Fire Gardy

In the summer of 2007, the Twins traded away Luis Castillo to the Mets for what seemed at the time to be an underwhelming haul of prospects. Players and fans alike were angry that the Twins would do that, seemingly throwing away a good thing for nothing, and giving up on the season.

It took Alexi Casilla a little longer than expected to click in the majors and replace Castillo’s production, which made the move look worse in the summer of 2007. But in 2008, Castillo was worth just 0.5 Value Wins above replacement, while Casilla was worth +1.2 wins. (Or, in Baseball Prospectus’ terms, Castillo’s WARP was 0.0 while Casilla’s was 0.6.)

Meanwhile, Dustin Martin was part of the take from the Castillo trade, and has turned out to be a pretty decent prospect. His CF defense is apparently good enough to play, and he can hit. Last year at AA he hit .290/.355/.447 with 10 HR and 34 2B and 22 SB. The only black mark on his record is that he strikes out too often — 125 K’s to 49 BB’s in 133 games played. If he can improve that K/BB a little bit, he could be something.

Meanwhile, he’s hitting very well in his first taste of big league camp, batting .583 so far in spring training. The few times I’ve been able to see him play, I’ve been struck by his Ichiro-like swing that looks like it should get him a high contact rate, and the ball seems to leap off his bat. And he’s fast on the basepaths.

He’ll start this year in Rochester, biding his time until two of our outfielders go down (and maybe Pridie also). He’s got a lot of guys in front of him right now, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with organizational depth. And if the Revere/Hicks generation catches up by the time the current generation is ready to move on, Martin should be valuable enough in a trade to get us something better than Castillo.

Oh yeah, and the Mets have to pay Castillo for three more seasons of icing his knees during games in April and rapidly declining range in the field. Does anyone still think we lost that trade?