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The Chicago White Sox were not expected to be significant spenders this offseason so Friday’s news that the club added Wellington Castillo on a two-year deal raised some eyebrows.<\/p>\n
Maybe it shouldn’t have.<\/p>\n
Castillo joined the Orioles a year ago on a two-year deal that included an opt-out clause if he performed well. The 30-year-old exercised that clause after hitting .282\/.323\/.490 with 20 home runs and 53 RBI in 96 games.<\/p>\n
It would not have been a surprise to imagine the White Sox added someone with major league experience to help out at the Triple-A level but now it appears that person may come in the form of Kevan Smith or Omar Navaez.<\/p>\n
The White Sox had planned to use Geovany Soto as their near everyday catcher last season but that lasted just 42 at-bats before the veteran went down with a season ending elbow injury. That left a bunch of action behind the plate for both Smith and Navaez and truth be told neither really asserted themselves behind the plate or with the bat.<\/p>\n
Smith was below average defensively and threw out just 13% of would be base stealers well off the league average of 27%.\u00a0He hit an empty .283 with just 21 extra base hits. He walked a mere nine times in 276 trips to the plate.\u00a0 With Smith behind the plate there were 5 passed balls and 26 wild pitches.<\/p>\n
Navarez was better at the plate. He hit .277 but added 38 walks in 295 plate appearances to up his on-base percentage to .373 but much like Smith offered little in terms of being a guy who was more than one base at a time as he managed just 12 extra base hits. Navarez had 6 passed balls and saw 34 wild pitches. He threw up 24% of would be base stealers.<\/p>\n
Clearly the font office was not comfortable with either Smith or Navarez getting too much time behind the plate and did not envy having a tandem of them come opening day. That surely is what led to\u00a0a rebuilding team who is trying to trade star player Jose Abreu, to give a veteran backstop a two-yeal deal with $14.5 million with a club option for $8 million in 2020 that carries a $500,000 buyout. In addition to being an upgrade with the bat Castillo threw out 44% of base stealers last season and is known for being able to block pitches and the edge of the plate.<\/p>\n
The White Sox also reached an agreement with relief pitcher Danny Farquhar on a new deal worth $1.05 million next year. He spent time with both the Rays and White Sox last season and finished with a 4-2 record, 4.20 ERA and 45 strikesouts with 13 holes in 52 games. He would appear to have a strong grip on a back of the bullpen spot next season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Chicago White Sox were not expected to be significant spenders this offseason so Friday’s news that the club added Wellington Castillo on a two-year deal raised some eyebrows. Maybe it shouldn’t have. Castillo joined the Orioles a year ago on a two-year deal that included an opt-out clause if he performed well. The 30-year-old […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10915,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[499],"tags":[181,503,501,1015],"coauthors":[6],"class_list":{"0":"post-10914","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-chicago-white-sox","9":"tag-front","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-wellington-castillo"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10914"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10916,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10914\/revisions\/10916"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10914"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}