it’s official now: The Mets traded prospects Dustin Martin and Drew Butera to Minnesota for Luis Castillo.
To me, there are several ways to look at this.. The first way is that Castillo serves absolutely no purpose to the Mets this year except as a backup infielder. The only reason most people are seemingly worried about Ruben Gotay starting, and so the Mets decided they needed to acquire one of the worst defensive second baseman in the game. Castillo’s zone rating is .801, while Gotay’s rating is .827. Castillo’s FRAA was a -6 this year, while Gotay’s was a -2. You can be skeptical of defensive metrics, but the correlation between the two is just too high to ignore.
Of course, the other way of looking at this is exactly why I believe it’s a good deal. The Mets are going to recieve a 2nd round draft pick next year, which i’d much rather have than Drew Butera and Dustin Martin.
For those who don’t know too much about Butera and Martin, here’s my two cents. I wrote a short blurb on Butera about a month or so back, and at the time there seemed to be some hope for him. Following two terrible offensive seasons, he put on a decent performance, (.258/.348/.418) and showed a nice eye at the plate, (24 BB vs: 28 K) despite being old for the FSL. At the time I though of him as a Jeremy Brown type player, or at least hitter, since the sum of his offensive value was his ability to get on-base.
He fell off the map at AA, (.188/.207/.231) pretty much diminishing whatever hope there was of him being a major league starter. Butera does have a gun for arm- he’s reportedly hit 92 mph on the gun on his throws to second- so if he manages to hit nayhwrre close to replacement level play, he should make a fine backup catcher.
Dustin Martin is pretty much a fourth outfielder at best. He’s been extrmeely lucky this year, (.371 BABIP) and while a very small part of his BABIP can be the result of his speed, it’s highly unlikely that rend will continue, since his his GB%, (59%) and lD%, (9%) are both well below the league average. His ceiling’s a fourth outfielder
There you have it. The Mets traded two organizational fillers for a 2nd round draft next year. Not bad when you think about it, right??
Filed under: Drew Butera, Dustin Martin
