The Red Sox have signed catcher Christian Vázquez to a three-year contract extension through the 2021 season, with a club option for 2022.
Vazquez gets 3 year extension
- Thread starter RedOctober3829
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The Red Sox have signed catcher Christian Vázquez to a three-year contract extension through the 2021 season, with a club option for 2022.
Slated to make around $1.4M this year, can't imagine the deal raises his AAV more than a million or so otherwise why do this now? It does buy out one year of free agency, possibly two with the option.
It'll definitely be more than a $1M AAV increase. Typically player salaries increase substantially in their Arb2 and Arb3 years.
My guess is something like $15M-18M over the three years, with a club option of $8M-$10M for year four.
My guess is something like $15M-18M over the three years, with a club option of $8M-$10M for year four.
$13.55 million guaranteed from ‘19-‘21 with a buyout for 2022 if the club option is declined.
So about 15M over four years...3.75M-ish AAV. Eats into their small amount of wiggle room with the cap but not dramatically so. Could be a wash if they dump Holt.
Money in this market is pretty good. If he could ever become like Yadi and develop some real offense this contract would be a steal.
6.25 for a backup C that can't hit is horrible, in a vacuum, for only 1 year of FA, but relative to their payroll (total and contents) and to what he would likely receive on the market as a starter it's certainly more than acceptable.
I wonder how long Leon stays.
The extension also retains him through his age 30 season, 31 with the option.
It's easy to forget how bad he was offensively in 2014 and 2016 - but my eyes tell me he's turned a corner at the plate, and I think he's even capable of putting up somewhere around 20 HR, with a decent batting average and OBP.
It's easy to forget how bad he was offensively in 2014 and 2016 - but my eyes tell me he's turned a corner at the plate, and I think he's even capable of putting up somewhere around 20 HR, with a decent batting average and OBP.
Vazquez was awful at the plate most of last year too but over the last 2 months of last season he had a .404 BABIP with 17 singles to shallow right field. I think his defense is vastly overrated as well, both throwing, framing, and generally making smart decisions. I don't see the point of not going year to year with him.
Doesn't this suggest that he's good at framing, at least relative to his peers?
http://www.statcorner.com/CatcherReport.php
And this seems to suggest his throwing is also good, at least insofar as caught stealing is concerned:
https://www.foxsports.com/mlb/stats?season=2017&category=FIELDING+II&group=2&time=0
Maybe there's other measures out there. These are the first I found in each category.
If you are not a real freakish outlier in framing, like Flowers, or even second tier like Grandal or Hedges (or negatively like Lucroy), it's all jumbled noise. Again, Vazquez is very good but not one of the elites at throwing and clearly has had problems with overaggressive throwing and bad decisions. I'm trying to find it but I believe Alex Speier wrote a story about how Vazquez has not delivered on the promise of game changing defense.
Regardless. In a market where 2 players next year will be making 35 + million a year what is 3.5 - 5 million per? They can’t pay everyone and expect to sign a Buster Posey type behind the plate unless they can develop one. Vazquez hit .290 last year so he’s not a total waste. Okay player who will hit 8th or 9th depending what streak Bradley is on.
In my mind, if the pitching staff loves throwing to him and he can hit like he did last year then the contract is worth it.
Pfft, the metric system?
My catcher throws 17 rods per ghurry, and that's the way I likes it!
More specifically, he's making $2.85 million in 2019, $4.2 million in 2020, and $6.5 million in 2021 with a $7 million option that can go up to $8 million with 2020-2021 plate appearance-related incentives.
“In 211 major league games, he has thrown out 42 percent of attempted base stealers (42 of 100), the highest rate for any catcher since at least 1987 (min. 200 games caught), ahead of Hall of Famer Ivan Rodriguez (41.7 percent).”
https://www.mlb.com/redsox/news/red-sox-chrstian-vazquez-3-year-extension/c-269568110
Vazquez has caught Sale in at least two of his starts this spring, and was catching him again today before he got hit by a line drive. Cora's on record saying that he's not going to stick to personal catchers so much. So either the new manager is challenging his best pitcher or that best pitcher isn't all that particular about who he throws to and the personal catcher thing last year was more a function of the manager than the pitcher(s).
This deal has upside and downside protections in it. They buy out some arb, and they have an option. It's really, really not a lot of money, and they obviously like him for it. No complaints here.
It makes it likely he'll be one of their catchers in 2020. Teams need two and it's not like this contract forces them to play him 120 times a year.
That was already likely, wasn’t it? 2020 was to be his last arb-eligible season.
Point is, if some scenario occurs where both Vaz and Swihart are healthy and good this year, then Vazquez is more attractive to other teams next winter at 4/$16ish than 2/$10ish.
Might also be an argument for keeping him, but it’s useful since we have no trade chips.
Vaz was better than Lucroy last year, and this deal pays him less in 2021 than Lucroy just signed for.
Add in the option and this seems like a good deal for the Sox to me.
