Ryan Lavarnway Joins ‘From Phenom To The Farm’: Episode 91

Image credit: JUPITER, FLORIDA - MARCH 09: Ryan Lavarnway #36 of the Miami Marlins throws against the New York Mets during a Grapefruit League spring training game at Roger Dean Stadium on March 09, 2020 in Jupiter, Florida. (Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

If you’d told Ryan Lavarnway as a child that he’d have made it to MLB, he probably wouldn’t
have been surprised.

“When I was five years old, I decided I was going to make the big leagues—and that was the end
of that conversation,” said Lavarnway.

By age 18, however, Lavarnway felt pretty far away from The Show. Through his junior year, he
hadn’t even yet cracked the starting lineup on the varsity team at El Camino Real High School (CA).

“My senior year, I went in with no offers, and no one knew who I was,” said Lavarnway.

The confidence he’d had about making it to the big leagues as a child was still in there, he just
needed a little help in finding it. During a preseason meeting, Lavarnway’s head baseball coach
threw out a question to his team: who was going to hit cleanup for them that year? Lavarnway
spoke up, saying, “Why not me?”

“I thought he was going to list the reasons it wasn’t me…but instead this coach, he just looked at me and said, ‘Why not you, Ryan?’ and that allowed me to detach from this former identity that I had of the kid that wasn’t good enough, of the kid that was too small and I really went off and started to reach my potential,” said Lavarnway.

He went off as a senior, earning All-Conference honors and catching the attention of Division 1
colleges, specifically ones that needed talent with good grades. Lavarnway took his big league
dreams to the Ivy League, choosing to attend Yale—a school not known for churning out big
league bats.

“Realistically, Yale had produced more U.S. Presidents than big league hitters at that point,”
said Lavarnway.

As a sophomore, Lavarnway converted from outfield to catcher. He wasn’t a natural fit behind
the dish, but it didn’t much matter, as he led Division 1 in batting at a .467 clip. He then followed
that up as a junior by leading the Ivy League with 13 homers, despite missing his final eight
games with a wrist injury. Boston kept him in the northeast, tabbing Lavarnway with their 6 th
round pick in the 2008 draft, despite worries from scouts that his future behind the plate was
limited.

“I got drafted because I could bang, not because I could catch,” said Lavarnway.

Lavarnway hit from the jump, earning back-to-back co-offensive player of the year awards in the Red Sox system, and improved his receiving and throwing behind the dish to go from fringe catcher to solid backstop. He made good on his five-year-old dream by making his big league debut in 2011.

He shuttled up and down between Triple-A Pawtucket and Boston during his Red Sox tenure,
spending parts of four seasons in the big leagues. But, following his 2014 DFA by Boston, Lavarnway entered a different, post-prospect phase of his career.

From 2014 to 2023, Lavarnway played for 12 different organizations, appearing in the big leagues for eight different teams, sometimes for stints as little as five games before being jettisoned back to Triple-A or the waiver wire.

“I had a daughter during my last season, and then I was traded when she was nine days old,” said
Lavarnway. “My wife and I moved across the country 56 times, paid rent in 33 different cities. I
think I pretty much defined a journeyman.”

With each pit stop came hope that it’d be the final stop, followed by a letdown. On July 20, 2019, Lavarnway bashed two home runs in his Reds’ debut, but found himself designated for
assignment eight days later.

“I always hoped I would find a forever home—that’s why you keep going,” said Lavarnway.

Lavarnway may not have stuck in one place for too long, but for a guy who didn’t start on varsity
until his senior year and went to a school not known for having a big league pipeline, he turned
in a stellar run behind the dish, appearing in the big leagues all but one year from 2011 to 2021.

On the latest episode of ‘From Phenom to the Farm,’ Ryan Lavarnway discusses his journey from the Ivy League to the big leagues. He talks finding motivation from coaching, working to stick behind the plate as a professional and the joys of playing for Team Israel.