After those first couple games, Molitor refused to play Astudillo. So, the one good thing about this move is that the front office is optioning a guy was not going to play anyway. As for not playing catcher at Rochester before his call up, I think it's more likely Astudillo is capable of playing many positions in addition to catcher and the FO wanted to get him some other innings around the diamond, and not that he needed to move off of catcher for poor skills. His bat is still a question mark at this level, but the no-walk, no-strikeout profile Astudillo carries was written up favorably in Fangraphs. So, yeah. Whole thing's weird.