When the Boston Red Sox open their 2019 Major League Baseball season March 28 against the Seattle Mariners, they’ll only be carrying two catchers.
That’s Dave Dombrowski’s plan, anyway.
Boston carried Sandy Leon, Blake Swihart and Christian Vazquez for the entirety of the 2018 season. And while Swihart filled in nicely — particularly when Vazquez broke his finger — he often was the odd man out, left to play other positions on the field. But the president of baseball operations wouldn’t give any indication of who would be traded, just that “philosophically,” he’d like to have two backstops.
“I think philosophically, yes, that’s what we are planning on doing: to have two catchers rather than three,” Dombrowski said, via MassLive’s Christopher Smith. “As you know, that’s always a position where we’re a foul tip away from changing what your outlook is. But realistically I think Opening Day we would have two catchers. But we haven’t made any deals as you can see. I think the catching market overall for trades has been slow.
“The Realmuto deal — we’re not dealing the same level of player — but it affects other clubs, other organizations,” Dombrowski explained. “There’s even a couple free agent catchers still out there at this time. So we don’t want to just give our guys away by any added. We think they’re all big league catchers. All legitimate big league catchers. So we’ll just play it out and see what happens.”
Vazquez carries the highest contract of the three, but after starting him in 10 of 14 postseason games en route to a World Series victory, it’s clear manager Alex Cora has a lot of trust in him behind the plate.
