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Rusney Castillo

Nationals Sign Rusney Castillo To Minor League Deal

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The Nationals signed former Red Sox outfielder and one-time top prospect Rusney Castillo to a minor league deal earlier this month. The 34-year-old Cuban defector, who spent 2021 playing for NPB’s Tohoku Rakuten Goldean Eagles, will most likely begin the season with Triple-A Rochester but could be given a chance to compete for a bench role.

Castillo signed a seven-year, $72.5MM deal with the Red Sox in 2014 after Major League Baseball declared him a free agent, but he never lived up to the lofty expectations that followed. After posting an impressive .333/.400/.528 line in a ten-game cameo to close the 2014 season, the toolsy outfielder opened 2015 with Triple-A Pawtucket, appearing in 80 major league games after a late-May call-up. Though he played sparkling defense in Fenway Park’s atypical outfield, logging 14 Defensive Runs Saved across all three spots, he struggled to get on base and to hit for power, notching only 5 home runs and 13 walks in 289 trips to the plate on the way to a .253/.288/.359 overall line. For his career, Castillo sports a .262/.301/.370 triple-slash in 337 plate appearances across three seasons.

Following a brief stint in the bigs, the Red Sox placed Castillo on waivers in June 2016, outrighting him to the PawSox after he went unclaimed. The outfielder played out the remainder of his contract there, posting a palatable .293/.335/.425 line across parts of five seasons, but was never given another shot to hack it in Boston.

With the rebuilding Nationals’ outfield in a state of flux, Castillo could get the chance to log some time in the bigs in 2022. Despite struggling to a .225/.276/.282 line in Japan’s top division in 2021, he’ll look to compete for a role in an outfield mix that currently includes Yadiel Hernandez, Lane Thomas, Andrew Stevenson, Donovan Casey, and former top prospect Victor Robles alongside all-world right fielder Juan Soto — though an additional spot could open up should the new CBA include a universal DH and the Washington brass seek to lessen Soto’s injury risk by keeping him off the field. Fans should expect the Nats to bring in another minor league free agent or two to join the competition before Spring Training arrives, whenever that may be.

NPB’s Rakuten Golden Eagles Sign Rusney Castillo

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JANUARY 10: Castillo will be guaranteed $600K on the deal, reports Jon Heyman of MLB Network (Twitter link). The pact includes another $1MM in potential incentives.

JANUARY 9: Former Red Sox outfielder Rusney Castillo has signed with the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles of Nippon Professional Baseball.  The Eagles officially announced the move today, after reports out of Mexico last month suggested Castillo was preparing to join the Japanese team.

Castillo last played in the majors in 2016, appearing in nine games for Boston that left him with a .262/.301/.379 slash line over 337 career plate appearances from 2014-16.  The big majority (289 PA) of that playing time came in 2015, when Castillo seemed ticketed for regular duty in Boston’s outfield after being called up from the minors in May, but Castillo stumbled to just a .647 OPS that season.

Though he signed a seven-year, $72.5MM deal as an international free agent in August 2014, Castillo was already on the outs with the Red Sox, as the team put him on waivers and outrighted him to Triple-A in June.  This left Castillo stuck in a contractual loophole, as his salary was no longer counted against Boston’s luxury tax bill since he was outrighted.  However, the new collective bargaining agreement from the 2016-17 changed these terms, so Castillo couldn’t be returned to the Red Sox 40-man roster without the entirety of his remaining contract being again counted for luxury tax purposes.

As a result, Castillo was more or less trapped at Triple-A Pawtucket to play out the remainder of his deal.  He ended up posting a respectable .295/.335/.425 slash line with 42 homers over his 1973 career PA with the PawSox, and he will now head to Japan in an attempt to spark what has been a thoroughly unusual career.

Barring any changes to international signing rules in the upcoming CBA talks, Castillo’s $72.5MM deal will stand for the foreseeable future as the largest deal ever given to a Cuban free agent.  It also stands out as one of the more expensive misfires in Red Sox history, though it shouldn’t be forgotten that Castillo had enough potential coming out of Cuba that almost every team in baseball had some level of interest in him back in 2014.  Should Castillo play well for the Eagles, it will be interesting to see if he remains in Japan next winter or perhaps explores a return to Major League Baseball.

