Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Castillo to Mets?

Gotta like the deal for the strength it adds to defense up the middle, and the DP combo with Reyes. Offensively, Castillo looks like less of an asset. His .304 average so far this season (.294 career) is decent, though not as good as Ruben Gotay's. Run production is subpar, with only 18 RBIs for the season, compared to 19 for Gotay, who has batted 123 times compared to Castillo's 349. Castillo seldom walks (29 times this season), but doesn't strike out much, either (28). One reassuring stat is that he doesn't ground into a lot of double plays (only three this year). Evidently, he hits lots of well-placed grounders and bloops. He's no threat to clear the fences, with 23 dingers over a career now in its twelfth season, and none so far this year (Gotay has 4, again with only 123 ABs). All in all, though, this adds up to Castillo's being reasonably well suited to the role of number two hitter; he has a fair chance of advancing a runner and getting on base himself.

This deal may prove a test of Billy Beane's maxim that good defense is seldom worth what you pay.

6 comments:

  1. you don't really look for a second baseman to be a masher anyway.

    i'd have some concerns about atlanta picking up texiera, though. if i were you.

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  2. Castillo is a nice pick-up and they got him for nothing, although one of the "prospects" is my friend's nephew.

    Texeira was the best player available. It'll be a race.

    Are you going to NY Grand Opera in Central Park tomorrow night?

    Fully-staged production of Tosca at the Naumber Bandshell. They are a great company.

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  3. Joe - sorry, won't be able to make opera in the Park tonight because of other plans made long ago. We will be going (on a date yet to be determined) to the Public Theater's production, at the Delacorte Theater in the Park, of A Midsummer Night's Dream, in which our friend Jay Sanders plays Bottom.

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  4. Claude: Is that the actor Jay O. Sanders (Day After Tomorrow)?

    Also: Yankees rule all!

    [grin]

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  5. I suppose if I'd bothered to open your link, you would've been saved from my rather idiotic question. Anyways, I wasn't aware that Jay could act. Has he just been misrepresented in the roles he's been saddled with? Sorry.

    Yankees rule all for all time!

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  6. Swit,

    Since Jay is a friend (I've gotten to know him because his son and my daughter have been friends since first grade - they're now going into eighth), I guess I can't be called unbiased on this question, but I don't think the two movies I've seen him in - The Day After Tomorrow and Glory (in which he has a small part as a Union general) do justice to his ability as an actor. I have seen him on stage twice, in two very different roles, and in both of which I think he excelled. The first was a reading of a stage treatment for Jack London's The Sea Wolf, in which Jay read the part of Wolf Larsen; the second (which I saw twice) was the Public Theater's production of David Hare's Stuff Happens, in which he played George W. Bush.

    Why aren't you a Braves fan? As a Mets fan, I naturally hate the Braves, but I don't think being a fan of theirs is an indication of a fundamental character defect, unlike Yankee fandom. (Yes, I know a few admirable people who are nevertheless Yankee fans, but they all seem to have extenuating reasons. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and consider you one of them.)

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