Buzzkill Pauley said:
Excepting, of course, that Willie McGee already had more than 5000 PA against MLB pitching when he hit free agency.
Castillo's got 0. And while recent returns on Cuban defectors has been good, he's not a sure thing.
Bingo. There's a lot of that old Peter Gammons trick going on in this thread--introducing hypotheticals and then treating them as implicitly more or less certain. "If he's Brett Gardner with power"--well yeah,
if he's Brett Gardner with power, he's worth a sizable bid. But we don't know that he is yet. We only know that some scout made that comparison.
Until he plays in the major leagues, he's essentially a prospect--maybe a AAAA prospect if you want to look at it that way. It's not true that all recent Cuban defectors have outperformed expectations. Puig has. Depending on who you ask, Abreu has. Cespedes has, at best, matched his billing. Viciedo has fallen short of it.
Here's what was written about Castillo on BA last winter before the feeding frenzy began:
Defection Of Top Cuban Outfielder Rusney Castillo Could Shake Up Free Agent Market
More of a doubles hitter than a big home run threat, Castillo puts a charge into the ball with a line-drive righthanded swing, though he can get long to the ball at times and some scouts think he’s prone to chasing pitches off the plate. Primarily a center fielder in Cuba, Castillo has also played some second and third base, so his versatility could be a draw for some teams. He’s an aggressive, high-energy player, though some teams see him as a fourth outfielder.
Does that sound like a guy worth making an aggressive bid for? It doesn't to me. Oh, yeah, but, Abreu! Puig! Well, this isn't Abreu and it isn't Puig. It's a defensively versatile speed guy with doubles power and a propensity to chase. That could turn out to be Brett Gardner with power, or it could turn out to be Damian Jackson with a big price tag.
Of course we don't have too much talent. But you're talking about investing tens of millions in a 27-year-old whose skill set is a very close match for a cost-controlled 21-year-old on your roster, and whose certainty of making that skill set work in the majors does not seem significantly superior to the 21-year-old's. I'm in favor of making a bid, because this isn't like the posting system; there's nothing to lose but the staff time spent on putting the bid together. But I'm not in favor of making an aggressive bid. Throw a lowball-ish number out there; either you don't get him, or it turns out everybody else had cold feet too and yours were the warmest, and you get him for a reasonable bargain. He just doesn't strike me as worth going out on a payroll limb for.