AL Notes: Red Sox, Rusney, Sale, Indians, Pujols

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Remember Rusney Castillo? Signed to a seven-year, $72.5MM contract in August 2014, the Cuban outfielder had a rough season in the majors with the Red Sox the next year and has barely appeared in the majors since. The Red Sox have minimized their luxury-tax bill by keeping Castillo in the minors, and he’s likely to stay with Triple-A Pawtucket this season, but he’ll be a free agent thereafter. The 32-year-old discussed his status with Jason Mastrodonato of the Boston Herald, saying: “My goal remains the same: I want to make it to the big leagues. And if given the opportunity, give 100% to Boston. That’s the goal, to get up there.”  As Mastrodonato notes, there’s at least an outside chance Castillo will return to Boston late in the season if the team’s well under the tax threshold by then (he’s due a $14.3MM salary, so it could be a tall order to fit him in). Castillo will first have to impress in Pawtucket for that to happen, though. He wasn’t great at the highest level of the minors in 2019, when he hit .278/.321/.448 with 17 home runs in 493 plate appearances.

  • Sticking with the Red Sox, ace Chris Sale has been on the mend from 2019 elbow problems and a recent bout of pneumonia, but he’s recovering well. Sale’s “progressing quickly and could begin to face live hitters soon,” Chris Cotillo of MassLive.com writes. However, it’s not clear whether Sale will be ready for the start of the season. The 30-year-old had a stunning amount of difficulty preventing runs in 2019, when his ERA ballooned from 2.11 the prior season to a career-worst 4.40, but most of his other numbers looked fine. Sale notched a 3.39 FIP/2.93 xFIP with 13.32 K/9 and 2.26 BB/9, suggesting he’s still a front-of-the-rotation talent.
  • Indians closer Brad Hand turned in excellent overall production yet again in 2019, but his effectiveness waned to a worrisome degree from late June through the end of the season. That was thanks in part to injuries that limited him to 57 1/3 innings – his fewest in more than a half-decade. Hand dealt with left arm fatigue that kept him out of action for a large portion of September, and he ended the year with his worst average fastball velocity (92.9 mph, compared to 94.1 in 2018) since 2012. “For whatever reason this tired arm affected my arm slot and pitches,” Hand told Paul Hoynes of cleveland.com, adding, “This year I’ll probably take a few more steps and stay ahead of it.” Manager Terry Francona’s hopeful that Hand will build up his velocity slowly this spring, as opposed to maxing out before the season starts. This is the last guaranteed year on Hand’s contract, but if he continues to hold his own, it’s hard to believe the Indians (or, if they trade him, another team) won’t exercise his $10MM club option for 2021.
  • Angels manager Joe Maddon will sit down with first baseman/designated hitter Albert Pujols nearer to the season to discuss his 2020 role, per Rhett Bollinger of MLB.com. The 40-year-old future Hall of Famer appeared in 131 games last season, but it went down as the third straight campaign in which he logged below-replacement-level numbers. Pujols batted .244/.305/.430 with 23 homers and minus-0.2 fWAR over 545 plate appearances. The majority of his work came at first, though he may have to battle Tommy La Stella for reps at the position this season. And Pujols probably won’t get much time at DH because of the presence of Shohei Ohtani.

Rusney Castillo Won’t Opt Out Of Red Sox Contract

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Caught in one of the more unusual contractual situations in recent baseball history, Rusney Castillo will remain with the Red Sox in 2020, as he tells Stephanie Apstein of Sports Illustrated that he won’t exercise his opt-out clause for the final year of his contract.  As per the terms of that original seven-year, $72.5MM deal, Castillo has the ability to become a free agent after this season, though in declining the opt-out, he’ll earn the final $13.5MM owed to him in salary.

