Sure, all rumored signings come with conflicting reports in this day and age, but the Rusney Castillo set in the last few days has been particularly enjoyable. The Phillies were the favorites while simultaneously not being expected to get Castillo. The Yankees were going to go over the top until they decided they weren’t.
And then yesterday, the Cubs were basically out … just in time for Buster Olney to hear that they were the favorites.
On that one, I cautioned that Olney’s report was coming by way of other teams in the bidding, who sometimes have a reason to obfuscate, and it sounds like that may have been what happened. Because joining in yesterday’s report from Sahadev Sharma that the bidding was going to exceed the Cubs’ perceived value of Castillo, we now have Ken Rosenthal:
Sources: #Tigers, #RedSox, #SFGiants still in mix for Rusney Castillo. #Cubs, #Yankees, #Phillies not expected to place high bid.
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) August 20, 2014
Things were already trending that it wasn’t going to be the Cubs before Sharma’s and Rosenthal’s reports, so I feel relatively comfortable in saying (1) the Cubs probably aren’t going to get him, and (2) the contract is probably going to be surprisingly high.
The Giants are a new-ish name, by the way. So that’s interesting.
When this all shakes out, I’ll be very interested to see where Castillo lands, and to hopefully hear a little more about the bidding. As I said yesterday, at some point you have to draw your valuation line in the sand, and not go above it (process-oriented approach). It’s easy to declare the signing team the winner, but we won’t really know that for years – which, I know, is painful in our #HotTakes world.
That said, if the Cubs do bow out of this one and Castillo goes on to dramatically exceed the value of his contract, it’ll be a miss.
And, further, if the Cubs do bow out, I’ll start wondering when Yasmani Tomas becomes a free agent.