Rusney Castillo Deserves to Be Traded
Boston Red Sox fans remember Rusney Castillo. He was supposed to be the next Yoenis Cespedes. Alas, he wasn’t.
A physically impressive specimen, the Red Sox rewarded Castillo’s Cuban League performances with a seven-year, $72.5 million contract in 2014. He debuted later that year, and saw significant time at the big league level in 2015. He wasn’t awful, but he was decidedly underwhelming. Castillo was eventually optioned to the minors, and by 2016, found himself off of the 40-man roster. It was a precipitous fall for such a hyped import.
Because of baseball’s odd luxury tax rules in which only the salary of players on the 40-man roster count towards the threshold, Castillo has remained in AAA since 2016.
The victim of a system that hurts players, Rusney Castillo has done more than collect checks in the minor leagues. He won the International League batting title last year, and is rocking essentially the same OPS this year. By all accounts, he’s earned the opportunity to try his hand at the Big League level again, but because the Red Sox are tiptoeing the luxury tax threshold, the opportunity will not occur in Boston. The Red Sox would have to pay something like $5M just to see Rusney face Major League pitching.
Before we go on, can we all take a second to digest how horrible and deeply unfair this is? Castillo won’t get an opportunity in the Majors with the team he signed with no matter how well he plays or what he does in the minors, because that team is incentivized to keep him off the 40 man roster to avoid his salary counting against the luxury tax. That’s a travesty. Castillo is getting screwed because he signed a big contract. It’s just wrong.
However, this screwed up situation could create an opportunity for a creative team to take advantage of baseball economics, and roll the dice on an outfielder. Castillo is owed $11M this year and has a player option for next year. Presumably, he’ll opt-in to that option – $14M, is, after all, a big chunk of change. However, he may want the opportunity to sign elsewhere this offseason. How much would you value the opportunity to get out of baseball Purgatory?
There’s another wrinkle here. Castillo has only accrued 143 days of service time. Baseball-Reference lists him as a potential free agent in 2025. Whoever acquires him would basically get Castillo for $14M for 2020, plus the league minimum for 2021 and 2022. It would be a fascinating arbitration case after that, but $14M/3 years would be fine for a fourth outfielder, especially one capable of playing centerfield. It’s certainly possible that Castillo has finally figured it out in America – since June 1, he’s hitting .318 with 8 homers – and he could be a steal if given the opportunity to prove himself.
What would a deal for Castillo look like? Thus far, I have presumed that Castillo is an asset that teams would really like. That’s probably a fool’s assumption, as he’s a 30+ year old AAA centerfielder with a $14M salary and a sub-.800 OPS. Emilio Bonifacio is all of those things without the large salary. So is Rajai Davis. So if the Red Sox were to deal Castillo, they would probably have to attach a prospect of some kind.
In 2015, the Braves effectively bought Touki Toussaint, then ranked around the 120th best prospect in baseball, from the Arizona Diamondbacks for the cost of paying Bronson Arroyo $10M. The Red Sox, of a different financial stature than the Diamondbacks, would likely have a different calculus in how they value their prospects vis-a-vis their money. Thus far, the Sox have seemingly been perfectly content paying their AAA centerfielder $10M+ annually as long as it doesn’t count towards the luxury tax threshold. But now that the guaranteed deal is wrapping up, another team may be interested in paying some of that.
With the Touki and Arroyo deal, the Braves knew they were getting an injured Arroyo. He was just salary. Touki was the prize. With a potential Rusney deal, Rusney may hold value. Some team may look at him like casino online Latvia, a chance to gamble. We simply haven’t seen him at the big league level since 2016.
Meanwhile, the Red Sox would probably be unwilling to accept a bad contract in return. They don’t want a deal that pushes them over the luxury tax threshold, even if they say differently in the press. So the acquiring team would likely have to accept a borderline prospect rather than a Touki-type.
That’s a reasonable deal though, right? Two players who could make an impact at the big league level for $14M (Castillo’s 2020 salary)?
Why wouldn’t the Giants take a chance on Castillo? Why wouldn’t the Orioles? Why wouldn’t the Marlins? Oh, right…
The Red Sox obviously think of Castillo’s $14M in 2020 as a lost cause, but other teams may see it as an opportunity to acquire talent. And for the player? A AAA batting title, and a good attitude through a multi-year purgatory of minor league bus rides surely show that Rusney Castillo deserves a fresh start and a new opportunity.
-Sean Morash