There was no expectation that Castillo would opt out, given that he hasn’t appeared in a Major League game since June 16, 2016.  “You’re not going to cancel something when you don’t have anything else,” Castillo told Apstein.  It’s hard to argue with the 32-year-old outfielder’s logic, as he would surely have to settle for a minor league contract if he did opt out, even if such a non-guaranteed deal might be the only realistic way he plays in a big league game in 2020.  Still, Castillo has continued to live in a Boston apartment, Apstein writes, out of a belief that he will eventually return to the Red Sox and the majors, and he makes a daily commute to Rhode Island for every home game for the Triple-A Pawtucket Red Sox.

Castillo was outrighted off Boston’s 40-man roster in June 2016, and under the terms of the current collective bargaining agreement (signed in the 2016-17 offseason), putting him back onto the 40-man at any point would have made his contract once again eligible to be counted for luxury tax calculations.  This would have added an extra $10.357MM (the average annual value of Castillo’s deal) onto Boston’s tax bill for the remainder of Castillo’s contract, regardless of whether or not the Sox outrighted him again.  As Apstein notes, even trading Castillo would have some luxury tax repercussions for the Red Sox, not that teams were exactly lining up to acquire Castillo and add his contract to their own books.

The end result is that Castillo has become a fixture at Triple-A Pawtucket, appearing in 389 games for the PawSox since being outrighted.  He has continued to hit decently well (17 homers and a .278/.321/.448 slash line over 493 PA in 2019), but even with spectacular numbers, it’s unlikely Castillo would have been an option for a Red Sox club that was both facing major luxury tax concerns and also didn’t really have a need in the outfield with Mookie Betts, Andrew Benintendi, and Jackie Bradley Jr. forming one of the game’s best trios on the grass.

Given that the new CBA also changed the nature of international signings, Castillo’s $72.5MM deal has remained the largest deal ever given to a player who defected from Cuba.  Castillo arrived onto the MLB scene with a great deal of hype, though ultimately hit only .262/.301/.379 over 337 plate appearances with the Red Sox from 2014-16.

AL East Notes: Osuna, Rutledge, Rusney, Duda, Rays

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Blue Jays closer Roberto Osuna told Sportsnet’s Arden Zwelling and other reporters that he has been dealing with anxiety issues in recent days and is unsure as to when he’ll be back on the mound.  “I don’t really know how to explain it. I just feel anxious. I feel like I’m lost a little bit right now,” Osuna said via an interpreter. “This has nothing to do with me being on the field. I feel great out there. It’s just when I’m out of baseball. When I’m not on the field, I feel just weird and a little bit lost.”  This is the first time the 22-year-old has experienced such feelings, he said, noting “I’m just not myself right now.”  The organization’s head of mental performance, Paddy Steinfort, has been working with Osuna during this period and declined a interview on Osuna’s status.

Here’s some more from around the AL East…

  • The Red Sox placed Josh Rutledge on the seven-day concussion DL today, calling up Tzu-Wei Lin from Double-A to take his spot on the roster.  [Updated Red Sox depth chart at Roster Resource]  Troublingly, Rutledge may have originally suffered this concussion in late May, and it was only detected within the last couple of days.  Boston was already thin at third base with Pablo Sandoval, Marco Hernandez, and Brock Holt also on the DL, and Rutledge’s absence will only increase the likelihood of the Sox pursuing third base help at the deadline.
  • Rusney Castillo is playing well at Triple-A but isn’t a likely candidate for a return to the majors for contractual reasons, the Boston Globe’s Alex Speier writes.  Thanks to changes made in the new collective bargaining agreement, the Red Sox would have the average annual value of Castillo’s contract (around $10.4MM) counted on their luxury tax calculations through the end of the outfielder’s deal in 2020, even if they called up Castillo for even just one day or dealt him to another deal and ate part of the salary obligations.  Between this financial cost and the Sox already being pretty set in the outfield, Castillo may not have a clear path back to the bigs at all for over three years.
  • The Yankees and Mets are hardly frequent trade partners, though Newsday’s David Lennon suggests that Lucas Duda could be the answer to the Yankees’ need at first base.  With Tyler Austin and the still-injured Greg Bird both unproven commodities at first, Lennon argues that Duda is a proven slugger that can help fill that positional need for the Bronx Bombers, and he could be available if the Mets are indeed open to moving veteran players.  After an injury-plagued 2016, Duda has rebounded to hit .253/.365/.565 with 13 homers over 200 PA for the Mets.  As a free agent after the season, Duda also wouldn’t represent a long-term roadblock for Bird or Austin at the position.
  • The Rays are closing in on a winning record at the season’s halfway point, and the Tampa Bay Times’ Marc Topkin lists ten solid decisions made by the club both last winter and during the season that have positioned the Rays for playoff contention.

