McAdam: Red Sox DFA Blake Swihart, recall Sandy Leon in early-season catching switch

In a somewhat shocking move, the Red Sox designated catcher Blake Swihart for assignment Tuesday and recalled Sandy Leon from Triple-A Pawtucket.

The move comes as the team has sputtered to a 6-11 start, largely because of poor starting pitching. The Red Sox staff ERA through the first three weeks of the season sits at 5.93, 13th in the American League, while the team's starters have combined for a 7.18 ERA, dead last in the AL.

Through 17 games, the Red Sox have just three quality starts and two wins from their starting pitchers.

Only weeks earlier, the Sox elected to go with a catching tandem of Christian Vazquez and Swihart, while placing Leon on waivers. When Leon went unclaimed -- largely due to his $2.475 million salary after an abysmal offensive year in 2018 -- he was assigned to Pawtucket.

Leon, who put together a slash line of .177/.232/.279 last year, was hitting just .120 at Pawtucket for the first 10 days of the minor league season. But in the past, he's been something of a security blanket for both Chris Sale and Rick Porcello, each of whom has struggled this season.

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The swiftness of this move - and what led up to it -- has the distinct smell of panic for a team which has been unable to get out of its own way early in the 2019 season.

While it's possible Leon could improve the performances of Sale, Porcello and Nathan Eovaldi, it's hard to lay all the blame at Swihart's feet.

Swihart started a little more than a third (six of 17) of the team's games, so the team's poor pitching can hardly be his responsibility solely. Too often, the team's starting pitchers executed poorly, leaving pitches over the middle of the plate and suffering predictable consequences.

The organization insisted throughout spring training that it had full confidence in Swihart as a major league catcher, but today's move belies that faith.

Worse, the team has effectively now lost Swihart for next to nothing. It could, conceivably, work out a deal over the next few days and get a low-level prospect in return for him. But a more likely scenario will be for Swihart to be claimed on waivers since interested teams know the Sox are desperate and can instead wait to take a chance on getting him for the price of only a waiver claim.

The Sox could have moved him over the winter and gotten something of value in return for him. But by waiting until the final days of spring training to make a decision on which catching tandem to retain, they missed out on that opportunity.

And now, a team with a bloated payroll, pushing up against the third luxury tax threshold, will be giving away an inexpensive (Swihart was making just $910,000) and controllable asset for little, if anything, in return, while running the risk that the former first-round pick makes good on his potential elsewhere.

This marks the second time in the last few years the team has walked away from Swihart as a catcher. In 2016, he began the year as part of a tandem, but in April, unhappy with his receiving, the team stripped him of that role.

Leon, meanwhile, will be placed in the unenviable position of serving as staff savior, and while his presence will likely be of some comfort to Sale and Porcello in particular, it's unfair to expect that the veteran catcher can help an underperforming staff execute an early-season turnaround.

Moreover, the Sox can't expect to get much in the way of offensive contributions from him. Throughout spring training and early in the year at Pawtucket, he looked no more confident at the plate than he did last year, when he delivered just nine hits in the final two months -- covering 35 games -- of the season.

And given Jackie Bradley Jr's all-too-familiar early-season struggles at the plate, the Red Sox again find themselves with a black hole in the bottom of the third lineup -- the very same issue they experienced in the first half of last season.