By Jack Healey
If the Red Sox aren’t going to worry about their catchers offensively, then they should take a look at them defensively. The way I see it Sandy Leon is better than Christian Vasquez offensively and is better than Vasquez defensively too. Nine of the ten pitchers currently on the Red sox have lower ERA’s when Leon is catching. Eight of them have given up fewer home-runs. That info is in the column by Julian Benbow of the Boston Globe on Sunday.
Vasquez has the reputation of being this great defensive catcher, but last week he was charged with a passed ball that a little leaguer would’ve caught and he botched a one hop throw to the plate that would’ve nailed the base runner. Speaking of little league, what about grabbing at the ball with his mask a couple of weeks ago? You would expect that in little league. Leon isn’t exactly Babe Ruth at the plate and he hasn’t played much so it’s a small sample size, but at .208 Leon is batting over 25 points higher than Vasquez is. Leon is also a switch hitter. I say Leon should be the first string catcher and not Vasquez. There is one problem and that is that the Sox are paying Vasquez too much money to be a back up.
The Celtics mailed it in on Saturday night. I really didn’t expect them to win, but I didn’t expect them to get blown out by that much either. As bad as the Celtics were blown out , Houston’s loss last night was even worse if that’s possible. I don’t expect the Celtics to win tonight either so I see the series going back to Boston at 2-2.
Win or lose in this series the reason Brad Stevens has received so much credit in this post season is that the Celtics are not at full strength. That’s the bottom line. They are a depleted team. Maybe it will catch up to them in this series or maybe in the next series, but the point remains that Stevens has done a remarkable job with this team!
Speaking of remarkable. The Vegas Golden Knights making it to the Stanley Cup Final is unbelievable! It shows future expansion teams have a chance if they aren’t given the bottom of the barrel in the expansion draft.
I’m glad “Justify” won the Preakness as I now have somebody to root for in the Belmont!
I did watch some of the Royal Wedding and I did enjoy it. I’ll tell you that I really like Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and they can be my king and queen any day.