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Castro’s deal reached its end after this past season and with the signing of Alex Avila along with Mitch Garver becoming literally Mike Piazza, the odds of him returning are about the same as me dating Scarlett Johansson, so allow me to look back on Castro’s deal and see how both parties did.
Castro presented an interesting example of the shift in thinking in the Twins as this was the first “major” deal handed out by the front office now headed by Derek Falvey and Thad Levine and it appeared that they were starting to apply their ideas to the current roster. This included signing a player who is easily overlooked by traditional stats but brings value through more advanced ways of looking at players. Some may have seen his career .232 batting average and scoffed at why the Twins would even bother while others would look at his OPS+ of 93 (above average for catchers) and excellent advanced defensive stats and see a great player hidden underneath the tyranny of RBIs.
“Value” is tough to exactly define in baseball but $/WAR gives us a good general starting point to tackle the issue. 1 WAR comes out to about $8-9 million dollars on the free agent market but this relationship isn’t linear as teams rarely pay $8 million a year for a player worth 1 WAR and players worth 3 WAR don’t typically make $24 million a year on the market. Castro’s deal does however give us a good base as his contract of $24 million would mean that he needs to put up just ~3 WAR over the course of his contract for his performance to equal what the Twins paid for.
Luckily for both Castro and the Twins, he was more or less worth exactly that. Baseball-reference’s version of WAR (rWAR) has him at 3.1 in his time with the Twins while Fangraphs (fWAR) has him at 3.7 and Baseball Prospectus (WARP) has him at 4.0.
His bat was more or less what it was with the Astros as his OPS+ with the Twins was 91 compared to 93 with the Astros. The public defensive numbers we have available are also quite kind to Castro as Fangraphs as he has been the 14th best pitch framer in baseball since he signed with the Twins (min 1500 innings). This doesn’t sound too impressive but many of the names ahead of him are purely defensive specialists like Jeff Mathis who also couldn’t hit their way out of a cardboard box (Mathis has a career wRC+ of 46), so Castro was one of the few catchers who could hit at an average level and defend well.
Beyond that, it seemed like Castro brought more to the table than just his ability on the field. Unfortunately, I am not in the clubhouse so I don’t know exactly how everything shook out in there but it seemed like many pitchers were outspoken in how he worked with the pitching staff in both calling games and pre-game preparation. The catcher position more than any other is one that demands more than just on-field performance and it appeared that Castro was useful there as well.
Castro was never an eye-popping player but he was a solid role-player who brought good value to a team that needed a strong defensive catcher and he was worth almost exactly what his contract paid him. The Twins also made the playoffs in both of the seasons he was healthy, coincidence? Most definitely, but still something fun to think about when considering a player’s value.
UPDATE: Jeff Passan of ESPN reports Castro is joining the Angels.
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