The Boston Red Sox recently sent catching prospect Jhon Nunez to the Detroit Tigers in exchange for relief pitcher Matt Hall. This was a mistake.
Okay look, I get it. I romanticize the Red Sox prospects a lot of the time. However, that doesn’t mean I’m wrong about them. Potential is a very fickle thing. It could go away, never show up, or even just be a straight-up lie. That being said, it is also a very exciting and more importantly, a very valuable thing.
Potential gives teams hope. It gives players value. And it can turn someone into a star. It’s how teams evaluate prospects. They look at a teenager and see what they could turn into on the field. With that being said, trading Jhon Nunez made very little sense. Not just because he had potential though. There is even more to this situation than just that.
It didn’t make sense because of the position he plays. Nunez is a catcher. Easily the position the Red Sox have the worst depth at. After Christian Vazquez, they have Kevin Plawecki as the backup. There are no other catchers on the 40-man roster.
I’ve talked about this in the past. How the Red Sox need to give two catchers a shot in Spring Training. Those catchers were Austin Rei and Nunez.
The reason I picked those two catchers was simple, they both have good potential, and have shown a lot in the Minors in recent years. They are also two of the catchers in the minors that could actually realistically make the jump to the Majors.
Kole Cottam is exciting but needs more time to polish. So do Roldani Baldwin, Alan Marrero, and Charlie Madden.
This is a position of very little depth for the Red Sox, as they have no catchers in their official top-30 prospects list. Although I did have Cottam in mine, while Nunez, Rei and Baldwin all flirted with the list.
Boston only has one catcher in the minors with MLB experience. That would be Jett Bandy, a career .218 hitter (.282 OBP).
Just for reference, Nunez is a 25-year-old switch-hitter who slashed .280/.333/.412 in Double-A last year. He is athletic for the position, plays good defense and has a lot of potential offensively. Is Nunez perfect? No. He’s a strong prospect though.
In 1,075 at-bats he has just 192 strikeouts. Nunez also has 41 career steals. There are a lot of unique things to like about him.
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Let me ask you this. If something happens to Vazquez where he is out for an extended period of time, do you feel good with Plawecki and Bandy behind the dish?
I’m not pretending like Nunez would have been a superstar. He had a ton of potential though and could have fought to break the roster at some point this year.
Instead, the Red Sox traded one of their few semi-MLB-ready catchers for a 26-year-old relief pitcher with a career ERA of 9.48 and a WHIP of 2.07. He also had a 5.30 ERA in Triple-A last season.
This is not to knock Matt Hall either. The Red Sox recognized they needed relief depth and traded for someone they felt they could get for “cheap” who has the potential to turn it around.
Did you really have to give away one of the few catchers to get excited about though? More importantly, did you have to give away a prospect I was always talking up? This is happening too much Red Sox. I’m starting to think you just like to make me look stupid. I don’t need any more help in that department.