FORT MYERS, Fla. — For hitters, one of the nice things about getting off to a hot start is they don’t have a puny number following a decimal point staring at them from scoreboards, stat sheets, thoughts. The longer the rut lasts, the bigger the small number grows in their minds.

Red Sox catcher Christian Vazquez was coming off a career year at the plate in 2017 when he hit .290, but didn’t carry the hot bat into 2018 and hit a career-low .207.

Red Sox Manager Alex Cora traced the problems to the beginning of the season.

“I do feel that that first series in Tampa, he hit a few balls right on the nose right to right field,” Cora said. “Teams make adjustments and you could see the right fielder playing right on the line and the second baseman playing in the hole and he didn’t get rewarded, and then he started chasing hits. And when you do that, it doesn’t work. He abandoned his approach. Instead of hitting line drives the other way, he started hitting flares the other way.”

Vazquez finally started boosting his batting average, hitting .298 in June, but was injured one week into July and didn’t return until September. He hit .233 in the postseason. His defense picked up as well, Cora said.

“He did an outstanding job blocking balls,” Cora said. “A lot of people were talking about wild pitches and passed balls in the postseason. That was the case with our guys. I think it was like 35 out of 35 blocking pitches, so that was good. He actually did an outstanding job in the postseason.”

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The manager said he likes what he sees from Vazquez during spring workouts at the plate and in the conditioning department.

“He’s hitting the ball in the air a lot,” Cora said of Vazquez. “He’s driving the ball, so he’s in a good place right now.”

Vazquez’s best path to playing time involves carrying an improved bat into the season. Even then, Sandy Leon will be tough to keep out of the lineup, depending on the identity of the starting pitchers. Leon usually catches for Chris Sale, and David Price compiled much better statistics during the regular season with Leon catching him.

Rick Porcello is on record as saying Leon is the best catcher he ever has worked with.

“A lot of people get caught up in that, and obviously Sandy did an outstanding job when Christian got hurt, but then you look in the playoffs when Christian caught most of the innings in the World Series,” Cora said. “There was a big deal about him catching Porcello against the Yankees.”

Porcello limited the Yankees to one run in five innings of a 4-3 victory in Game 4 of the Division Series.

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“Sandy has caught a lot the last two years and it seems like he’s caught the same guys a lot,” Cora said. “It gets to a point sometimes you have to make decisions based on that. With the offense that we have it’s not that we’d like them to hit .200 or not get on base, but we feel like we’re still going to score runs.”

The Red Sox carried three catchers (Blake Swihart) last season, but plan to keep just two this season, sending one elsewhere in a trade, if possible.

The three catchers combined to hit .208 last season, with Leon checking in at .177.

Cora wasn’t interested in handicapping the race for playing time at catcher this early in the spring.

“Everybody’s going to play and we’ll make a decision, so I don’t get caught up in who has a leg up or whatever,” Cora said. “They’re three good catchers and we trust the three of them.”


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