Cafardo’s Latest: Santana, Howard, Red Sox, Baker, Papelbon

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Here are highlights from the latest from Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe:

  • Ervin Santana of the Twins could soon become a sought-after trade target due to his talent, experience and affordability, one AL scout opines. Santana makes just $13.5MM this season and next, with a $14MM option that can vest under certain conditions. Jose Quintana attracted plenty of attention over the offseason, but Santana should emerge as a big name too if the Twins make him available — which they haven’t yet, according to Cafardo.
  • Slugger Ryan Howard would like to continue playing, but has not yet received any opportunities, Cafardo writes. Howard did, of course, struggle through most of the past several seasons in Philadelphia, and he batted just .196 last year. He did hit 25 home runs in 362 plate appearances and bat .262/.324/.608 in the second half. It appears there aren’t any teams out there swayed by those numbers, however.
  • Thanks to Allen Craig ($11MM) and Rusney Castillo ($10.5MM), the Red Sox’ affiliate in Pawtucket will have the largest Triple-A payroll ever. Neither are on the 40-man roster. Craig played sparingly for Pawtucket last year and hasn’t appeared in the big leagues since 2015; he’s in what should be the last year of the $31MM contract he signed with St. Louis prior to the 2013 campaign. The Red Sox will almost certainly pay him a $1M buyout on his 2018 option once the season is over. Castillo was outrighted last season and is still owed $46MM through 2020.
  • Nationals manager Dusty Baker, whose two-year contract with the club expires after the 2017 season, says he would like to continue managing beyond that. (As of last week, there weren’t any pending extension talks between Baker and the Nats.) On an unrelated note, Baker also shares his take on whether a manager can tell whether his team will be good or bad at this point in the season. “There are too many variables like injuries and different things that happen in players’ lives,” he says. “One thing though, you know when you have a bad team. When you leave spring training you know when you have a bad team and you know when you have a good team. Just hard to predict how good sometimes.”
  • Former star closer Jonathan Papelbon still hasn’t decided whether he’s going to keep playing, Cafardo writes. Papelbon didn’t sign this winter while dealing with a family matter.

East Notes: Mets, Yankees, Red Sox, Nationals

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In unwelcome news for the Mets, left-hander Steven Matz is dealing with elbow irritation and won’t make his scheduled start Monday, Anthony DiComo of MLB.com was among those to report (Twitter links here). Doctors have assured Matz that he doesn’t have ligament damage, per DiComo, and the 25-year-old insists he’s fine and will throw off flat ground Monday. However, general manager Sandy Alderson is concerned about Matz. “It’s worrisome that he continues to be injured,” said Alderson. Matz’s stellar rookie campaign last year ended in August because of a “massive” bone spur in his elbow, which led to October surgery. Before that, he logged a 3.40 ERA, 8.77 K/9, 2.11 BB/9 and 51.1 percent ground-ball rate in 132 1/3 innings. Fortunately for the Mets, they do have enviable rotation depth to fill in for Matz if he should miss regular-season time. “This is why we have (Robert) Gsellman and (Seth) Lugo,” a team source told Kristie Ackert of the New York Daily News (Twitter link).

