Goodbye Luis Castillo - some thoughts

I have been accepting the conventional wisdom that Luis Castillo would be leaving at the end of this year. That the Twins just couldn’t come up with the bucks required to hold onto this great lead off hitter, who went almost one full year without committing an error fielding. That freeing up the salary from Luis Castillo was the only way we could clear enough bucks to hope to hold onto Torii Hunter, and in the future Johann Santana and possibly Joe Nathan, too. Today I started to think about some of these assumptions. This thought process was started by comments made by Johann to the Minneapolis Tribune.

Santana expressed his unhappiness with the Luis Castillo trade. What really caused the unhappiness to boil over to the press was that no further acquisitions were made, just a couple of minor league players who may contribute “in the future.” It seems to be a trend that Santana may have had enough.

All of this started me thinking about my unhappiness with the Luis Castillo trade and everyone’s assumption that the Twins wouldn’t/couldn’t resign him. And a thought popped into to my noggin’ – why not? We resigned the dubious skill (sic) of Rondell White after his 2006 season spent mostly on the DL. When Rondell did play the role for which he was acquired – DH – his batting average was (and is) appalling. Instead of cutting him loose last winter the Twins, those miserly paymasters, resigned him.

Rondell was only making $2.5 million, so this may explain why the Twins resigned this rather questionable talent. But Rondell has never filled the role for which the Twins picked him up – DH. The only time he hits is when he’s also playing in the outfield. As an outfielder Rondell plays okay and he does hit, but the Twins have many, many outfielders in waiting, all of them lower in price and all who could be part of “the future.”

Luis Castillo was only signed through the end of this year. Everyone in the press and the blogs has been saying that the Twins wouldn’t be able to resign him. The common wisdom was that Luis Castillo would go for way more money than the Twins could afford. I’m questioning this now. The Twins were paying Castillo about $5.7 million for 2007. They have now saved $2 million of that to apply to buying the guys better lunchmeat I guess.

Now I know that there is a large difference between $2.5 million and $5.7 million. I also know that there is a really big difference in the contributions past, present and (what could have been the) future of White and Castillo. The Twins could not have known that White would be on the dl again this year. But the Twins did know that White could not fill the needed role of DH and that should have been enough to NOT resign him last winter. There – I’ve just found half of the money needed to resign Castillo.

So, since we can’t afford the skills and bat of Luis Castillo, then by God, we had better not afford Rondell White again this winter!!!!