After a season in which four different players made at least one start at catcher for the Boston Red Sox, chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom plans to revamp the position in the coming months.
Speaking during a press conference on Thursday, Bloom touched on the organization’s outlook for the offseason, where he noted that the team's depth chart at the catcher position could see a new face or two come the 2023 season.
“This is one of the areas I fully expect that we’re going to explore additions,” Bloom said. “It’s nice to know that we have two guys that are familiar with how we do things, that showed a lot of good things. But we owe it to ourselves and everybody who cares about this team to look to get better and catcher is certainly not going to be an exception to that.”
Christian Vazquez was the Red Sox’s go-to starter at catcher until he was shipped off to the Houston Astros ahead of this season’s MLB trade deadline. Red Sox manager Alex Cora then relied upon Kevin Plawecki, Connor Wong, and also Reese McGuire, who was acquired from the Chicago White Sox ahead of the trade deadline, to feature at catcher over the remainder of the campaign.
Overall, Plawecki and Wong each finished regular season play with an OPS+ under 70, while McGuire made the most out of his at-bats in the second half of the campaign. McGuire posted a .337 batting average to go along with an OPS+ of 142 in 36 games played with the Red Sox.
Plawecki was released by the Red Sox in September, and he later ended up joining the Texas Rangers organization. McGuire and Wong ended up receiving more at-bats following Boston's call to release Plawecki.
“I think both of these guys showed well, which is good for them, good for us,” Bloom said. “We didn’t want to be in the position we were in at the end but we tried to make the most of that position in terms of giving them opportunity both for their growth and benefit and also for ours. So I think they definitely raised the floor of what we had.”
From Willson Contreras to even a possible reunion with Vazquez, Bloom sure will have plenty of options in free agency to bolster the Red Sox's depth at the catcher position.
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