More from the East Coast:

  • Likely to go without injured shortstop Didi Gregorius for the first month of the season, the Yankees are scouring the trade market for help, according to Brendan Kuty of NJ.com. Ideally, the Yankees would like to acquire an inexpensive player who’s on an expiring contract and has minor league options remaining. New York is reportedly eyeing the Diamondbacks’ Nick Ahmed, who checks two of those boxes (he’s cheap and comes with options), while the club’s uninterested in pricier shortstops in the Reds’ Zack Cozart and the Tigers’ Jose Iglesias. If no trade materializes, the Yankees will choose an Opening Day shortstop from an in-house group consisting of Ronald Torreyes, Pete Kozma, Tyler Wade, Ruben Tejada and Starlin Castro.
  • Considering they’re not on the Red Sox’s 40-man roster, outfielder Rusney Castillo and first baseman/outfielder Allen Craig are already facing uphill battles to achieve relevance in Boston. Moreover, their onerous contracts make even short promotions to the majors unlikely, notes WEEI’s John Tomase (via colleague Rob Bradford).  Castillo, for instance, would cost the Red Sox $56,596 per day to keep on their 25-man roster. Thus, a two-week stint with the Sox would cost $800K and push them over the luxury-tax threshold, which they’ve been careful to stay under. Castillo and Craig have upped their stock this spring, writes Bradford, but the team unsurprisingly sent the pair back to Triple-A on Sunday. They’ll combine to make $21.5MM in the minors this season.
  • Nationals reliever Koda Glover is reportedly likely to win their closer job, which is the role he has wanted since the team selected him in the eighth round of the 2015 draft, details Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post. The first time Glover reported to the Nationals, they had him fill out a questionnaire. One of the questions asked, “Are you a starter or reliever?” Glover wrote, “I’m a closer,” which has “reverberated through the organization ever since,” per Janes.

AL East Notes: Bautista, Rusney, Weeks, Rays

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In the wake of Dellin Betances’ unusually public war of words with Yankees ownership in the wake of Betances’ arbitration hearing, a seemingly far more civil salary disagreement between the Yankees and another star was settled on this day in 1935.  Long before salary arbitration was instituted in MLB, Lou Gehrig agreed to a $30K contract from New York for the upcoming season.  This hefty-for-the-era salary made Gehrig the highest-paid player on the club, though it was still $7K short of Gehrig’s original demand.  The Iron Horse didn’t seem too put off by the smaller paycheck, however, as he went on to hit .329/.466/.583 with 30 homers and a league-best 125 runs scored in a season that was, incredibly, a significant dropoff by Gehrig’s standards.  He “only” posted 8.7 fWAR in 1935, as compared to his 10.7 fWAR season in 1934…so *clearly* the Yankees made a shrewd move in withholding that extra $7K.  Gehrig, undoubtedly embarrassed by his subpar 1935 performance, rebounded for a 9.7 fWAR year in 1936.

Here’s the latest from around the AL East…

  • Jose Bautista was choosing “between five or six places” this offseason before ultimately deciding to return to the Blue Jays, the slugger told Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi and other reporters.  There wasn’t too much buzz surrounding Bautista’s market this winter, as he was ultimately able to land only one guaranteed year on an $18.5MM salary, though another two years and $36.5MM could be available in option years.  While the list of suitors was “not as many as I was expecting,” Bautista said he is happy to be returning to his first choice team.
  • Bautista also expressed some regrets about his public salary comments during last year’s Spring Training camp as well as comments made in private to Jays management.  “I think in retrospect – I believe I can speak for myself and not for them – but I feel like I definitely could have handled things differently and maybe things would have played out different….Not necessarily changing the things that I said, maybe voicing them in a different setting and in a different way that might not get misconstrued and misunderstood the way that they did,” Bautista said.  A lack of familiarity between the two sides contributed to the situation, he added.
  • Rusney Castillo is something of a forgotten man in the Red Sox camp, as ESPN.com’s Scott Lauber writes that the outfielder has no clear path to MLB playing time or even the 40-man roster.  Castillo is still hopeful of making an impact, as he is retooling his swing and is enjoying more personal comfort now that his five-year-old son and other family members have been able to leave Cuba to join him in the United States.  Castillo signed a seven-year, $72.5MM deal with Boston in August 2014 but has just a .679 OPS over 337 big league plate appearances.
  • The Rays essentially made “a coin-flip decision” to draft Delmon Young over Rickie Weeks with the first pick of the 2003 draft, Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times writes.  Drafting Weeks would’ve obviously significantly changed not only the Rays’ franchise history, but likely a good chunk of baseball history over the last decade-plus, as Topkin chronicles the chain reaction of events that would’ve been altered had Young not gone first overall.  Weeks, after all these years, has finally ended up in a Tampa uniform after signing a minor league contract with the Rays earlier this month.

