Entering the season it looked like catcher was one of the Red Sox’s biggest areas of weakness. Connor Wong was the organization’s only established big league backstop, and with top prospect Kyle Teel gone as part of the Garrett Crochet blockbuster there didn’t seem to be much depth available behind him.
As luck would have it, the Red Sox wound up finding a diamond in the rough mere hours after dealing Teel away.
Carlos Narvaez was hardly Boston’s most heralded offseason acquisition, but the rookie catcher has been a revelation in his first full season as a big leaguer. Originally acquired from the New York Yankees in exchange for pitching prospect Elmer Rodriguez-Cruz, Narvaez has been not only a legitimate MLB contributor, but arguably one of the most productive catchers in baseball through the season’s first two months.
Watching Narvaez play, you wouldn’t know that he came into the season with just six games of big league experience.
Entering Saturday, Narvaez was batting .291 with five home runs, 17 RBI and an .837 OPS, and since April 18 he’s batted .349 with all five of his homers and a 1.015 OPS over 24 games. His 1.9 Wins Above Replacement is tied for second in MLB among catchers who have played at least half of their games at the position, behind only Seattle standout Cal Raleigh.
Defensively Narvaez has been brilliant. His plus-eight defensive runs saved is tied with San Francisco’s Patrick Bailey for the best mark of any catcher in baseball and is tied for the fifth-best mark in MLB across all positions. Only Tampa Bay shortstop Taylor Walls (plus-12), Atlanta first baseman Matt Olson (plus-11), Red Sox teammate Ceddanne Rafaela (plus-10) and Chicago second baseman Nico Hoerner (plus-nine) have been better, according to Fangraphs.
“So far so good. He will struggle at one point, hopefully he doesn’t, but this is a league that makes adjustments,” said Red Sox manager Alex Cora. “One thing that he does pretty well, he has a plan and he sticks to it. The other thing he has too is he can hit a line drive to right field whenever he feels like it. He can stay inside and take a single and when you have that you can survive when things are not going great.”
Though Narvaez’s offense has exceeded expectations, his abilities as a catcher haven’t caught any of his teammates by surprise. Narvaez has always been highly regarded for his defense and catching abilities dating back to his time in the Yankees minor league system, where he developed a reputation as the guy everyone enjoyed working with.
“He was the catching guy, he was the guy everyone wanted to throw to,” said right-hander Richard Fitts, who has known Narvaez since 2021 when they were both teammates with the Yankees’ High-A affiliate. “He was receiving really well, he had the mind of a big league catcher and he was picking it up with his bat then and getting going. We all loved throwing to him then and I was really happy when we picked him up this offseason.”
“He does all his homework, he’s confident back there, obviously his receiving numbers are great so half the time you’re like where’s that pitch? And you go back at the video and it’s two balls off but he makes it look so good,” said right-hander Greg Weissert, who also played with Narvaez in the Yankees system. “He’s stealing pitches for you and behind in the count or whatever it is, I think watching all the replays of the game makes you realize how many he’s getting.”
Upon joining the organization Narvaez made a point to get to know his new pitchers right away, reporting to Fort Myers well before he was required to jumpstart that process.
“You have to have that relationship and I think that work started in spring training,” Narvaez said. “Get closer to them, hang out with them, have dinner with them, build those relationships, that’s the most important thing for a catcher.”
Those efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. Several pitchers who hadn’t previously worked with Narvaez have complimented him throughout the season, and he’s also drawn high praise from Jason Varitek, the club’s game planning coordinator and one of the best catchers in club history.
“Carlos is what we envisioned,” Varitek told the Herald on April 19. “An elite defender, an elite receiver.”
“In a nutshell, Carlos is a baseball player,” he added, “and it’s a compliment (to him) and a compliment for this industry and Red Sox Nation. He’s a baseball player and he exudes baseball.”
Red Sox legend praises rookie catcher Carlos Narváez: ‘He exudes baseball’
For everything Narvaez has accomplished so far in his young career, the fact that he’s made the transition as a rookie to the majors so seamlessly shouldn’t be overlooked. Going from sparsely filled minor league facilities to Fenway Park can be overwhelming for some, but Narvaez — who comes from an accomplished baseball family — said he’s been uniquely well prepared for the bright lights.
