Looking Back on the Castillo/Gotay Debacle

To this day, I still have a soft spot for Ruben Gotay. Bitter is actually a more apt. description.

On a personal level, it has always irked me that Luis Castillo is wearing a Mets uniform at the expense of a promising youngster cheated out of a big league career. Nothing against Castillo, other than being a toxic asset on the Mets payroll, but any time an athlete is denied a well-deserved opportunity to succeed at any level it is somewhat depressing.

I thought Gotay deserved a chance before the Mets traded for Castillo at the deadline in 2007.  When the Mets denied him a spot on the 25-man roster  before heading north in 2008, and were thus forced to place him on waivers, I thought it underscored the ignorance of the organization like nothing else; only the Mets would rid themselves of a 25 year-old .800+ OPS. infielder for absolutely nothing.

Looking back more closely now, however, I probably overlooked a few red flags. Even than, Gotay was an egregious fielder, and his BABIP was a concern. So I decided to analyze the deal a little further.

The Trade:

On July 31st, 2007, the Mets sent prospects Drew Butera and Dustin Martin to Minnesota for Luis Castillo. Butera and Martin were barely C-Level prospects at the time, and have yet to play in the big leagues since, but Minnesota was able to avoid paying the money owed to Castillo the rest of his contract year.

Gotay was hitting an excellent .350/.382/.504 with a .391 wOBA at the time of the deal. His high OBP. however, was mostly a function of his batting average. as he walked in just 5.26% of his PA. That is a significant problem when your BABIP is .411. I did not think much of his BABIP at the time, partly because he had a very high LD% (around 29%). If we regress his production toward a more reasonable .320-.330 BABIP, his line was about .284/.322/.409 with a .330 wOBA.*

That does not sound like too bad of a drop-off, but if Gotay did regress all the way to a .325 BABIP over the next two months, he would have put up something like a .275 wOBA  and a .580 OPS. down the stretch.

From the Mets perspective, the consensus was (correctly), that Gotay was a promising, if risky venture, and they decided to acquire the dependable veteran in Castillo. Castillo joined the Mets with a .709 OPS. and gave them a .742 OPS. Overall, he gave them a solid 3.1 UZR/150, an exorbitant improvement over Gotay’s -18.9 UZR/150 in 37 games that year.

The point is Gotay would likely have experienced a severe drop-off in his production, and that was a risk the Mets undoubtedly could not afford, even if it hindered Gotay’s development, and I have to admit that.

Post 2007:

If Gotay could have sustained his 2007 production before Castillo arrived over a full season, he would have given the Mets slightly below average offense at second, and left a lot to be desired defensively (career -7.7 UZR/150). That is sill worth 1.5-2 wins, or around $7-$9 million, if he played everyday. In contrast, Castillo, whom the Mets signed to a four-year, $24 million dollar contract before the 2008 season, has been worth an average of 1.1 wins the last two years, due to his decline in range since.

Of course, we have to be wary of sample size error- we are talking about less than 150 plate appearances. But Gotay also offered vast potential for improvement at the plate with his quick bat (I loved his wrist-flicking action), and on the diamond with his quick feet.  Not to mention the Mets would have had his cost under control for years.

In the absence of better options, Gotay could have stepped up and platooned in 2008, or the Mets could have found a stop-gap option (Castillo on a one-year deal?), and given Gotay 250-300 at-bats off the bench, include some time in the outfield, to prove himself. They certainly could have used him instead of Damion Easley or Argenis Reyes at second when Castillo was on the DL. Yes, Easley was coming off a very good year, but he was 38 and the Mets should have seen his swift decline coming. Add Brady Clark’s 7 at-bats to the mix too, whom the Mets decided to initially carry at the expense of waiving Gotay.

Conclusion:

While the deadline deal, in hindsight, was a solid move on Omar’s part, it was beyond foolish to have cut ties with Gotay entering 2008. I am willing to cut Omar some slack, since Castillo went from a solid defensive second baseman in 2007 to an absolute butcher the last two years

Chances are, Gotay was no Rod Carew in the making, but he could have been busy carving out a nice little big league career the last two years. The Mets could try and make up for that this off-season.

* I did not use his overall season line, since Gotay played sparingly after July 31st. If I recall, he did not play completely regularly beforehand either, but I think we get a much better idea of his production.