East Notes: Red Sox Outfield, Phillies, Syndergaard, Teheran

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Red Sox outfielder Chris Young hit the DL with a hamstring injury, as Chris Mason of the Boston Herald writes. He joins Brock Holt and Blake Swihart as unavailable left field options for Boston, which already had ample justification to pursue an upgrade at the position. There’s some optimism for both of those players, at least, as Holt has begun a rehab assignment and Swihart is out of his walking boot.

Here’s more from the eastern divisions:

  • The Red Sox are stretched thin in left even as Rusney Castillo looks less and less like a viable major leaguer. Rob Bradford of WEEI.com takes an interesting look at the process that led the team to sign him to a contract that now seems like an expensive miss.
  • Phillies GM Matt Klentak says that the “feeling out process” has begun for summer trade activity, as Corey Seidman of CSNPhilly.com reports. Still, he suggests that it’s largely been quiet for Philly thus far. Klentak also discussed the progress of top prospect J.P. Crawford, explaining that some early struggles at Triple-A are just part of the maturation process and noting that he has continued to exhibit a mastery of the strike zone.
  • The Mets appear to believe that Noah Syndergaard’s valuable right elbow isn’t at risk despite a recent scare, as MLB.com’s Anthony DiComo reports. An MRI showed only inflammation, and manager Terry Collins noted that Syndergaard has dealth with minor flare-ups at times in the past without any real structural issue arising. He’s set to make his next scheduled start.
  • Over at Fangraphs, Eno Sarris explores an important question for the Braves as well as potential suitors for righty Julio Teheran: just how good is he? He suggests that Teheran may be able to continue to outperform ERA estimators somewhat, though perhaps some movement toward those marks is to be expected. In the end, Sarris calls him “a good pitcher on a great contract,” which seems like a fair appraisal.

Red Sox Outright Rusney Castillo

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JUNE 20: Castillo has cleared waivers and been sent outright to Pawtucket, tweets Brian MacPherson of the Providence Journal.

JUNE 19, 1:21pm: The Red Sox hadn’t contacted Castillo as of an hour ago, tweets Rob Bradford of WEEI. Castillo has three days before he’ll have to report to the team, Bradford adds.

10:57am: The Red Sox placed outfielder Rusney Castillo on outright waivers Saturday, reports Jon Heyman of FanRag Sports. Castillo will clear waivers Monday if nobody claims him. Given that Castillo is on a $10.5MM salary this year and is set to rake in upward of $50MM through 2019, odds are strongly against a team claiming the Cuba native.

This obviously isn’t the outcome the Red Sox or Castillo anticipated when the two sides agreed to a seven-year, $72.5MM contract in 2014. Castillo came to the United States as a potential five-tool center field option for Boston, but he never lived up to that promise with the Red Sox after an excellent initial taste of the majors.

When he first joined the Red Sox late in the 2014 season, Castillo appeared in 10 games and collected 12 hits – including three home runs – three walks and three steals in 40 plate appearances. Over a much larger sample size last season, he batted a poor .253/.288/.359 with five homers and four steals across 289 trips to the plate. That lack of production has carried into this year, with Castillo having posted a .245/.304/.320 line in 161 PAs with Triple-A Pawtucket. Despite the Red Sox’s injury issues in left field, where Blake Swihart and Brock Holt are both on the shelf, the 28-year-old Castillo has collected just eight PAs in the majors this season.

Going forward, there’s a chance Castillo will remain with the Red Sox organization if he clears waivers, according to Michael Silverman of the Boston Herald. While Castillo would no longer be on the club’s 40-man roster, he’d still be able to suit up for Pawtucket.

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