Add in the option and this seems like a good deal for the Sox to me.
I wonder if this in any way precludes Sandy Leone being moved? Perhaps for a AAA catcher with options???
Vazquez was virtually identical to Hedges last year, both with 1.5 extra strikes per game. My full list is here. I show breakdowns in detail, and explain my methods here. I looked at "noise" issues here. My results turn out virtually identical to StatCorners and just about every other framing list I've seen. If it's "noise", explain why different people using different techniques get the same results. If you don't believe my results, you're welcome to calculate them yourself and explain which step is wrong.
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Sale likes the extension.
“That’s huge,” Sale said at JetBlue Park, via Boston.com’s Maureen Mullen. “He’s a younger guy, too, so having him around, he’s been around a while, around here a while, so we all love him. Well worth it. He earned it, every last penny of it.”
I'm surprised the team offered this extension now, rather than next offseason. They must really love him, Cora included.
“That’s huge,” Sale said at JetBlue Park, via Boston.com’s Maureen Mullen. “He’s a younger guy, too, so having him around, he’s been around a while, around here a while, so we all love him. Well worth it. He earned it, every last penny of it.”
I'm surprised the team offered this extension now, rather than next offseason. They must really love him, Cora included.
And Bogaerts and Betts must not have any intention of signing away any of their first free agency years.
Ask yourself this - if what kind of AAA catcher with options would you move for Sandy Leon if the roles were reversed? Is that guy any better than Austin Rei or Dan Butler?
Add that I think Cora is hoping to use Swihart as more than just a backup C and this deal for Vaz likely underscores that, and I can see a meaningful role for Leon on the 2018 club.
I'm pretty optimistic on Vazquez' bat myself. His BABIP might be unsustainable but his ISO went up and his K% went down. His second half improvements correlate with swapping about 10% of soft contact for 10% of medium contact, while going opposite field 4% more often. Going opposite field yields by far his lowest soft contact percentage. It also is the leader in producing liners and flies.
If these are signs of Vazquez learning to sit back and use Fenway's spacious RF to his advantage that could result in a more consistent, solid, offensive output from him. Of course, the challenge that would likely follow then is everyone trying to bust him inside, at which point he'd need to show the ability to pull pitches for power.
From the rest of your post I'm guessing you mean something like "presages"?
I suspect the answer is that they need more time to figure out what the best use of Swihart is. They probably don't want to commit to him being their #2 catcher unless/until they feel really sure he can do that job. It would make sense to make this decision when Pedroia comes back and forces roster moves. For that reason, I suspect we'll see a fair amount of Swihart behind the plate in the early going.
As for a AAA catcher with options--how's that going to work? A team interested in Leon is a team that needs to replace its second catcher because he's either terrible or hurt or both. But this hypothetical team has a AAA catcher with options who's presumably MLB-ready (if he isn't, then what good is he to us?). So why would they give up this guy for Leon instead of just promoting him?
The Sox did add Michael Olman from the Rangers yesterday https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/o/ohlmami01.shtml
Guessing it's because of Oscar Hernandez' suspension.
At least it's someone who has played in the majors.
Guessing it's because of Oscar Hernandez' suspension.
At least it's someone who has played in the majors.
I don’t think Swihart is on this team to stick as a #2 catcher. He’s here to rebuild his value as a first-division starter or 3-win utility guy. If the Sox can give him the opportunity to do that, then we trade him like one. Or we trade Vázquez, who’s a suddenly more valuable long-term asset.
If he’s healthy, Swihart’s a starting catcher with Realmuto-like upside. Less likely but still possible, he’s a C-eligible utility type who can log 450 PAs (like Barnes or Inge or Surhoff). But we’ve a long way to go for that to be proven, and it’d come at the expense of two guys (Nuñez and Holt) who already fulfill most of the functions of that job.
Swihart just isn’t a #2 catcher. His value — both real and perceived — would deteriorate if we treat him like one for any length of time. He’s fine defensively, but there are enough fungible backup catchers with exceptional defensive skills in MLB, and we already have a fine one.
So yeah. It’d be weird to say that extending Vázquez makes it *more likely* we’d trade him. But I'm not sure it's a grand statement he's the catcher of the future. The extension widens the opportunity for a trade return next winter in the scenario where both Váz and Swihart are healthy and hitting this year, which looks increasingly likely.
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SO much better than the "what about his sister Sierra" joke I was trying to come up with
It's easy to get distracted after they handed Vazquez a fistful of dollars.
This cannot get enough love.
This...just no.
It's not. It doesn't even remotely work. It could conceivably work at another position, but even then, probably not. If Swihart can catch a couple games a week and play 2-3 more in the field somewhere, trading Leon frees up a bit of cash and might bring in a lottery ticket but the point of trading Leon isn't to get good value, it's to get something and clear salary because the alternative is just dumping him because we need the roster spot for someone better.
Not worth its own thread, but they did get some catching depth
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/boston-red-sox
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/boston-red-sox