During this past week’s run of press comments from members of the Red Sox organization at Fenway South (including Sam Kennedy, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about), catcher Carlos Narváez got some glowing reviews.
Manager Alex Cora noted that Narv/Narvi/The Narv did a great job exceeding expectations in 2025, per Gabrielle Starr the Boston Herald, while being “banged up” the entire time. Red Sox Hall of Famer and current team staff member Jason Varitek commended him for his preparation and mindset in the clubhouse. Cora himself ordained him as the team’s starting backstop, a call that was all but official leading up to Spring Training.
These are all good things for a guy who was basically an afterthought when he was traded from the Yankees to Boston in December 2024. After all, he was acquired by the Sox on the same day that ace Garrett Crochet was. A little over a year later and Narváez is starting his 2026 season in the good graces of those around JetBlue Park.
That Herald article did have one other point that I feel warrants further discussion, though: the idea of a contract extension for the 27-year-old Narváez.
“The only thing I may say is I would love to be a Red Sox forever. I would like to retire with this team. We haven’t talked about it, hopefully that will come in the future.
That’s something that I’m not paying attention to right now. Of course, I would love it, but we’ve got different goals this year, and I think this year is going to be very important for us, for everybody.
We got our goal set. Like, individual things, personal things that will come in the future, and of course I’m more than happy and welcome if that happens, but as of now, our goal is to get a World Series ring this year.”
Perhaps that extension topic won’t rear its head for a few more seasons. Carlos has only played in 124 major league games (118 of which came in 2025), he’s coming off a cleanup knee surgery this winter (one that he reportedly, according to MassLive put off until the conclusion of the previous season), and he’s still under pre-arbitration control.
But maybe now’s the time to at least start thinking about it, even if it’s just a fun thought exercise. Hell, I’ve got nothing better to do on this holiday.
From a 30,000 foot view, Narváez was rated as the 12th-most valuable catcher in 2025 according to fWAR (2.7) out of backstops who had at least 400 plate appearances. Much of that value at the position league-wide was driven by offensive output, though, and Narv’s bang-on average OPS+ of 100 was never going to set himself apart in that department. We’ve seen some encouraging signs of power at times from Carlos from the right-hand side of the dish (something we very well might need to improve heading into the new year), but there can be some big time holes in his swing as demonstrated by his 27.7% whiff rate and 24.9% strikeout rate (both below the 30th percentile mark last season, according to Savant).
However, his Def rating on FanGraphs (which is just the combined total of his fielding runs above average and positional adjustment) of 14.2 put him as the sixth-most valuable defensive catcher in the sport. Savant’s metrics confirm those defensive skills, as his fielding run value of 12 was good for the 96th percentile across MLB in 2025. Blocks, arm talent to catch runners stealing, framing (which may not be as valuable of a skill going forward due to the introduction of the ABS challenge system, but something that will still be useful in some fashion nevertheless), pop time, you name it: Narv was in elite company.
WAR may not be able to always tell the full story of a player, but it at least gives us a good benchmark. For perspective, catchers that Narváez was within one fWAR of last season—one way or the other—include Milwaukee’s William Contreras (3.6), the Giants’ defensive wiz Patrick Bailey (3.4), rookie of the year Drake Baldwin of Atlanta (3.2), Austin Wells of the Yankees (3.0), the Cubs’ Carson Kelly (2.6), Philly’s J.T. Realmuto (2.1), and Ryan Jeffers of Minnesota (2.1).
With that in mind, we can pop over to Spotrac’s catcher contract breakdown. Three of those names I just mentioned—Contreras, Jeffers, Kelly—have average annual values between $9.4 million and $5.75 million. A fairly comparable player within Boston’s division is Alejandro Kirk of Toronto, who inked a five-year extension with the Blue Jays last year worth $58 million ($11.8 million AAV) through 2030. Kirk is excellent defender behind the plate with a career OPS just south of .750 and a career OPS+ of 108. Maybe he doesn’t get there on offense the same way Carlos would—Kirk’s 15 home runs last year was a career high after only eclipsing double-digit dongs one other time beforehand, while Narváez had 15 homers in his first full MLB season—but the similarities are there.
- Narváez is the equivalent of “We have Alejandro Kirk at home,”
- He’s still in his 20’s with pre-arbitration years still in play, and
- Catchers of similar caliber are making somewhere around the mid-to-high seven-figure range each season…
…what sort of deal might make sense for him?
Something around the lines of five years, $45 million feels about fair to me in a vacuum right now. Red Sox Payroll on Twitter—an excellent resource, by the way—said a deal starting in 2027 worth $50 million over six years with a club option, based on pre-arb extensions for catchers elsewhere, could be worth consideration. I think that’s a fair estimation too; tack on an extra year to lower the AAV, that’s sensible.
However, would either of those bids even make sense to offer at this point in time? The Red Sox front office certainly has to be considering the knee issue last season, right? Would an AAV of $8-9 million be worth eating into the arbitration years of a catcher? Do you let Narv play out 2026 and then come back to the table to negotiate a long-term deal? He’ll be closer to 30 years of age than 25 by the conclusion of this season; do you just let the arbitration years play out if he doesn’t take a step forward? If he does take a step forward on offense, are you gonna have to shell out even more money—Alejandro Kirk money, or even more given the nature of how the AAV line is always going to climb for talent—at this point next year if you want to keep him in the picture going forward?
Competitive balance taxes should never deter a franchise of this stature from making the moves they’ve got to make to stay competitive, and the contracts of Masataka Yoshida and Trevor Story will (probably) be coming off of the books over the next few years, but that’s another factor to consider when having this discussion.
At the end of the day, I guess I don’t expect an extension to be provided to Narváez in the near future. For clarity, let’s just call it the 2026 season; I don’t expect a long-term deal prior to the end of the World Series this upcoming fall. But Mr. Breslow does move in silence, so who am I to say for sure?
For now, I hope Narv is able to keep up that defensive presence while improving on offense. If he can do that, I’d be more than happy to entertain an eight-figure AAV extension for him—because that would mean he’d be a massive part of Boston’s success in 2026.
