The White Sox signed Welington Castillo

Hey! Hey!! The White Sox made a move…….yep, all that talk about the Hot Stove not kicking off until Stanton’s and Ohtani’s situations were resolved was total bullshit as there was a non-DiPoto trade and our White Sox signed Welington Castillo.  The deal is 2 years and $15M with a team option for 2020 that is worth $8M (500K buyout, which is included in the original $15M).

The 108ers love this move, well, I mean, we love any move that improves the product of the team we’ll be watching 162 times in 2018, but its more than that………

Depth – We’ve touched on this before in the #SundaySoak and in general conversations in the 108, but, Kevan Smith and Omar Narvaez, as well as they played last year, are really #2 catchers at best and truthfully…..on a really good team, they are #3 catchers that you have sitting at AAA awaiting an injury (or worse).  Good solid guys that can do a few things in the majors, but you don’t want to have to count on them for 100 starts a year.  Playoff teams NEED those guys in their system and now with Welington Castillo taking over the #1 catching duties, we’ll have that adequate depth.  In fact, the best case scenario is by 2020 when the Sox are the class of the AL Central, Collins is starting (or Seby Zavala) with Castillo as the #2 catcher and Narvaez chilling at AAA….JUST…..IN……..CASE.  Great franchises have that depth.  I like that it is starting to develop for our White Sox.

DON’T WORRY (BE HAPPY) – The people out there stumping for Smith and Narvaez, don’t worry, they still project to play quite a bit.  Castillo’s main knock is that he won’t start 120 times, so we’ll need these other guys as well.  The mix of the three should be quite productive, especially if they utilize Narvaez LH bat against tough RHP.

White Sox fans – I saw a fair amount of “we didn’t need to do this, Smith and Narvaez had decent years”………while I don’t disagree that they had good years (for them), looking to upgrade the roster, particularly as the White Sox ramp up to being a contender is a must.  Also, as White Sox fans, we should look at it positively from both perspectives.  YES, those guys did look pretty good and YES we have also brought in another guy along with these guys we already have to make the position an overall strength.

Pipeline – Signing Castillo (potentially through 2020) and having control over Smith and Narvaez over that same time period allows for generous heaps of development time (Generous Heaps of Development Time sounds like an old REM song) for Collins and Zavala.  That’s what the end of the rebuild should look like, the White Sox should be bursting at the seems with talent at various positions…..this was the first step towards that at Catcher.

Now Rick Hahn just needs to trade for Evan Longoria