COMMENTARY
About 20 minutes before the start of Boston’s step-forward sweep of Tampa Bay this weekend, the Red Sox announced they’d traded Blake Swihart to Arizona. As we discussed here, it was a conclusion three years in the making, dating to when the team pulled the plug on Swihart behind the plate a week into the 2016 season and recalled Christian Vazquez, whose lost year to Tommy John surgery helped create Swihart’s one true run with the Red Sox.
In the run-up to Friday, there was the anger and disappointment that comes when a first-round pick is perceived to have been developed poorly, then given up on.