along with his peripheral numbers, but we’re seeing steps in the right direction. For a 23-year-old with a reputation for having great makeup, this is a good first step. As long as we see him continue this trend through the rest of the season, he should absolutely have a role on the 2016 team. With Vazquez and Hanigan also under contract for next season, someone will likely need to go. Based on what we’ve seen from Swihart this year, he should not be that man. If they pair him with one of those glove-first backstops, the Red Sox could turn a weakness behind the plate into a strength next year.
Photo by Rick Osentoski/USA Today Sports Images