Former Mets second baseman Luis Castillo, released a couple days ago, is free to sign with another team starting today (for the ML minimum of $414,000). A few reports had the Chicago Cubs as one of many teams that would give Castillo a look, but (thankfully) manager Mike Quade has generally squashed the Cubs’ connection to Castillo.
“I haven’t seen enough of him to know what he’s got left,” Quade told reporters yesterday. “I’ve been thrilled to death with [Darwin] Barney and [Jeff Baker], and I believe that [Blake DeWitt’s] work ethic will get him through what has been a tough string for him and that he still is going to be a valuable guy.”
Setting aside the impressively tepid comments about DeWitt, Quade does genuinely seem happy with the options at second base, at least when viewed in comparison to Castillo. And Quade got even more blunt.
“I don’t even know how well [Castillo] runs now. When you’re slapping it around like he does, it’s good to have some legs to go with it. And his arm was never fantastic, so I don’ t know.”
I’d say that’s a pretty strong suggestion that we’ll not be reading any more Castillo rumors. And if we do, we’ll know who’s really running the roster show…