Tuesday, February 21, 2017

The $72.5 Million Question: Will Rusney Ever Be Good?

(Boston Globe Photo)
As ESPN.com's Scott Lauber points out, it's been thirty months since Rusney Castillo played his first minor league game. And, the soon-to-be 30-year old Cuban is no closer to Fenway now than he was in 2014. So, it begs the question: 'Did the Red Sox blow $72.5 million on this dude?' There's pretty much no chance that Castillo breaks camp with the big club—so he faces another year in AAA (or lower) trying to prove himself. It could be that he is a really late bloomer—more so than his countrymen Jose Abreu, Yasiel Puig and Yoenis Cespedes. Or, he may just never match the extreme hype that accompanied his signing. There is some reason for hope—at all minor league levels over the last eight years, he's hit .296. And, in his brief time with the major league club (99 games) he is a .262 hitter. Time—which he is rapidly running out of—will tell.