“I think the Venezuelan Winter League helped me a lot,” Narvaez said, noting that his team played in the league’s championship series the last two seasons. “When you play those games it’s like 20,000 people. I’ve been playing in that environment for the last two years so I think that’s huge for me.”
Though Cora has insisted the catcher spot remains a two-person tandem, the balance of playing time has clearly shifted from Wong towards Narvaez. Entering Saturday’s doubleheader the rookie had started 11 of the club’s prior 12 games, and overall the Red Sox are 21-14 in games that Narvaez has started.
Narvaez was penciled into the cleanup spot for the first time in his career in the first game of Saturday’s doubleheader as well.
Like fellow rookie Kristian Campbell — and most others — Narvaez will eventually encounter some adversity, but for now he’s been everything the Red Sox could have asked for and more.
“It’s fun to see because I’ve seen him be one of the best catchers and one of the guys everyone wants to throw to, and him being able to pick it up with his bat a little bit and show what he’s made of, it’s really fun,” Fitts said. “It’s like he’s beyond his years.”
O’s paying for not seizing moment
This should have been the Baltimore Orioles’ year.
After a painful period of tanking and rebuilding, the Orioles assembled an exceptional collection of young talent and looked poised to contend for years to come. The group finally broke out in 2023 and has made the playoffs in back-to-back seasons, and last year the club was purchased by billionaire David Rubenstein, who seemingly had the resources to help elevate what had long been one of the most cash-strapped franchises in the sport to a financial heavyweight.
Orioles fans went into the offseason with every reason to expect some big swings. Instead the club sat on its hands, and now it’s reaping what it sowed.
The Orioles have been perhaps the most disappointing team in the league. Entering Saturday the Orioles were last in the AL East and 11 games back of the first-place Yankees, and their 16 wins were tied with the lowly White Sox for the fewest in the American League. Baltimore’s pitching staff has been a disaster, and even the club’s talented young core of position players has underperformed.
Baltimore has already fired Brandon Hyde, who won AL Manager of the Year just two years ago, and the club’s playoff odds entering Saturday sat at a dismal 1.6%.
How could this have happened?
Almost everything that could have gone wrong for the Orioles so far has, but Baltimore also had a golden opportunity to supercharge its already immensely talented roster and punted. Most glaring was the club’s failure to adequately address its starting rotation. The Orioles not only lost ace Corbin Burnes to the Diamondbacks in free agency, but then replaced him with 41-year-old Charlie Morton, who has a 7.68 ERA and is no longer in the rotation.
The other biggest addition to the club’s pitching staff was 35-year-old Japanese veteran Tomoyuki Sogano, who has actually been pretty good (3.07 ERA in 58.2 innings) but who wasn’t regarded as the kind of frontline arm Baltimore should have been targeting.
With so much young talent to dangle in trade talks and loads of money to spend, the Orioles should have had an offseason much like Boston’s. Garrett Crochet easily could have been theirs, and so could any other number of premier players.
Instead the Orioles missed their moment, and now their seemingly bright future suddenly looks a lot murkier.
Shaw returns
Top Chicago Cubs prospect Matt Shaw, a former Worcester Academy standout, endured a rocky start to his big league career. The Brimfield native was sent back to Triple-A last month after batting .172 over his first 18 games, but earlier this week Shaw was called back up and is already looking much better. The 23-year-old has gone 5 for 16 (.313) with three doubles and two stolen bases in his first four games back in the majors. … Former Central Catholic standout Cam Devanney is making a strong case for a big league call-up. The 28-year-old from Amherst, N.H., was batting .313 with 11 home runs and a 1.040 OPS through his first 33 games with Kansas City’s Triple-A affiliate. … Rowley’s Thomas White continues to rise through the rankings and is now up to No. 26 on Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospects list. The left-hander from Phillips Andover has posted a 3.24 ERA with 37 strikeouts over 25 innings through his first six starts with the Marlins’ High-A affiliate, though he hasn’t pitched since May 9 due to left index finger soreness, according to Isaac Azout of Fish on First.
