BOSTON — Chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom liked what he saw from catchers Reese McGuire and Connor Wong during the final month as they split time.
But he also plans to look at available catchers outside the organization this offseason as he builds his 2023 roster.
“This is one of the areas I fully expect that we’re going to explore additions,” Bloom said during the Red Sox’s season-ending press conference at Fenway Park on Thursday. “It’s nice to know that we have two guys that are familiar with how we do things, that showed a lot of good things. But we owe it to ourselves and everybody who cares about this team to look to get better and catcher is certainly not going to be an exception to that.”
The Red Sox traded Christian Vázquez to the Astros and acquired McGuire from the White Sox at the trade deadline.
The 27-year-old McGuire went 33-for-98 (.337 batting average) with a .377 on-base percentage, .500 slugging percentage, .877 OPS, three homers, five doubles, one triple, 13 runs and 12 RBIs in 36 games for Boston. The former first-round pick (14th overall in 2013) threw out 5-of-12 attempted base stealers (42%).
The 26-year-old Wong, who Boston acquired in the Mookie Betts trade in February 2020, went 9-for-48 (.188) with three doubles in 27 games. He threw out 3-of-21 attempted base stealers (14%).
Boston designated Kevin Plawecki for assignment in mid-September to give McGuire and Wong more reps to evaluate them for 2023.
“I think both of these guys showed well, which is good for them, good for us,” Bloom said. “We didn’t want to be in the position we were in at the end but we tried to make the most of that position in terms of giving them opportunity both for their growth and benefit and also for ours. So I think they definitely raised the floor of what we had.”
Boston also has catching prospect Ronaldo Hernández on its 40-man roster. He’s expected to receive a rare fourth minor league option next season.
Willson Contreras, Vázquez, Omar Narváez and Mike Zunino are among the pending free agent catchers.
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