McAdam: For Blake Swihart, the time is now

BRADENTON, Fla. -- Hard as it may be to believe, Blake Swihart's major league debut happened back in 2015. Now, four years later, the Red Sox are still trying to find out exactly what they have in him.

After years of stressing his versatility as his chief attribute, Swihart finds himself in a different spot this spring. He's again a catcher first and foremost. While past springs have seen him moved around the diamond, this time, he's prepared almost exclusively to play behind the plate.

Manager Alex Cora, looking to get some extra at-bats Tuesday in Dunedin, asked Swihart whether he wanted to fill in in the outfield, play first base or DH. Swihart chose the latter because he had gotten so few reps at the other positions in the last few weeks.

That Swihart is part of the catching competition shouldn't be a surprise. Dave Dombrowski, the Red Sox' president of baseball operations, has said the Sox intend to deal one of their three catchers before the start of the season.

In that sense, every time Swihart is behind the plate, as he was Monday against the Pittsburgh Pirates, he's both competing for one of the two available spots with the Sox and auditioning for potential trade partners.

And while speculation seems centered on Swihart being the odd-man-out and the Sox retaining Sandy Leon and Christian Vazquez as their catching duo, it's not out of the realm of possibility that the Sox deal away Vazquez and go with Swihart and Leon.

Having developed Swihart from the time he was a first-round selection in the 2011 draft and seen him weather a nasty ankle injury in 2016, the last thing the Sox want to do is to trade away someone just now entering his prime and watch him develop into a useful major league catcher elsewhere.

That's why Cora wants to see as much of Swihart behind the plate this spring as he can, to further the evaluation process.

"Yeah, we'll pay a little bit more attention,'' said Cora. "Going into the season last year, I had a pretty good idea who was going to catch a lot. This year, we've got spring training to make decisions. It will be cool to see him perform and go out there and do other things.''

Swihart started just 16 games at catcher last year, but got into 12 other games behind the plate. Cora saw him improving his pitch-blocking skills and saw Swihart become more comfortable preparing to implement game plans and lead the pitching staff.

"Obviously, his arm is a plus,'' added Cora. "We saw that last year and in drills.''

Swihart cut down five of 19 would-be base-stealers for a 26 percent rate, just below the American League average of 28 percent.

And ultimately, there's Swihart's athleticism which allows him to move around positionally.

"There's going to be days that he's going to have to play other positions because that's his value, too,'' said Cora. "But he's into the whole catching thing. He's doing an outstanding job. There's a reason he's still with us. We believe he can catch at this level.''

"I think Blake has a chance to be a good, all-around player,'' added Dombrowski. "We just have see how it all plays out. We have three catchers and we think they all have plusses. They're all legitimate big league guys. I think he can do it. We felt the same way last year, especially as the season progressed. He really worked hard early, when he wasn't playing much, on his catching skills. It's amazing that he continued to develop the way he did, but he worked really hard at it.

"We saw enough. We feel he's ready to catch at the big league level. Now, I don't know how it's going to shake out. But we think he's ready.''

Swihart didn't start catching until high school, and in that sense, has had to learn on the fly about the position ever since. Even with the lack of game action, he continued to work at the craft last year with tangible improvements.

"I think I started making strides last year during spring training, knowing exactly what I wanted to do, how I wanted my body to work and what position I wanted my body to be in,'' he said. "During the season, even if I was playing other positions, I was still working at catching, doing drills every day, so that if my name was called, in the back of my mind, I was ready for this. I took that into the offseason and I feel really good back there now.''

If there's a disappointment about Swihart's major league career to date, it's that he hasn't yet fulfilled his considerable offensive potential. Last year, he posted a .613 OPS, which looked impressive only in comparison to the competition: Leon (.511) and Vazquez (.540).

Then again, Swihart hasn't had the opportunity to play on a regular basis, and for a relatively young player (he'll turn 27 in April), irregular playing time can be an obstacle to production. There was a decided split in performance for the switch-hitter: he hit a solid .275 with a respectable .748 from the left side against righties. Batting right-handed against lefties. Swihart was held to a single extra-base hit in 61 at-bats and batted a mere .131.

"I think I'm definitely a better hitter than I've shown,'' he said. "There's a lot that I'm continuing to work on, but there's a lot that I haven't fully shown yet.''

Still, it's not the bat that needs to prove anything.

"His plus is his (offensive) upside,'' said Cora.

This spring, it's more about Swihart can do behind the plate, not beside it.