Big Deal Day: Red Sox Trade Christian Vazquez, Make Two Other Deals As Well

Notes on acquiring Tommy Pham, the Vazquez deal, and the Jake Diekman trade

Yesterday, a day from the trade deadline, amidst talk of buying and selling, of trying to win tomorrow and today, the Red Sox made a series of moves. What was the purpose behind those moves? Were they good moves? Or were they moves that were covered in poo juice and set on fire? Or perhaps, something in between. Let’s jump in and discuss them!

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Sometimes I feel like I fall into writing a bit too much like a story in a newspaper. Newspapers are great (I subscribe to three of them!) but this newsletter is different and sometimes I have to remind myself of that. For example, the Christian Vazquez trade. Here’s what I started writing about that deal last night.

Yesterday in the first deal of the day, the Red Sox traded their starting catcher, Christian Vazquez, to the Houston Astros for two minor league hitters, Enmanual Valdez and Wilyer Abreu.

There’s nothing technically wrong with that sentence. It’s factual. It’s direct. But it’s emotionless. It could’ve been written by a computer. Let’s try that again.

Trading your starting catcher is something bad teams do, and after a 2-87 July (approximated), the Red Sox bowed to that reality However, there is something more to the trade the Red Sox made yesterday when they sent Christian Vazquez to Houston for two minor leaguers.

It’s gutting.

On two levels.

First, Christian Vazquez has been in the Red Sox organization since 2008.

He was drafted by a team that employed Jacoby Ellsbury, Dustin Pedroia, Mike Lowell, Manny Ramirez, Jon Lester, Tim Wakefield, and Clay Buchholz. That was ages ago! So long ago that Fenway has been encased by an ice age between then and now! (That was a Bobby Valentine joke.) Christian Vazquez has been here that long. He’s been the starting catcher for two World Series champions. He’s the longest tenured Red Sox player. Or, he was.

Losing that guy is painful. For me it’s not the same as trading Mookie Betts, or losing David Ortiz or Dustin Pedroia to retirement. It won’t be the same as Xander Bogaerts or Rafael Devers leaving, if those things come to pass. Vazquez isn’t on that level. But that said, he’s important. He has a place in Red Sox lore. He’s not just some dude.

Second, Chaim Bloom has been making the argument that he can win now and build for the future simultaneously. That’s a good theoretical stance to take, I think, and some teams do it well (Dodgers, Rays) but it’s difficult to pull off in practice. This is a good example of why. Trading Vazquez hurts the fans, yes, but more importantly for the purposes of winning it crushes the team. It hurts on the field, at the plate, and in the clubhouse. It will hurt in the standings too. There’s no universe where trading Christian Vazquez today makes the Red Sox better for the rest of the season. None.

That’s not to say there aren’t reasons to do it. Vazquez will be 32 next season. He’s a catcher with a lot of innings on his frame. Signing a catcher for his ages 33, 34, and perhaps 35 seasons might not be the best return on investment. So if they weren’t going to keep him around, trading him now, getting something for the value he was providing through the rest of the season, value the Red Sox weren’t going to use (assuming they weren’t competing this season), makes sense.

But what if the Red Sox were going to use that value? You can’t on one hand claim they were going to use it (they’re trying to win!) and on the other claim they weren’t going to use it (they’re playing for next season). The argument could be made that the return was too good to pass up, and perhaps that’s true. It’s a harsh way to run a baseball team, constantly shipping players in and out, each time looking for modest upgrades in value, but it is done.

That appears to be the plan, at least here, as the Red Sox also shipped out reliever Jake Diekman to the Chicago White Sox for catcher Reese McGuire. Some amount of McGuire, Kevin Plawecki, Connor Wong, and perhaps Triple-A catching prospect Ronaldo Hernandez will fill Vazquez’s shoes for the end of the ‘22 season. In losing Diekman, the Red Sox corrected a wrong they made this past off-season, namely giving Jake Diekman a two-year contract. After watching him for a few months, his lack of command made it clear that he wasn’t going to be able to be a relied upon member of the Red Sox bullpen, and now the Red Sox are out from under that deal for this season and next. And they got a catcher, which they, you know, needed.

McGuire is no great shakes. He’s had good offensive seasons with the Blue Jays, his original club, but those were a few years back. Recently he’s been a below average hitter who can handle innings behind the plate if not in any kind of spectacular fashion.

If the Vazquez trade was a step back and the Diekman trade was neutral, the last trade of the day, acquiring outfielder Tommy Pham from the Reds for a player to be named later or cash, was at least a nominal step forward. Pham is a right-handed hitting left fielder who hits lefty pitching well and that’s roughly it. He’s not horrendous against righties but he’s not good. He makes a decent platoon partner or pinch hitter for Jackie Bradley Jr. or Alex Verdugo. He’s a useful piece, but not a whole lot more than that. He’ll be a free agent following the season so there will be no need to dump him on the White Sox next July.

There may be more deals coming today. In fact, I expect there will be. JD Martinez and Nathan Eovaldi, who pitched well in a winning effort yesterday against Vazquez’s Astros (weird!), will likely be shown the door. But we’ll cover that if/when those moves happen.

For now, this day will be remembered as the day we said good-bye to Christian Vazquez. It’s a sad day. It’s the end of an era, in a way. Vazquez was a Red Sox and if the team had wanted to keep him, I think they likely could’ve found a way to do it. But Bloom, for better or worse, has been exploring the idea of upgrading the catching position since last off-season when he made a run at Jacob Stallings (be happy that one didn’t happen).

So once that’s the evaluation, it’s just a matter of time, and this became Vazquez’s time. He’s going to a good situation in Houston, so that’s good for him, though it’s going to be difficult to watch his games and root for him in that Astros jersey. Perhaps it’ll be easier if they play Andrew Benintendi’s Yankees in the playoffs…

[pause five minutes to compose myself]

I’m still learning about the two prospects the Red Sox received for Vazquez so I hope to have some more on them soon, but for now, they’re both hitters first and fielders second (for better or worse). They’ve both had good seasons with the stick and have, in the scouting parlance, popped a bit. The upside is two above average bats and below average gloves. Not bad prospects, and as with all prospects, they can get better (or worse). The hope would likely be that they could impact the Red Sox roster by the end of next season or perhaps the season following.

The consensus among the prospect literati seems to be that it’s a fair haul for two months of Vazquez, if that kind of thing matters to you.

So that’s it. Notes from an eventful Monday. Tuesday looms. I need to get some sleep. Thanks for reading.