The date is the 17th of September. The year? 2014. The Boston Red Sox have called up a foreign prospect they had signed just weeks earlier.
This prospect is the native of Ciego de Ávila, Cuba: Rusney Castillo. All 5-foot-9 of him standing in the box of PNC Park in Pittsburgh. He went 1-4 –– jumpstarting a 10-game dose of Castillo that resulted in a .333/.400/.528 slash-line with 162 wRC+.
Yes, a 10-game sample size is nothing in comparison to the full 162-game season, but the then 26-year-old outfielder looked like a signing filled with promise and potential stardom.
Fast forward to the present. Rusney Castillo has appeared in just 89 more games at the MLB level, slashing just .253/.287/.359 with 72 wRC+. Scouts cited it was Castillo’s inability to catch up to the high-velocity fastballs he was seeing regularly. So the now 32-year-old has spent the bulk of his seven-year, $72.5 million deal in Triple-A Pawtucket.
But the Cuban-born outfielder has blossomed at McCoy Stadium, hitting .293 with a strikeout-rate of just 14.7 percent.
The Red Sox were able to get his salary off of the luxury tax pool when they removed him from the 40-man roster in 2017, but with reports that Mookie Betts might be on the block this winter, there’s a real chance Castillo comes back, and for good reason at that.
Scouts have indicated that Castillo didn’t run particularly well in Pawtucket last year, thus leading to him switching to right field for much of 2019 –– but in the 723.1 innings he has played defensively in the MLB, he has 18 defensive runs saved –– which was tied for 19th in the MLB among outfielders with a minimum of 700 innings played between 2014 and 2016.
Pretty good considering he’s the only outfielder in the top-20 with less than 1,600.0 innings.
The speed might be declining, and he certainly isn’t a superior offensive option than Mookie Betts, but Rusney Castillo is going to be paid over $14 million next year after picking up his player option –– in hopes to get another crack at the MLB level.
Castillo was sent down to fine-tune his skills and improve in critical areas. He did that proficiently and has since been trapped in the minors due to a matter of circumstance. The 32-year-old Cuban-born outfielder should be given another chance in the majors –– and the time is 2020 for Rusney.
