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Sunday, June 18, 2006

Juan Castro returns to the Reds

On Thursday, the Reds re-acquired utility infielder Juan Castro from the Minnesota Twins for minor league outfielder Brandon Roberts. Roberts was a 7th-round selection in the '05 draft and had a good year at Rookie-league Billings, hitting 0.318/0.386/0.438 (0.824) w/ 32 steals in 39 chances. Not a huge prospect, but not half-bad either. In contrast, Castro has a reputation as a classic all-field, no hit middle infielder. The reputation is well deserved. Recent Stats:
Year/Team PA PA/K PA/BB PA/HR SB/% OBP SLG OPS PrOPS GPA EqA VORP
2003/CIN 341 5.9 18.9 37.9 2/40% 0.290 0.388 0.678 --- 0.228 0.232 -0.5
2004/CIN 314 6.2 22.4 62.8 1/100% 0.277 0.378 0.655 0.657 0.219 0.224 -3.5
2005/MIN 283 7.3 31.4 56.6 0/50% 0.279 0.386 0.665 0.692 0.222 0.237 -0.9
Offensively, Castro has been lucky to reach replacement level the past three years. He doesn't walk much, strikes out fairly often, and doesn't hit a whole lot of homers (though he did hit 9 in half-time work in '03). Defensively, Castro saw most of his innings last year at shortstop, and was 9 plays above average last year according to the fielding bible, which would translate to 21 plays above average in a full season's work. So yeah, the guy can pick it.

So we've got a solid defensive option in the infield for late innings. Frankly that's what I thought we'd have with Phillips before he showed what we can do, and I have no problem with having someone like that on the roster. But carrying 12 pitchers and three catchers does put a premium on roster spots, so it will be interesting to see what happens when, say, Edwin Encarnacion returns from the disable list. Like many, I feel like we're bound to see another trade soon. If only LaRue was hitting... Maybe someone'd be interested in Aurilia? Package with Milton while he's still throwing well for a starter? Or maybe straight up for a reliever? We shall see...

2 comments:

  1. The only problem is, that according the Twins fans his defense has been below par this year. Dropping pop ups, missing routine groundballs etc.

    His stats seem to point to the same thing.
    7 errors in 50 games (compared with 5 in 73 last year) [of course that doesn't include a lot of errors that his reputation has protected him from]
    As well both his range factor and his zone rating are condierably below his last year numbers.

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  2. Interesting. He is 34, so he's at the age that infielder's range can sometimes fall off rapidly. We shall see..

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