Orioles catcher Welington Castillo will decline a one-year, $7MM player option and re-enter the free-agent market in search of a larger multi-year contract, tweets FanRag’s Jon Heyman. The decision has seemed likely for quite some time now given the strength of Castillo’s 2017 season in Baltimore. He’ll hit the open market as one of the top catchers available, along with Alex Avila and Jonathan Lucroy.
Castillo, 31 next April, had a career year at the plate in what looks like it will be his only season in Baltimore. Through 365 plate appearances, the slugger batted .282/.323/.490 with a career-best 20 homers. He was limited to 96 games in large part due to a testicular injury that was suffered when a ball was fouled into his groin. Castillo was sidelined for about three weeks and got off to a slow start upon returning before he closed out the year with a blistering finish. (He also missed 10 days early in the season with a minor bout of shoulder tendinitis.)
Defense has long been a knock on Castillo, but his 2017 work behind the plate showed legitimate signs of improvement as well. Castillo caught a whopping 49 percent of runners that attempted to steal against the Orioles’ pitching staff, and his oft-panned pitch-framing skills finished at a roughly league-average level, per Baseball Prospectus.
While it’s certainly possible that the O’s could kick the tires on a reunion with Castillo, the team has top prospect Chance Sisco all but ready to take over a prominent big league role in 2018. He’ll presumably pair with backup Caleb Joseph to form the Orioles’ primary catching duo in 2018 and beyond, though 26-year-old Austin Wynns is also an option to see some time behind the dish of Sisco proves to be in need of additional development.
Moving on from Castillo and going with an affordable combination of Sisco, Joseph and/or Wynns will allow the Orioles to dedicate more of their offseason resources to the starting rotation, which is clearly the organization’s top overall need.
You refer to him as “Cozart” in the last half of the paragraph.
D’oh. Thanks for that. Trying to get posts about Cozart, Welly and Forsythe up in a span of 2 minutes. Brain wires got crossed up. Appreciate it.
He had a nice season, time to cash in for multiple years.
its a post about castillo but then you put in cozarts name
MLBTR has him going to the A’s, which makes sense. I don’t think the A’s will go ‘all in’ on a top 10 FA until they’ve 100% locked down their stadium deal but they have very few salary commitments and need a FT backstop.
I’d prefer Lucroy, but Castillo would also work and represents a major upgrade until Sean Murphy is ready in ~2020.
How good is Castillo defensively? Game calling specifically is something we’re going to need with so many young starting pitchers next season.
Good question. I don’t know what his rep is for calling games. Maybe an O’s fan or two can chime in regarding his defense. It seems as if his stats are better than his reputation behind the dish, for whatever that’s worth. i think that between Castillo, Lucroy or Ianetta one of them will be wearing Green & Gold in 2018
Probably, unless the A’s decide to eat a year and throw Beau Taylor out there in a platoon with Josh Phegley or Dustin Garneau.
Framing isn’t as important as I probably made it, what with so many ground ball pitchers on our staff.
Let’s hope not…
I can see the A’s with their young staff, getting both Castillo and Iannetta, two veteran catchers to platoon and bring them on. Also Maxwell is probably going to get released and they Castillo and Iannetta are a fine bridge to Sean Murphy, their C of the future.
That’s a lot of money to commit to catchers. Maxwell really messed up our rebuilding plans, and with very little catching depth in the upper minors we don’t really have much of a choice.
Meh, Iannetta isn’t going to get more than a 1-yr deal. Castillo probably will get 2/24 or something.
I doubt Maxwell is going to be released over the gun incident, although he should. But Chapman is still pitching, and what he did was much worse than what Maxwell is alleged to have done.
O’s fan here. I watched Castillo catch Bundy in Anaheim vs the Angels in August. Bundy had 10 strikouts. Castillo was much better defensively than I thought he would be. Has a great arm, a great bat, and a lot of positive energy.
He calls a good game…but i understand the bench coach John Russell helps a lot with that during the game. To me, Castillo was impressive. His new team will be very happy with him.
He throws out runners very well, that much I know.
Now here’s an interesting topic to talk about. The Orioles signed Castillo last year for about the same amount of money in 2017 that he would have gotten in arbitration had the Diamondbacks non-tendered him AND gave him a player option. Wouldn’t it have made more sense for both sides if the Orioles had traded the Diamondbacks like a lottery ticket type prospect for Castillo? That way, the Diamondbacks get SOMETHING for Castillo and the Orioles don’t have to give him a player option, which as we know, player options are pure downside to a team.
Him and Holland are the only ones, right?
Not too many player opt outs.